Amid Marvel Studios’ losing battle against superhero fatigue, What If…? remains a bright spot for fans. While increasingly convoluted (not to mention increasingly lengthily titled) feature films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and shows like Secret Invasion face dwindling viewership numbers and scathing reviews, the first animated Marvel Cinematic Universe series has managed to maintain both a fanbase and critical acclaim.
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There’s a simple reason for this. While The Marvels required audiences to have watched two different MCU shows and have a working knowledge of an interspecies space war to get what was going on, and Loki made fans wade through multiple different versions of Jonathan Majors during the peak of his legal issues, What If…? is easy.
The show, based on the long-running Marvel Comics series, doesn’t require the same knowledge of lore as others, because it throws away continuity in every episode. Its very premise allows viewers to pick up what’s happening immediately, guided by the cosmic narration of Uatu the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) and helpful episode titles.
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What If…? is a welcome reprieve to an increasingly tired MCU, and Marvel knows it, so season 3 and a zombie-themed spinoff series are already in the works. Head writer A.C. Bradley and lead director Bryan Andrews have the closest thing that Marvel Studios gives to a blank check, able to turn Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) into a purple freak, lure Michael B Jordan back into the fold, and turn Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) into a fan-favorite character.
We’re already looking forward to season 3 of What If…? and are ready to offer some suggestions of what corners of the Multiverse Uatu could check out next time, culled from decades worth of comics.
Related: ‘What If…?’ Could Finally Bring Back Marvel’s Greatest Star
‘What If Someone Else Besides Spider-Man Had Been Bitten By The Radioactive Spider?’
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Spider-Man is arguably Marvel’s biggest star and, at this point, its only hero who can provide a billion-dollar box office gross with a solo movie. While Tom Holland might be cagey about returning as Peter Parker in a future film, Marvel can always bring Spidey back in animated form (previously voiced by Hudson Thames) for another alternate-universe adventure.
One classic story investigates what would have happened if, instead of Peter Parker, one of his high school colleagues had gotten chomped by a radioactive spider and gained its proportionate powers and the inspiration for a red-and-blue webbed costume. In this world, Flash Thompson (portrayed by Tony Revolori in the MCU), Peter’s trash-talking jock of a bully, got powers instead and dubbed himself “Captain Spider” before hitting the streets to fight crime. Uatu can fill you in as to what happens, but, suffice it to say, things don’t go well for Captain Spider.
‘What If… Wolverine Was an Agent of SHIELD?’
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Kevin Feige has been coy about when the X-Men will officially debut in the MCU, but we hope that by the time season 3 rolls around, we finally get to see a few more mutants than Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). What If…? would make an ideal showcase for Wolverine, AKA Logan, AKA James Howlett, in one divergent timeline where, instead of becoming Professor X’s most feral student, he comes under the mentorship of one Nick Fury of SHIELD.
In this world, Wolverine leaves the Weapon X program for SHIELD, never joining the X-Men, and eventually ends up as the director of the secret defense agency. In a startling turn, it might actually be that a guy named Fury was not actually the most effective covert peacekeeper, and, instead, a guy with near-constant actual bestial fury might be key to a better, safer world.
‘What If… The Punisher’s Family Had Not Been Killed?’
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Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, is set to make his MCU debut in the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again series, provided Marvel does not do yet another drastic overhaul of the much-anticipated show and ditch fan-favorite Jon Bernthal. The Punisher is pretty unquestionably Marvel’s grimmest and bleakest character, a man driven to unrepentant mass murder after the tragic and bloody death of his family, whose only mistake was getting caught in the crossfire of rival organized crime members at a family outing.
You’d think that Frank Castle would have a happier (or, at least, less absurdly violent) life if his loved ones did not get brutally gunned down in New York City’s Central Park, and, for a time, that’s the case. This particular timeline sees Castle becoming an upstanding, non-murderific member of NYC law enforcement, but it turns out that criminals are not the only ones he comes to see as needing punishment. Perhaps Castle is just a man who will find himself driven to extreme violence in any possible world in which he exists.
‘What If the Fantastic Four were Cosmonauts?’
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Much like the X-Men, the Fantastic Four have yet to be formally introduced to the MCU, though at least Marvel’s First Family has a solo movie on the calendar for 2025. What If…? season 3 does not yet have a release date scheduled, but if we get to see Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm by then, seeing the reality in which the Fantastic Four were a group of passionate, super-powered communists could be a fun treat.
This version of the Fantastic Four (who dub themselves Ultimate Federalist Freedom Fighters) is also not quite a parallel version of Earth-616. Instead of American astronauts getting irradiated by cosmic rays, four cosmonauts from the USSR became the world’s first super-team: Rudion Richards, Widow Maker (Natalia Romanova) (First appearance), Colossus (Piotr Rasputin), Iliana Rasputina. The quartet become loyal assets of Joseph Stalin in the Cold War, until a confrontation with that world’s version of the Avengers pits East vs. West. Like so many of Uatu’s stories, things turn dark pretty fast.
‘What If The Heroes Lost World War Hulk?’
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Marvel Studios has not yet adapted the 2007 World War Hulk storyline but has laid down quite a bit of track to someday make the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) attack the Earth with a cohort of alien warriors from the junk planet Sakaar. We already saw Bruce Banner’s angry alter-ego become a legendary warrior on Sakaar in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and, later, briefly got introduced to his half-alien son Skaar in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, but so a season 3 episode of What If…? could show us a different version of events that somehow leads to a darker, more brutal future.
This version of events sees almost every superhero on Earth killed in the battle between Tony Stark’s Illuminati and the Hulk’s Warbound, and things don’t get any easier for the planet from there. This would be one of the bleakest installments of the show, but Uatu doesn’t look away when things go wrong.
Related: New Avenger Character Leaked for ‘What If…?’ Season 2
‘What If Spider-Man Had Stopped the Burglar Who Killed His Uncle?’
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You’d think that Peter Parker managing to prevent the tragic death of his uncle would lead to a better universe, but according to this story, things don’t go well if Spider-Man doesn’t learn that with great power comes great responsibility.
Instead, after Peter Parker stops the robber who would go on to kill Uncle Ben on Earth-616, he gets a taste of fame and turns into a self-interested Hollywood big-shot. Unlike the usual version of Spider-Man, this version of the character is beloved by audiences, the star of big-budget monster movies, and, eventually, an under-handed, amoral power broker. It turns out, though, that seemingly in every universe, J. Jonah Jameson has beef with Spider-Man and tries to take him down, regardless of whether he’s a hero or not.
‘What If? The Gamma Bomb Spawned A Thousand Hulks?’
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The question of what happens when a thousand people get Hulk powers is easily answerable: a lot of stuff gets smashed. However, this particular What If…? makes things a bit weirder than that. In this particular branch of the Multiverse, the United States made a big mistake in World War II by dropping a gamma bomb on Japan, rather than an atomic one.
It turned a huge number of survivors into a Hulk army loyal to the Japanese Emperor, who spread across the world and easily conquered every other nation. Every other super-powered being on Earth emerges as a desperate attempt to combat the Oni (as they’re known), with almost no success. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t try.
‘What If the Fantastic Four Were the Original Marvel Bullpen?’
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We’ve gone through a lot of dark, destruction-filled What If…? stories here today, but that doesn’t mean that season 3 of the show needs to be all doom and gloom. After all, this is a comic book series that once asked the question of how the Marvel universe would be different if everyone were bananas. Like, actual, anthropomorphic bananas.
One of the goofiest tales ever told in comics (which is saying a lot) depicts what happens when Stan Lee, Sol Brodsky, Flo Steinberg, and Jack Kirby, some of the original real-life staffers at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, gain the powers of the Fantastic Four. Instead of Reed Richards and company fighting Doctor Doom, we get a whole lot of inside jokes and references to comic book lore, which would make for some good meta-fun to close out season 3. C’mon, Marvel. We dare you to.
Which What If stories should be in season 3 of the animated show? Let’s hear your opinions in the comments below!
Marvel’s What If…? has an entire multiverse of weird, grim, and wacky stories to pick from, and we’ve got some suggestions. Read More