At San Diego Comic Con 2022, it was revealed that Marvel's What If...? will release its season 2 early in 2023, and will officially have a season 3. Marvel's What If...? began as a comic book series in 1977, midway through Marvel Comics' second decade of mainstream success. What If...? spent its run browsing through Marvel history and spinning off issues based off of intriguing hypotheticals, such as 'What if Spider Man Joined the Fantastic Four?' and 'What if Captain America Hadn't Vanished in World War II?'. Though the original run of the comic series ended in 1984, it returned as a monthly anthology series on several occasions, and the idea of playing with alternate Marvel universes inspired prospective comic book and pop culture minds.
In 2021, Disney+ premiered its version of Marvel's What If..? as an animated anthology series that used a variety of MCU personnel from all throughout the franchise's history as their voice cast. Starring Jeffrey Wright as the all-seeing Uatu the Watcher, season 1 of What If...? explored a number of possible alternate universes for the MCU, and introduced variants such as Captain Carter, a version of Peggy Carter who took the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers, and an evil version of Stephen Strange who was corrupted by the Darkholde. The nine episode series had serious impact on the proper MCU, with several What If...? characters, including Captain Carter and Evil Strange, appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
During Marvel Animation's panel at SDCC 2022, plans were announced not only for What If...? season 2 to drop on Disney+ during the first quarter of 2023, but for a third season of What If...?. Reports of footage shown at the panel indicate that What If...? season 2 will include characters from recent MCU products such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and WandaVision, in addition to adapting other existing alternate universe comics arcs such as Neil Gaiman's 1602. The release timeline for season 2 of What If...? was confirmed in a tweet by Marvel Studios.
Click here to view the original post
While a second season of What If...? was always thought to be in the cards for the next stage of MCU projects, another installment of the series is even more important now that the mainline MCU is beginning to adopt more multiverse-related concepts. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was able to link the MCU to the existing X-Men films as well as episodes of What If...?, while Spider-Man: No Way Home was able to canonize both Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films as well as the Amazing Spider-Man films. At the same time, What If...? has already gained a spinoff, Marvel Zombies, which was also teased during the panel.
Marvel's plan seems to be to using multiverse theory not only to legitimize past iterations of existing MCU characters, but to encourage new reimaginings of characters who contrast with what we already know. A season 2 of What If...? seems to be geared towards bolstering the latter school of thought, and giving audiences new ways of looking at or thinking about the characters they already know in one specific light. Additionally, Marvel Studios' confidence in What If...? has also led to a more expanded animation division for the company, perhaps looking to replicate the wide range of Marvel animated series' audiences loved during the '90s. So knowing what What If...? season 2 will be, and when it will hit, as well as knowing there's more coming, will be the reassurance fans need as Marvel continues to get animated.
Source: Marvel Studios