What If…? Creators Reveal Hilarious Inspiration Behind Darcy Lewis and Howard the Duck’s Romance

What If…? came to an end this week, and Marvel fans are excited to see what the future holds for the animated series. The show’s finale saw The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) assemble the “Guardians of the Multiverse” in the hopes of taking down Ultron. There were many dark episodes throughout the season, but there were also some filled with comic relief. The funniest episode by far was “What If… Thor Were an Only Child?,” which followed a world where Odin chose not to adopt Loki, leaving Thor less concerned with his duties and more interested in partying. When the God of Thunder first arrives on Earth, he decides to stop in Las Vegas, and invite a bunch of the MCU’s favorite aliens. There were many fun moments in the episode, but fans were especially obsessed with the surprise wedding between Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Howard the Duck (Seth Green). During a recent interview with Collider, head writer A.C. Bradley and director Bryan Andrews revealed the hilarious inspiration behind the romance. 

“That kind of came from… When you’re making an animation show and you do temp voices called scratch voices, where you put the storyboards and the rough voices against to see how everything plays before you get in Hayley Atwell and Kat Dennings and all the MCU actors… I can’t act, but if you give me a beer I do a very good Darcy Lewis,” Bradley explained. Andrews chimed in, “It’s true.”

Bradley continued, “Because it turns out drunk A.C. and Darcy are kind of the same. So my original scratch was recorded in the edit bay after a couple of shots of whiskey with the crew. And I also love Howard the Duck. I also have a slight crush on Seth Green, because we all watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer as teenagers. And so that came from a bunch of running jokes in both the script, in the edit bay, with some alcohol, with is really how the Darcy/Howard relationship sprang anyway.” 

Andrews added, “Yeah, it just came a bit organically, too, because even when we were doing Party Thor and the universe comes, we’re just like, “Yeah, of course, Howard’s going to be there. Of course. It’s Vegas. He’s in this suit. He has a martini, and he’s in Vegas for sure.” Right? And then the combo of the two, then each little thing, it was… it’s just meant to be. It just came, and it’s perfect, so the fact that audiences are responding to that makes us really happy because we’ve loved that forever and haven’t been able to talk about to anybody, and now we can say, “Isn’t that amazing?” They just seem made for each other. I don’t know why. It’s great. We love it.” 

Season 1 of What If…? is now available to stream in its entirety on Disney+.