What If? Season 2 Bringing Back Major Marvel Star

The Marvel Cinematic Universe got its first animated series last summer, with the first season of What If…? making its debut on Disney+. The series, which is based on the comic series of the same name, chronicles alternate universes where key events from MCU movies and shows played out differently. It’s been known for quite some time that the show is renewed for a sophomore season, which has begged the question of which characters and scenarios we’ll see play out in the new episodes. During a recent panel at the LightBox Expo (via Laughing Place), What If…? director Bryan Andrews revealed that Cate Blanchett will be reprising her role as Hela in Season 2, after originally portraying the character in Thor: Ragnarok.

While details surrounding Blanchett’s What If…? appearance are under wraps, Andrews reportedly teased that it will be a side of the character that fans haven’t seen before.

What is What If…? Season 2 about?

In What If…? Season 2, after enlisting the Guardians of the Multiverse to stop Infinity Ultron, The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) returns to meet new heroes and explore more strange new worlds in the MCU’s ever-expanding Multiverse.

“The Watcher was designed to almost be us,” What If…? head writer A.C. Bradley explained in an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com earlier this year. “He’s us, the audience. He’s us, the watchers, as we’ve been watching the MCU grow and expand these last almost-14 years now. And then even for some of these older folks who grew up reading the comic books, reading these universes. So the whole idea of The Watcher was that as these stories continue, he steps more and more closer, he becomes more real to us, because these stories become so much more to him. They become his language, his cultural touchstones, the way it has for our entire society. And these heroes become, in a way, his friends. He needs to save the multiverse because he can’t let this go. He breaks his oath because they matter so much. Something finally matters so much to him that he’s forced to break his oath.”

“And that was pulling from the comic books,” Bradley continued. “In the comic books The Watcher is notorious for saying he won’t intervene, and then when he does, it’s always for something huge. He doesn’t intervene because Reed Richards’ car broke down. He intervenes because something huge is coming on the horizon. We just had to figure out what that would be in the Marvel multiverse, and that was the idea of playing with Ultron, who is such a great villain. And now, thanks to Phase Four, he could have the Infinity Gauntlet. You marry Ultron with the Infinity Gauntlet and you have utter devastation.”