Marvel Studios Teased What If? Episode With Iron Man on Sakaar and Everyone Missed It

Never say that Marvel doesn’t spoil its fandom. In fact you might say that they spoil them so much that sometimes we don’t even notice everything that they give us. As pointed out by Reddit user /u/_HappyTheMan_ on the /r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers subreddit, they left something right under our noses. When Disney+ first launched in the United States in November it included the “Expanding the Universe” special about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and with a tease of all the new content coming from Marvel Studios to the streaming service. Among them is the animated series What If…? and hidden in the art for the series was a very exciting image, a new look at Iron Man as seen in the show.

At exactly the 7:22 mark in the special, an image of Iron Man can be seen with a very unique set of armor, which seems to imply Tony Stark will make his way to the gladiator planet of Sakaar in one episode. In case you’re not convinced by the image itself that this is the context of Tony’s new look, Jeff Goldblum himself confirmed at much in an interview when he spoke about the episode that he’ll be appearing in as The Grandmaster.

“I played the part again a couple of days ago. I went to the Disney studios and I recorded the Grandmaster’s voice for an episode of a show that’s gonna be on Disney+ that’s called What If…?,” Goldblum previously said in a BuzzFeed video. “It’s an animated version of all the characters we know and love from Marvel and this episode included the Grandmaster and Iron Man, and Korg. Taika Waititi had already recorded his voice for that, so yeah, for a couple hours I enjoyed doing that.

Before the rumor mill goes on again about Robert Downey Jr. returning to the part, despite Goldblum saying so in the interview, it was reported that the actor misspoke and that RDJ truly is finished with the part. It’s unclear who will voice Iron man in this episode of What If…? but we’ll get to see a really interesting turn of events that sees the hero in a new setting like no other from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The series, narrated by Jeffrey Wright as the all-seeing Watcher, will also see the return of MCU vets like Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Brolin, Hayley Atwell, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Natalie Portman, Michael Douglas, Michael B. Jordan, Sebastian Stan, Michael Rooker, Tom Hiddleston and other returning Marvel stars.

The first season of What If…? is set to premiere on Disney+ in Summer 2021 with season 2 already in the works.