We’re only one episode into Marvel’s What If…?, but there’s already been plenty of talk about what the future holds for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first foray into animation, which isn’t that much of a surprise when a second season was confirmed to be in development a long time ago.
Of course, there are still eight more wild, weird and wonderful multiversal adventures to go before speculation will really kick into high gear about what comes next, especially if it turns out that the show isn’t strictly abiding to an anthology format and ends up telling an overarching narrative that ties into the live-action side of the franchise.
Creator A.C. Bradley has previously revealed several jettisoned ideas including an almost identical story to the plot of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a Hydra Captain America episode and Spider-Man literally turning into a giant arachnid, so you can guarantee that plenty of potential tales have been tossed back and forth in the writers room.
In a new interview, Bradley revealed that the writing process for Season 2 is almost complete, with the effects of the pandemic inevitably resulting in a much different and more challenging way of working.
“Work on season two has been different because of COVID, and I think all our lives are very different right now. But we’ve had an amazing team and writing is knee-deep. Almost done actually. Because these episodes are so difficult to animate, the writing has to happen quite a bit before the show airs. As hard as the last year and a half has been for production, it’s been harder on people, it’s been hard on everyone, I can’t complain.”
It’ll be interesting to find out how quickly the planned Marvel Animated Studios comes together and if it affects the visual aesthetic of What If…? to any great degree, when Season 1 was outsourced to Australia’s Flying Bark Productions and Canadian outfit Squeeze Animation, neither of whom are owned by the comic book company. Keeping things in-house will be the way moving forward, but now that the style of the show has been established it’ll be difficult to move away from in the future.