Marvel Studios has made a huge change to its scheduled programming this year that means we won’t see any Marvel Cinematic Universe projects over the Holiday period. The Multiverse Saga has been an almost constant source of criticism among MCU fans, though there have been some projects that have stood out. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Thunderbolts*, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Moon Knight, WandaVision, and more have been praised, and another TV series has also been positively received, but Marvel Studios will not be capitalizing on its success.
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For the last two years, Marvel Studios has released seasons of its animated What If…? series over the Holiday period. While What If…? season 1 released between August and October 2021, season 2 and season 3 both released their episodes on consecutive days from December 22nd, including on Christmas Day. This release schedule made What If…? an essential part of an MCU fan’s Holiday period, but Marvel Studios is not developing any future seasons of What If…?. We’ll be going without this year, even though What If…? could have been the perfect long-running show to flesh out the Multiverse Saga.
Why We Still Want What If…? Season 4 & What Stories Could Be Explored
When the Multiverse Saga was first announced back in 2022, this chapter of the MCU was intended to come to an end with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2025. Since then, delays, strikes, and reshuffles have extended the Multiverse Saga to December 2027, but What If…? perhaps wasn’t planned to go on for that long. What If…? season 3 ended in 2024, which would have led directly into the final chapter of the Multiverse Saga in ’25, meaning the series coming to an end now does, in some ways, make sense, but we now want more.
Since the Multiverse Saga has been extended, it would be great to see more What If…?. One of the biggest criticisms of the Multiverse Saga is that the multiverse hasn’t been explored as much as it could have been. We’ve seen a few alternate realities in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and more, but What If…? was perfectly primed to explore the weird and wonderful possibilities of these parallel worlds. We got some of this, but Marvel could have pushed the series even further in season 4 or beyond.
What If…? season 3 started to push the envelope more than the series had before by introducing a variant of X-Men member Storm. The finale teased even more wild variants that could have been explored in future seasons, including a samurai Ghost Rider, a six-armed Spider-Man, Thanos as Weapon X, Maestro as a Master of the Mystic Arts, Jubilee as the Silver Surfer, Infinity Wanda Maximoff, Nova, Blade as Moon Knight, and more. The latter returned in the Marvel Zombies miniseries, but we want more of these crazy variants to be explored, so we’re still hoping for What If…? season 4, no matter how unlikely this may be.
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