Kevin Feige Reveals What If…? Has More Episodes Than Marvel Studios’ Other Disney+ Series

Marvel Studios president and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige confirms the number of episodes planned for the first season of Marvel’s What If…?, the studio’s first animated series coming to Disney+. Taking inspiration from the comic book series of the same name — which remixed familiar stories and characters outside the mainstream continuity — What If…? was first confirmed by Feige during The Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day in April, where Marvel unveiled its slate of original programming headed to the company’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, including the live-action WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, each planned for six-episode seasons.

In a new interview with BuzzFeed Brazil, Feige revealed What If…? has been ordered for a ten-episode first season:

“I’m very happy that we’re doing the What If…? series for Disney+ right now, and I’ve seen most of them. We have ten for Season 1, we’re already working on the next ten for Season 2,” he said. “We’ve revealed one that is very exciting, we’ve talked about it for years, which is the one where Peggy Carter gets the Super Soldier serum and becomes Captain Carter. That’s the very first episode, and I’m excited for people to see that. I’m excited to see the finished version of that, and I’m excited for the world to see it.”

During Disney’s D23 Expo in August, Feige explained the series would touch on all 23 movies comprising the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of 2019, from Iron Man through Spider-Man: Far From Home.

“What If…? is based on a comic series that we’ve loved for years, where they take a storyline you know and change one element, and see how things could get different,” Feige said. “So the 23 films of the MCU that you know are gonna showcase one little difference in each episode, and see how things change.”

Showrunner Ashley Bradley later clarified What If…? would not be dedicating an episode to every MCU entry: some episodes would touch on multiple films at once, including an episode that asks what if T’Challa became Guardians of the Galaxy’s Star-Lord?

“Kevin said that we will be exploring every movie in a new way, but not every episode is about one movie if that makes sense,” Bradley told Discussing Film in September. “On the reel [shown at D23 Expo], there is this image of a Star-Lord T’Challa because we wanted to see what if the worlds of Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy collided? That was taking two universes, two to three movies, kind of twisting them in new ways.”

Re-imagining one MCU movie per episode is “not the objective,” Bradley added. “The objective is to hopefully see the majority of characters from all 23 movies. You’ll see multiple characters in an episode.”

The series, narrated by Jeffrey Wright as the all-seeing Watcher, will also star 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.

What If…? is set to premiere on Disney+ in Summer 2021. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here. Disney has also launched a gift subscription option for the holidays.

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