Marvel’s What If…? seems to have earned more Marvel Cinematic Universe cred in Season 2, largely thanks to episodes like “What If… The Avengers Assembled in 1602?” and an overarching storyline that feels more in sync with the current MCU Multiverse Saga storyline.
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However, now that What If…? Season 2 is over, we’re learning some choice details about the “What Ifs?” behind the making of the sophomore season – including the fact that it almost had a Spider-Man episode!
In a new breakdown of What If…? Season 2, we got the background information that this second season was written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (between January and October of 2020). Because of the pandemic, the makers of What If…? decided that they didn’t want to dip too much into the darker end of the storytelling pool. That became an issue when it came to one particular episode that was planned for season 2 – a dark take on a Spider-Man story:
“It felt like the world was already ending and we didn’t need to add to it,” What If…? writer/showrunner A.C. Bradley explained to IGN. “And so it became kind of an escape and a fun release. However, I did write an episode, which is forever going in a drawer, that was very, very dark. I was calling it ‘Children of Men with Spider Man.’”
If you don’t get the reference: Children of Men is Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian thriller starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Charlie Hunnam. It imagined the year 2027 as a bleak portrait of humanity’s slow demise. The environment has been destroyed; human infertility has run rampant for nearly two decades; and the world economy is on the brink of collapse. Owen’s character is a bureaucrat who is recruited by his rebel ex-wife (Moore) to escort the first pregnant girl in years to a safe destination.
From the premise that A.C. Bradley teases, it sounds like this Spider-Man episode would’ve placed Peter Parker in a similar place of being the last usher of hope in a dying world. It’s a pretty fitting Spider-Man story when you think about it – but it would’ve felt out of place in What If…? Season 2, which is generally a more hopeful overarching tale, about people growing and changing for the better.
If anything, this ‘Spider-Man: Children of Men’ episode sounds like it would’ve made more sense in Season 1, which examined more extreme versions of Marvel heroes, taken from realities where they had to stand against the tide – or caused the flood of evil in the first place (Strange Supreme). That Spider-Man variant would’ve been a welcome addition to the Multiverse Avengers. But there’s still time for this story to be told.
What If…? Season 2 is streaming on Disney+.
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