Growing up, Marvel’s What-If? was always one of my favorite comic books. It took the biggest events in Marvel history and asked, ‘well, what if this happened instead?’. Popular stories from the comic included: What if The X-Men died on their first mission, What if The Fantastic Four never got their powers, What if Spider-Man Married Black Cat, and many, many more.
For the new animated version set to air on Disney+ starting the summer of 2021 is going to focus on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the basis of its questions and will examine what could have happened differently in the 20+ films that have already come out in the MCU. Leading the cast will be Jeffrey Wright as Uatu, The Watcher. Here’s what he told fans at the Hall H panel about his new alter-ego.
“The Watcher is a non-Earthly being who observes all things. He’s watching over the multiverse and occasionally may nor may not intervene with the doings of earthlings, other than that he’s off doing his own things…Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Moonlanding. The Watcher first appears in 63 I think, Fantastic 4, he turns up on the Moon because today’s the 50th anniversary, but the watcher had a crib their ages ago. I’m excited to see where we take it, we could take it anywhere.”
Here’s the great thing about having the deep pockets of Disney and Marvel. If you are going to bring back all the major characters from the films, you may as well have the real actors voice their roles. With that in mind, here’s the cast list for the new show:
- Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger
- Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes
- Josh Brolin as Thanos
- Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk
- Tom Hiddleston as Loki
- Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
- Chris Hemsworth as Thor
- Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter
- Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther
- Karen Gillan as Nebula
- Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye
- Paul Rudd as Ant-Man
- Michael Douglas as Hank Pym
- Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan
- Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark
- Sean Gunn as Kraglin
- Natalie Portman as Jane Foster
- Taika Waititi as Korg
- Toby Jones as Arnim Zola
- Djimon Hounsou as Korath
- Jeff Goldblum as Grandmaster
- Michael Rooker as Yondu.