What If…? season 3 gets previewed by Marvel TV executive Brad Winderbaum as the Marvel Cinematic Universe animated adventure gets to its final season. While The Multiverse Saga continues to move forward with its storytelling, the MCU is getting ready to wrap up one of its multiverse-based properties, which launched back in Phase 4. But as Phase 6 approaches, What If…? is going out with a bang, with The Watcher returning for one final journey alongside the heroes and villains of multiple realities.

In What If…? season 3, the MCU audience will see the debut of Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi, Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight, and Dominique Thorne’s Ironheart, who are all finally getting the animation treatment. What If…? season 3 also features Anthony Mackie’s Captain America, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, and David Harbour’s Red Guardian ahead of their 2025 returns in Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* respectively. While the X-Men movie reboot is still years away, Storm is also being introduced in the MCU, with X-Men ’97 star Alison Sealy-Smith voicing the beloved heroine.

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The creators of Marvel Animation’s What If…? have revealed many episode pitches that unfortunately never made their way into the multiverse series.

ScreenRant recently interviewed Marvel Studios’ Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation, Brad Winderbaum ahead of What If…? season 3 to promote the final eight episodes of the series and tease what viewers can look forward to with the swan song season. Winderbaum teased the return of several MCU fan favorites while also previewing the arrival of new faces in What If…? season 3. He also hinted at what’s being worked on behind the scenes in the world of Marvel TV, including the potential canonization of some of the previous Marvel TV shows before the Disney+ era.

Lining Up Marvel’s What If…? Season 3 & Agent Carter With MCU Canon

“You always ask me those hardcore continuity questions…”

ScreenRant: Episode 3 and 4 are absolutely fantastic, and episode 3 especially feels like a prelude to Thunderbolts*. But I heard that this was originally supposed to be a season 2 episode that got swapped into season 3. How did that end up happening?

Brad Winderbaum: Honestly, it’s just serendipity. It takes about two and a half to three years to develop something in live-action. You got to add tack another year onto that for animation, and it just perfectly lined up. Also, frankly, the Mech Avengers episode with Mackie as Captain America coming out right before Captain America 4 is also serendipity. You get lucky sometimes.

ScreenRant: One character that we’ve fallen in love with throughout the seasons of What If…? is Captain Carter, and we haven’t really seen much of her yet in season 3. What’s Captain Carter going to be up to in season 3? And, out of curiosity, is the Agent Carter show canon?

Brad Winderbaum: You always ask me those hardcore continuity questions.

I’ll tell you this: it’s exciting for me to think about how to square those ABC shows with the canon. That to me, if you know me and the way my brain works, is fun territory to imagine.

ScreenRant: Did Haley Aytwell’s experience with What If…? influence her decision to return for Doomsday? Were there any Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter stories that didn’t come out because it was a little too close to something else being developed for them in the films?

Brad Winderbaum: Well, I don’t know what we know and don’t know, so let’s just start there. But I will say that she loves this character, and I can’t imagine anyone else playing this character. Hayley, and certainly Captain Carter, is a force to be reckoned with. She’s pure nobility.

But, to me, the most interesting about Captain Carter is her relationship with the Watcher. If I look at What If…? as mostly an anthology; maybe 90% anthology and 10% serialized. There’s something about the culmination of each season, and I don’t know if you would call it father-daughter energy or siblings or just a best-friend relationship that emerges between those two, but it’s very interesting story territory to play with.

As much as What If…? seasons 1 through 3 do have an arc, it is the Watcher’s story of an introverted guy who is happy to watch the world go on as a spectator. He takes a chance, gets out of his comfort zone, and enters the world. And that comes at a cost, much of which has to do with Peggy.

ScreenRant: Captain Carter was one of the show’s first original characters. What can we expect from season 3? Is there another new character who might bookend some of these stories together?

Brad Winderbaum: One of my favorite characters ever is this character Byrdie, who’s played by Natasha Lyonne, that I really have to be tightlipped on. But she is so fun; she flies around, shoots lasers from her eyes, kicks a lot of ass, and is very cool.

X-Men Enter What If…? Season 3 With Storm, X-Men ’97 Is Brewing Its Own Universe

“X-Men by way of the ’90s — I don’t want to say how — does blossom in many different directions.”

ScreenRant: We’re getting Storm holding Mjolnir this season. Were there any other ideas for X-Men popping up, and can we expect any Marvel streaming projects with them after Secret Wars?

Brad Winderbaum: Alison Sealy-Smith is one of the most iconic voices in animation history. I’m in animation review right now of season 2 of X-Men ’97, and the things she’s doing as Storm? She’s unbelievable.

There’s such depth that she brings to this character in her vocal performance, so once the synapses fired, we were like, “We could do this in What If…?” It was just a no-brainer, and the fact that she was the Goddess of Thunder in a very famous issue of What If….? just brought the whole thing together. So, that is super exciting.

And X-Men ’97 is a universe in and of itself. X-Men by way of the ’90s — I don’t want to say how — does blossom in many different directions.

ScreenRant: If we get an X-Factor cartoon, Brad, I’m all on board with it. But what can you tell me about Nova? Could we get “Annihilation?”

Brad Winderbaum: I’ll tell you that it’s a really promising project. It hasn’t been greenlit yet, but the materials are very cool. I don’t want to say too much about it, but man, it would be exciting to make. I’ll tell you that much.

ScreenRant: I’m really excited for Eyes of Wakanda because that is canon within the MCU, and I love that because it feels almost like Star Wars: Clone Wars, where it’s bringing a new dimension to something from the past. Can we expect to see more animated projects that are canon in the MCU?

Brad Winderbaum: Maybe. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I like to look at the shows like the comics, where not every book has to be in the main Marvel timeline, but it’s certainly fun to play. It’s fun to be able to bounce around universes and look at each story as its own contained story, like every other studio on the planet gets to do.

They’re not thinking about how every one of their projects is literally a different universe from one another. They’re just like, “What’s the story I got to tell here that’s going to deliver something cathartic for the audience?” That’s really the way we look at it, and Eyes of Wakanda certainly does that. It really is about that history of Wakanda in such a rich way, and Ryan Coogler is the executive producer on it, so his vision for Wakanda and the entire universe-within-a-universe that is Wakanda is just so strong and vibrant and detailed that we could base a whole four-part event on it.

Brad Winderbaum Bids Farewell To Marvel’s What If…? For Now

“There are probably a hundred episodes that didn’t make it to the screen for every one that did.”

ScreenRant: Brian just dropped some bombs on me, saying that he wanted to do a KISS episode of What If…?, where there was a Battle of the Bands, and he also wanted to do a dungeon crawl, DnD-style episode. Were there any episodes left on the table that you wanted to do? And is this truly the last season of What If, or do we got more coming?

Brad Winderbaum: I think this is the last season of What If…? for the foreseeable future. You can’t count anything out in the Marvel universe, as you know, and there are infinite stories to tell. There are probably a hundred episodes that didn’t make it to the screen for every one that did.

There are some great episodes that almost made it. There was a Winter Soldier Yelena episode where she actually was the Winter Soldier back in Sam Wilson’s military days when he was with his unit. He’s the last man standing in the middle of the desert, and he’s got the wing pack, but it’s broken down. He’s just getting picked apart by the sniper, and then they end up having to work together. That was always a banger one that I loved, but we didn’t get to do it.

More About What If…? Season 3

The final season of What If…? sees the return of The Watcher and Captain Carter, along with countless other beloved Marvel characters in new and different contexts. Some episodes include “What If… Agatha Went to Hollywood?”, “What if… the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?”, and “What If… Howard the Duck Got Hitched?”

Check back soon for our other What If..? season 3 interview with:

What If…? season 3 premieres December 22 on Disney+.