The season one finale of Marvel’s What If… is almost here and with it just one final question: what if the Watcher broke his oath of never interfering with the universe? According to director Bryan Andrews and head writer AC Bradley, the answer to that burning question and oh-so many more await in the first season’s ninth and final episode.
In a recent interview with EW, Andrews and Bradley divulged some pretty exciting information regarding their plans for the show as they wrap up season one and venture onward to season two. First and foremost, Bradley confirmed that all the fans who have been hoping for a chance to catch their favorite What If… characters back in action one last time are in luck.
“We will pop into and re-meet some of our heroes from the previous episodes, including the lovely Captain Carter [Hayley Atwell], Strange Supreme, Party Thor [Chris Hemsworth], and even Killmonger [Michael B. Jordan],” Bradley reveals. “Early on in the first season, like day one talking about it, there was this notion of we’re creating all these great heroes, but we only get to sit with them for 20 or 30 minutes. Wouldn’t it be great to see them again in the finale? And then once that decision was made, it liberated me to make the endings a little bit darker and bigger, knowing that we can give some sort of resolution in the finale.”
Andrews then expanded upon what kind of resolution we can expect following episode after episode of cliffhangers and unanswered questions, stating that in the episode it “feels like all the stuff that’s been percolating across the episodes, the adventure that we bring you into for the ending, ends, to a certain degree.” However, he then confirmed that despite the show reaching a climactic and star-studded “end,” all of season two’s episodes have already been written, and actually pull from a lot of what’s to come in Marvel’s ongoing phase four.
“Hopefully, we’ll see hints of Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Black Widow characters. The fun of What If…? is that we get to explore the entire infinite multiverse, so we try and bounce around as much as we can. I want to play with all these characters, and as much as I love Captain Carter, we’ve got to share the love. I’m very excited to show new worlds, new heroes.”
Lastly, Bradley said that while season one contained multiple “big, let’s end the world, let’s kill everyone” arcs, What If…‘s second season will “focus a lot more on the character stories and these heroes and showing a different side of them that people don’t expect and hopefully they can relate to,” meaning we’re hopefully in store for a lot of death and despair later on down the road. The season finale of What If… hits Disney+ Wednesday, October 6, but never fear Marvel fans, fresh MCU content won’t be away from the streaming service for too terribly long. The Hawkeye television series starring Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, and Florence Pugh hits the platform later this year on November 24.