WEBVTT 00:00:02.270 --> 00:00:03.310 The galaxy. 00:00:04.230 --> 00:00:07.190 To your eyes, a hundred billion points of light. 00:00:08.020 --> 00:00:09.650 But where you see light, 00:00:09.730 --> 00:00:14.030 I see worlds and the countless stories that fill them. 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:17.620 What you call destiny is just an equation. 00:00:18.280 --> 00:00:22.080 The product of variables, right place, right time, 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:27.380 or in some instances, the wrong place at the wrong time. 00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:32.840 What if one choice changed everything? 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:39.760 What if every reality came down to one single moment? 00:00:40.970 --> 00:00:46.600 Join me. Explore the multiverse and ask the question, 00:00:46.690 --> 00:00:48.110 "What if...?" 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:50.570 Perfect. Thank you. 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:01.950 We were looking at how to grow, how to expand, 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:05.870 how to evolve post Endgame and into Phase Four. 00:01:06.040 --> 00:01:10.840 And we had tons of ideas for features and for follow-ups 00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:13.710 to existing characters, and introducing new characters. 00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:16.380 But it was Disney Plus and the idea of Disney Plus 00:01:16.470 --> 00:01:20.010 that really allowed us to do things we hadn't done before. 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:22.430 We had to think what ideas 00:01:22.520 --> 00:01:25.390 are worth doing in animation that we couldn't do anywhere else. 00:01:26.060 --> 00:01:28.650 And it was Brad Winderbaum who came into my office and said, 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:31.150 "What about doing a What If...?" 00:01:31.230 --> 00:01:33.030 "We have so many fans now, 00:01:33.110 --> 00:01:36.110 "we have so many people that have watched our movies multiple times, 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:39.200 "everybody knows how things happen, 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:42.370 "how Iron Man became Iron Man, how Cap became Cap," 00:01:42.450 --> 00:01:44.120 that the What If...? series from comics 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:47.790 was always such a great way of putting a spin on it. 00:01:52.170 --> 00:01:54.670 What If...? as a concept and as a comic book 00:01:54.760 --> 00:01:57.550 is something that would always come up in conversation. 00:01:57.630 --> 00:02:00.510 Uh, I can think back to the earliest retreats. 00:02:00.590 --> 00:02:02.720 We would think about What If...? 00:02:02.850 --> 00:02:06.730 just in terms of not necessarily adapting it, 00:02:06.810 --> 00:02:09.730 but how many great stories came out of the comic book. 00:02:10.690 --> 00:02:13.150 And how so many of those stories 00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:14.570 actually became canon 00:02:14.650 --> 00:02:18.900 within the main continuity of the Marvel Comics universe. 00:02:27.330 --> 00:02:29.330 Speaking from my own personal experience, 00:02:29.420 --> 00:02:32.250 and this is something that other people have said as well, 00:02:32.420 --> 00:02:34.300 What If...? was a bit of a gateway 00:02:34.380 --> 00:02:37.800 to different comics you won't normally pick up. 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:39.680 You know, I loved Ghost Rider growing up, 00:02:39.760 --> 00:02:41.590 and I think the first Ghost Rider I picked up 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:47.470 was the "What if Danny Ketch's sister became Ghost Rider instead of him?" 00:02:47.560 --> 00:02:49.100 Then I was like, "This is awesome!" 00:02:49.190 --> 00:02:52.350 And then I'd read all that Danny Ketch, Ghost Rider run. You know? 00:02:52.440 --> 00:02:56.110 And I think a lot of people had a similar experience of What If...? 00:02:56.190 --> 00:03:00.450 It introduced you to characters you wouldn't normally read. 00:03:00.530 --> 00:03:03.660 In kind of abstracting them, it made them new. 00:03:03.740 --> 00:03:06.040 So there was a lower barrier of entry. 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:11.170 You didn't feel like you needed to read the 60 comics leading up to that one storyline. 00:03:11.250 --> 00:03:15.460 It was its own unique thing that you could experience as a newcomer. 00:03:20.090 --> 00:03:22.510 I remember when I was a kid, getting some of the comics 00:03:22.590 --> 00:03:25.470 and whether it's like, you know, Conan in New York... 00:03:25.550 --> 00:03:28.470 with Howard the Duck, or, you know, crazy stuff. 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:33.190 It was almost like it was Marvel's Twilight Zone of the time. 00:03:33.270 --> 00:03:36.400 And I think its heyday was really in the '70s, a little bit in the '80s. 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:39.280 It still has gone on, but those were the ones to really remember. 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:44.490 I think it was a testing ground for certain stories, 00:03:44.570 --> 00:03:47.950 certain possible ways they can possibly go with various characters, 00:03:48.040 --> 00:03:51.910 you know, trying it out, you know, safely in this little one-off comic. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.580 And then if it struck a chord, they can run with it. 00:03:54.670 --> 00:03:57.170 So, for example, like, "What if the Hulk was smart?" 00:03:57.250 --> 00:04:00.210 and that eventually became a whole storyline of its own with, 00:04:00.300 --> 00:04:02.260 like, Smart Hulk and all this business. 00:04:02.340 --> 00:04:06.890 And that's happened with, actually, quite a few of the What If...? titles. 00:04:06.970 --> 00:04:10.560 So, um, there is a lineage there, but for our show, 00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:13.310 we're not borrowing anything that was pre-done in the comic. 00:04:13.390 --> 00:04:16.110 We just came up with new stuff, 00:04:16.190 --> 00:04:19.940 since it's born directly out of the MCU specifically. 00:04:20.030 --> 00:04:24.820 So we're not just riffing on the comic characters per se, 00:04:24.910 --> 00:04:29.580 we're riffing on the Marvel movie cinematic version of those characters. 00:04:31.160 --> 00:04:33.250 I got visual on the intruder. 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:36.790 He's a Caucasian male, mid-20s with... 00:04:38.880 --> 00:04:40.550 really great hair. 00:04:41.340 --> 00:04:42.840 Excuse me? 00:04:45.510 --> 00:04:49.390 We had been working with Bryan Andrews for many years at Marvel Studios. 00:04:49.470 --> 00:04:54.140 He had boarded some of our most iconic action sequences. 00:04:55.350 --> 00:04:57.940 I worked with him on Ant-Man 1 when he designed 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:01.230 Scott Lang's first descent into the quantum realm at the end of that movie. 00:05:01.320 --> 00:05:04.990 And he had taken a big hand most recently 00:05:05.070 --> 00:05:10.240 as part of the story room that cracked the finale of Endgame, 00:05:10.330 --> 00:05:13.910 which was a combination of storyboard artists and Chris and Steve, the writers. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:17.580 And frankly, when I pitched What If...? to Kevin, 00:05:17.670 --> 00:05:19.460 and things were happening so fast, 00:05:19.540 --> 00:05:22.920 I just called Bryan, who I knew, and said, 00:05:23.010 --> 00:05:26.220 "Hey, dude, do you wanna work on this together?" 00:05:27.590 --> 00:05:31.390 And his response was, "Well, yeah, man, of course." 00:05:31.470 --> 00:05:34.770 You know, my brothers and I grew up loving all kinds of animation, 00:05:34.850 --> 00:05:37.020 but we also grew up loving Marvel. 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:39.900 I mean, we had How To Draw The Marvel Way, you know? 00:05:39.980 --> 00:05:43.730 We were huge fans of the paintings of Frank Frazetta and the rest of it. 00:05:43.820 --> 00:05:47.950 But it's all in that same kind of action-y, adventure, 00:05:48.030 --> 00:05:50.990 you know, bigger-than-life mythos stuff, 00:05:51.080 --> 00:05:54.200 and the Marvel comics were definitely an inspiration, you know. 00:05:54.290 --> 00:05:58.620 Certain artists would rise above others in our minds, 00:05:58.710 --> 00:06:02.040 whether it's, like, you know, Kirby, or... or whoever else. 00:06:02.130 --> 00:06:04.760 It's like there're certain artists that just captured 00:06:04.840 --> 00:06:07.420 your imagination in those drawings, in those panels. 00:06:07.510 --> 00:06:10.510 And, um, to think that so many years later, 00:06:11.220 --> 00:06:13.180 working in the live action stuff, it's like, 00:06:13.260 --> 00:06:16.230 "Oh, I used to draw all those characters when I was a kid." 00:06:16.310 --> 00:06:19.850 But here I am, working on it now for the Cinematic Universe, 00:06:19.940 --> 00:06:23.150 which is already kind of, like, "Well, that's an amazing dream." 00:06:23.230 --> 00:06:25.690 But then, now also doing it in an animated show 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:29.780 that's revisiting those characters, and it's, like, that's like, "Wait, what?" 00:06:32.280 --> 00:06:33.700 It's pretty amazing. 00:06:36.700 --> 00:06:38.830 One of the interesting things that happened 00:06:38.910 --> 00:06:42.380 in the development process of What If...? is 00:06:42.460 --> 00:06:46.760 how many ideas just come up, and we're still coming up with them. 00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:50.430 You almost can't stop thinking about it. 00:06:50.510 --> 00:06:51.590 What are you doing? 00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:55.390 Tinkering with time can weaken the very fabric of the universe. 00:06:55.470 --> 00:06:57.600 The key to the stories that were chosen 00:06:57.680 --> 00:06:59.890 is that they were all character-based stories, 00:06:59.980 --> 00:07:01.810 and they all drove at the human heart. 00:07:01.900 --> 00:07:06.440 Which is why we hired Ashley Bradley as our EP 00:07:06.530 --> 00:07:07.940 and head writer of the show. 00:07:08.030 --> 00:07:11.070 If you look at her work on Trollhunters and 3Below, 00:07:11.160 --> 00:07:16.580 you see a writer who, no matter what the big, crazy sci-fi circumstance is, 00:07:16.660 --> 00:07:19.910 is always trying to find the core of the character 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:24.000 and creates conflicts that really challenge who those characters are. 00:07:24.080 --> 00:07:26.500 And that's something we always try to do in the movies, 00:07:26.590 --> 00:07:29.050 and each episode of What If...? is gonna try to do. 00:07:30.420 --> 00:07:33.800 For a minute, I really thought it was you and me against the world. 00:07:33.890 --> 00:07:36.430 We're not fighting the same battles, Tony. 00:07:37.510 --> 00:07:41.230 The first few weeks, it was basically me and the other executive producers 00:07:41.310 --> 00:07:46.400 which is Brad Winderbaum and Bryan Andrews. And it was... camp. 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:48.730 It was two weeks of "What stories do we want to tell?" 00:07:48.820 --> 00:07:50.280 There's obvious ones. 00:07:50.360 --> 00:07:53.780 "What if Thor was never banished?" "What if Ultron won?" 00:07:53.860 --> 00:07:58.660 I'm going to bring about peace in our time... 00:07:58.740 --> 00:08:02.370 And once we got those out of our system, we started then playing more with 00:08:02.460 --> 00:08:05.710 "What if Yondu kidnapped the wrong kid instead of Peter Quill?" 00:08:05.790 --> 00:08:07.040 What happens next? 00:08:07.130 --> 00:08:09.300 Whatcha doing out there all by yourself anyway? 00:08:09.380 --> 00:08:11.010 Exploring the world. 00:08:11.090 --> 00:08:12.470 Sounds fun. 00:08:12.550 --> 00:08:16.970 But why stop at one world, huh? When we can show you all of them? 00:08:17.050 --> 00:08:20.560 Once you realize what the show can be, 00:08:20.640 --> 00:08:22.350 it's almost impossible not to ideate. 00:08:22.430 --> 00:08:27.900 You just... Your brain just starts to explore every corner of the universe. 00:08:27.980 --> 00:08:29.610 That's something that made 00:08:29.690 --> 00:08:32.190 the whole development process of this series so euphoric, 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:34.490 was that you get in a room with people, 00:08:34.570 --> 00:08:37.620 and it was just idea, idea, idea, idea, idea, 00:08:37.700 --> 00:08:40.830 'cause almost every event could be reconceived 00:08:40.910 --> 00:08:44.710 and remixed into its own What If...? story. 00:08:44.790 --> 00:08:50.050 And we realized very quickly that you could come up with a cool idea like, 00:08:50.130 --> 00:08:55.430 "Oh, what if Peggy Carter got into the Project Rebirth chamber 00:08:55.510 --> 00:08:57.720 "and became a Super Soldier instead of Steve Rogers?" 00:08:57.800 --> 00:08:59.720 But that was only the beginning. 00:08:59.810 --> 00:09:02.640 It wasn't just "what if," it was also "then what?" 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:05.230 So every pitch that we came up with, 00:09:05.310 --> 00:09:08.650 every idea that we conceived of had two parts. 00:09:08.730 --> 00:09:11.610 It had the "what if," which was essentially the inciting incident, 00:09:11.690 --> 00:09:14.110 and it had the, "then what," which is the actual story. 00:09:14.190 --> 00:09:15.320 What in heavens? 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:17.700 And as we developed the stories in the series, 00:09:17.780 --> 00:09:23.290 the "then whats" became the real emotional bedrock of the stories we were telling. 00:09:23.370 --> 00:09:25.250 You're my hero, Steve. 00:09:25.330 --> 00:09:27.420 I mean, you're a hero. 00:09:31.880 --> 00:09:33.300 You're my hero, too. 00:09:33.380 --> 00:09:36.300 The heart of the characters always has to remain the same. 00:09:36.380 --> 00:09:39.890 If T'Challa is in Wakanda or chilling with the Ravagers in outer space, 00:09:39.970 --> 00:09:42.010 he is always the once and future king. 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:44.640 Should we be bowing? I feel like we should we bowing. 00:09:44.730 --> 00:09:46.640 I mean, unless we should be kneeling. 00:09:46.730 --> 00:09:48.730 -Neither is necessary. -Please. 00:09:48.810 --> 00:09:51.730 It doesn't matter where in the world Tony Stark is, 00:09:51.820 --> 00:09:53.730 Pepper Potts is his North Star. 00:09:53.820 --> 00:09:57.610 Lot of people come around looking to get their moment in the sun with Tony Stark, 00:09:57.700 --> 00:10:01.200 and it's my job to sniff out exactly what it is they want with him. 00:10:01.280 --> 00:10:02.280 And what do you smell? 00:10:02.370 --> 00:10:04.200 Nothing. And that's the problem. 00:10:04.870 --> 00:10:08.540 Steve Rogers, whether he's in his Captain America uniform, 00:10:08.620 --> 00:10:10.670 whether he's Skinny Steve or not, 00:10:10.750 --> 00:10:14.090 he will go to the ends of the earth to do what he believes is right. 00:10:14.170 --> 00:10:16.800 Hey, I need a hand! Come on, help me get him out of here! 00:10:16.880 --> 00:10:19.300 No. You gotta get me in the suit. 00:10:19.380 --> 00:10:21.550 That's where we always kind of start with. 00:10:21.640 --> 00:10:23.430 Like, we go in different directions, 00:10:23.510 --> 00:10:26.060 but we stay true to the characters as much as possible. 00:10:26.140 --> 00:10:27.810 I believe that in this universe, 00:10:27.890 --> 00:10:30.400 as in every other, hope never dies. 00:10:34.190 --> 00:10:36.360 One of the things we're exploring in Phase Four, 00:10:36.440 --> 00:10:38.490 which we've talked about, is the Multiverse. 00:10:38.570 --> 00:10:41.780 And What If...? as almost every episode 00:10:41.870 --> 00:10:43.950 is narrated by the character, the Watcher, 00:10:44.030 --> 00:10:45.990 a very important character in the comics 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:49.160 that we've never really seen much of in the MCU. 00:10:49.250 --> 00:10:52.580 Briefly, we saw some Watchers, there's a little cameo with Stan Lee 00:10:52.670 --> 00:10:54.250 in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:57.210 Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted... 00:10:57.300 --> 00:10:59.970 We know the way it worked in the movies we watched. 00:11:00.630 --> 00:11:03.180 He's showing us other ways it could have gone. 00:11:03.260 --> 00:11:05.310 In a multiverse of infinite possibility, 00:11:05.390 --> 00:11:08.230 is your destiny determined by your nature 00:11:08.310 --> 00:11:10.690 or by the nature of your world? 00:11:10.770 --> 00:11:12.940 We knew that we were gonna do the Watcher. 00:11:13.020 --> 00:11:15.230 The Watcher is a big part of What If...? 00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:19.570 We needed this guide to help us navigate these vast new realities. 00:11:19.650 --> 00:11:24.120 And the voice we all heard in our head was Jeffrey Wright from day one. 00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:25.700 I am the Watcher. 00:11:26.450 --> 00:11:28.160 Where humans see chaos, 00:11:28.250 --> 00:11:35.000 I see the crucible that would transform this collection of individuals into a team of heroes. 00:11:35.090 --> 00:11:40.670 The Watcher kind of serves as a Rod Serling to The Twilight Zone. 00:11:40.760 --> 00:11:45.930 Kind of narrating the events, 00:11:46.140 --> 00:11:49.560 but also a sometimes-passive- sometimes-not participant. 00:11:49.930 --> 00:11:51.730 Oh, you're so close. 00:11:51.810 --> 00:11:54.230 The answer is right there. 00:11:54.310 --> 00:12:00.530 The Watcher is a celestial, extraterrestrial being. 00:12:00.610 --> 00:12:03.780 And I think he was introduced, if I'm not mistaken, 00:12:03.860 --> 00:12:06.780 in a Fantastic Four comic in 1963 00:12:06.870 --> 00:12:11.910 where we discover him on the moon, and he's introduced on the cover 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.790 as "The Most Dramatic Being." 00:12:15.880 --> 00:12:20.260 Humanity, so eager, so willing to face the impossible, 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:22.550 yet blind to the bigger picture. 00:12:22.630 --> 00:12:27.300 The language is very cool, and it kind of sp... 00:12:27.390 --> 00:12:31.100 You know, it speaks to a certain tone. 00:12:31.180 --> 00:12:35.400 He's obviously got to have a kind of strength 00:12:35.480 --> 00:12:40.030 and a kind of, you know, gravitas and power and all that stuff. 00:12:40.110 --> 00:12:41.690 Time. 00:12:41.780 --> 00:12:43.150 Space. 00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:44.360 Reality. 00:12:45.030 --> 00:12:47.120 It's more than a linear path. 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:50.200 It's a prism of endless possibilities. 00:12:50.290 --> 00:12:56.000 I like the idea of doing animation, um, of using the voice really as, 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:59.540 you know, from my perspective, as, you know, the whole character. 00:12:59.630 --> 00:13:02.840 I'd really just pretty much do what I do with any script though, 00:13:02.920 --> 00:13:06.130 in anything, is just try to find the music that's on the page 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:08.550 and figure out if I can play it, you know? 00:13:09.220 --> 00:13:10.220 I am the Watcher. 00:13:10.930 --> 00:13:14.680 I am your guide through these vast new realities. 00:13:14.770 --> 00:13:17.850 Follow me and ponder the question... 00:13:18.730 --> 00:13:19.730 "What if?" 00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:25.740 It was a really organic and kind of, you know, methodical process 00:13:25.820 --> 00:13:29.200 of talking it through at first and trying to give some ideas about, 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:33.120 you know, how I'd like a, you know, a character like this to sound. 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:37.920 I think often when you have a character like this in, 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.300 you know, in kind of the history of, you know, shows and movies, 00:13:43.090 --> 00:13:47.260 we make these certain assumptions about what that character should sound like, you know? 00:13:47.340 --> 00:13:50.140 Very often it's some, you know, old... 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:53.640 You know, when we think of power and wisdom and all of this, 00:13:53.720 --> 00:13:56.690 we think, well, we go to the UK for some reason. 00:13:56.770 --> 00:13:58.140 We think of Brits. 00:13:58.230 --> 00:14:00.810 It's, like, well, you know, um... 00:14:00.900 --> 00:14:03.900 I don't know if the British necessarily have, 00:14:03.980 --> 00:14:06.150 like, the monopoly on all those things. 00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:10.160 So, how can we find some other tones and rhythms and things 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:15.540 that bring all of that, um, that power to the character 00:14:15.620 --> 00:14:19.540 but are grounded in maybe some different rhythms and some different notes? 00:14:19.620 --> 00:14:21.500 And that was a fun conversation to have. 00:14:21.590 --> 00:14:24.710 A genius battled his demons both inside and out, 00:14:25.590 --> 00:14:28.840 while the world met the monster hiding in the man. 00:14:29.680 --> 00:14:33.100 And a godly Prince fell to Earth. 00:14:33.180 --> 00:14:36.770 He's both the... the guardian, 00:14:36.850 --> 00:14:41.860 but also the observer of what happens across the Multiverse. 00:14:41.940 --> 00:14:45.360 There's a running joke in the comic books. He says he'll never interfere. 00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:48.490 Wait five pages, and there he is in the middle of it. 00:14:51.240 --> 00:14:54.280 And in the comics, he got downright goofy at times 00:14:54.370 --> 00:14:55.910 and involved all the time. 00:14:55.990 --> 00:14:59.660 We're going to acknowledge those things, but slowly over time. 00:14:59.750 --> 00:15:01.120 Maybe not the goofiness. 00:15:01.210 --> 00:15:02.830 But we want to play with the conceit 00:15:02.920 --> 00:15:05.840 that the being is mysterious for the first initial episodes, 00:15:05.920 --> 00:15:10.380 and we start seeing more and more of him as the episodes play out. 00:15:10.970 --> 00:15:14.390 Uh, so by the end he's actually full-figured. 00:15:14.470 --> 00:15:17.680 We really see him. We really know like, "Here's this alien being," 00:15:17.770 --> 00:15:20.440 and he might actually get involved for the... 00:15:20.520 --> 00:15:22.850 For him, what might be the first time. 00:15:22.940 --> 00:15:24.690 You want me to say it? 00:15:24.770 --> 00:15:27.440 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I wanna hear you say it. 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:30.820 Okay. 00:15:30.900 --> 00:15:32.780 I can't believe I'm about to say this. 00:15:33.740 --> 00:15:35.160 I see now. 00:15:36.330 --> 00:15:38.120 I need your help. 00:15:39.830 --> 00:15:42.170 The visual aesthetic and the storytelling 00:15:42.250 --> 00:15:43.960 really begin with Bryan Andrews. 00:15:44.040 --> 00:15:47.380 He is designing every frame of the show 00:15:47.460 --> 00:15:50.130 and working with a story team of talented board artists 00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:55.470 to create the cinematic flow of this series. 00:15:55.550 --> 00:15:58.310 And he's working so closely with Ryan Meinerding 00:15:58.390 --> 00:16:02.060 to figure out what these characters look like. 00:16:02.140 --> 00:16:03.400 Ryan is amazing. 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:07.610 He's been the head of Marvel Visual Development, I think since Iron Man. 00:16:07.690 --> 00:16:11.360 He's brilliant, and we've been so lucky that he's been wanting to, 00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:13.700 like, come and play in our sandbox. 00:16:13.780 --> 00:16:17.660 I've always been a fan of J.C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell 00:16:17.740 --> 00:16:20.080 and a lot of the older American illustrators. 00:16:20.160 --> 00:16:22.460 And when Bryan and Brad pitched the notion 00:16:22.540 --> 00:16:24.830 of using that as a basis for the style of the show. 00:16:25.420 --> 00:16:27.340 I mean, that's my bread and butter. 00:16:27.420 --> 00:16:30.260 I love that stuff. So, trying to find a way to create visuals 00:16:30.340 --> 00:16:33.590 for this project that are gonna turn that illustrative style 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:35.970 into an animated style using our characters 00:16:36.050 --> 00:16:37.760 is just, it's been really a lot of fun. 00:16:38.760 --> 00:16:40.020 It's a good look on you. 00:16:40.100 --> 00:16:42.480 Really? You think I could pull it off? 00:16:42.560 --> 00:16:44.060 Maybe you'll grow into it. 00:16:44.140 --> 00:16:47.520 I was trained that there's no difference between animation and live action, 00:16:47.610 --> 00:16:50.480 even though clearly there are things that are different. 00:16:50.570 --> 00:16:54.280 But, at its core, it's just all visual storytelling. 00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:56.870 It's composition within the picture frame. 00:16:56.950 --> 00:17:00.370 It's... it's emotion. It's character. 00:17:00.450 --> 00:17:04.410 Uh, and those things exist regardless of whether you're doing a stop-motion, 00:17:04.500 --> 00:17:06.460 a 2D animated thing, 3D animated, live ac... 00:17:06.540 --> 00:17:07.790 It doesn't matter. 00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:11.710 And I've felt personally that animation hasn't quite gone 00:17:11.800 --> 00:17:15.220 as cinematic here in the States as it could. 00:17:15.300 --> 00:17:16.510 And Brad was in agreement, 00:17:16.590 --> 00:17:19.890 and we felt like, here's a way that maybe if we play our cards right, 00:17:19.970 --> 00:17:24.520 if whatever we do, whatever is in our brain, if we can get it out there onto the thing, 00:17:24.600 --> 00:17:26.020 maybe we could achieve that. 00:17:26.100 --> 00:17:29.150 Maybe we can, like, move the bar a little bit, 00:17:29.230 --> 00:17:30.610 which would be awesome. 00:17:30.690 --> 00:17:33.990 Just for our own personal love of the stuff. 00:17:34.070 --> 00:17:36.990 And so part of that style we're chasing is something that is, 00:17:37.070 --> 00:17:39.450 you know, atmospheric and cinematic 00:17:39.530 --> 00:17:43.450 and something that borrows from live action, 00:17:44.410 --> 00:17:48.500 photography, cinematic sense and really apply it to animation. 00:17:48.580 --> 00:17:50.210 Looking for directions, sir? 00:17:50.290 --> 00:17:52.300 Because you seem to have lost your way. 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:56.630 You would do best to kneel before a God. 00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:58.890 We don't really do that here. 00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:02.510 The stories that they're doing are so great and so concise 00:18:02.600 --> 00:18:07.140 that the direction that I'm getting is, like, sort of like, this is the character. 00:18:07.230 --> 00:18:10.270 This is the, you know, the costume they would be in, 00:18:10.360 --> 00:18:11.980 we wanna twist it in this way. 00:18:12.070 --> 00:18:15.280 We're able to do some work that hopefully is gonna land pretty quickly. 00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:19.700 It's also not only about character design in sort of a live action sense of, 00:18:19.780 --> 00:18:22.950 like, "How is this character different than what we've seen before?" 00:18:23.030 --> 00:18:26.620 But also, since we're trying to develop a new animation style, 00:18:26.700 --> 00:18:30.460 sort of, like, how can we turn these characters into animated characters 00:18:30.540 --> 00:18:33.550 in a way that still represents the character from the film 00:18:33.750 --> 00:18:37.590 but gives them a new life in sort of an animated form? 00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:40.390 Steve Rogers sent me. 00:18:40.470 --> 00:18:42.350 The name's Captain Carter. 00:18:43.390 --> 00:18:45.270 Another big decision for the show 00:18:45.350 --> 00:18:49.770 was that we were gonna chase character likeness as opposed to actor likeness. 00:18:49.850 --> 00:18:51.690 And it's a hard thing to define 00:18:51.770 --> 00:18:55.610 because the two things are so intrinsically linked. 00:18:55.690 --> 00:18:59.610 But we wanted to capture the spirit of the character in the same way 00:18:59.700 --> 00:19:02.820 that the actor would capture the spirit of the character on screen. 00:19:02.910 --> 00:19:04.530 And knowing that you're never gonna... 00:19:04.620 --> 00:19:06.700 It's not a photorealistic medium. 00:19:06.790 --> 00:19:08.710 So the questions became, like, 00:19:08.790 --> 00:19:11.830 "Well, what is Doctor Strange? What is Tony Stark?" 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:16.880 How to depict them in terms of their evolution as a character on screen? 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:21.720 I'll say this for the new guy, he certainly makes for good TV. Right? 00:19:21.800 --> 00:19:24.600 A lot of this stuff is fun because you can do pencil sketches 00:19:24.680 --> 00:19:26.430 and have them be relevant for the projects, 00:19:26.510 --> 00:19:32.480 so starting with Skinny Steve and, um, a version of Captain Carter. 00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:37.190 You know, just started trying to find things that were interesting 00:19:37.280 --> 00:19:39.820 about the characters' faces from the live action setting 00:19:39.900 --> 00:19:41.450 and try to simplify them. 00:19:41.530 --> 00:19:44.280 Um, you know, going forward from there 00:19:44.370 --> 00:19:48.490 into finding like a look for a dark Thor. 00:19:48.580 --> 00:19:50.500 Oh, do me, do me. 00:19:50.580 --> 00:19:52.670 Yes, you do me. 00:19:52.750 --> 00:19:54.500 You do me and you too. 00:19:54.580 --> 00:19:56.630 Oh, you guys really get me. 00:19:56.710 --> 00:19:58.670 But yeah, this is sort of the starting point, 00:19:58.760 --> 00:20:01.340 and I haven't sketched all of them on paper. 00:20:01.420 --> 00:20:04.640 But I have done some of them. And then transitioning into the computer, 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:07.100 being able to color and sort of refine them. 00:20:08.890 --> 00:20:11.140 Oh, here we go. Here we go. 00:20:11.230 --> 00:20:12.230 Wha-- 00:20:12.310 --> 00:20:14.270 We definitely want to stand out. 00:20:14.350 --> 00:20:18.610 And there is a variety of animated product being made these days, 00:20:18.690 --> 00:20:22.110 and a lot of it tends to be CG and sometimes even, 00:20:22.900 --> 00:20:25.570 I guess they call it two-and-a-half-D or 2D-3D, 00:20:25.660 --> 00:20:28.280 where it's like, it's 3D, but it's made to look 2D. 00:20:28.370 --> 00:20:31.200 So you might have your traditional backgrounds painted 00:20:31.290 --> 00:20:35.040 and the characters look as if they're cel-painted on, but they're not. 00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:37.130 We're exploring a variety of techniques 00:20:37.210 --> 00:20:40.920 and whatever is going to help us achieve the look we're going for, we'll use. 00:20:41.010 --> 00:20:45.680 But we wanna kind of hide it a bit and make sure that it doesn't jump out. 00:20:45.760 --> 00:20:49.430 And, in our opinion, it felt like a lot of the things that we were seeing, 00:20:49.510 --> 00:20:51.470 that stuff just jumps out, you know? 00:20:51.560 --> 00:20:53.560 And sometimes the 3D maybe isn't working. 00:20:53.640 --> 00:20:56.060 There's aspects that were pros and cons, 00:20:56.150 --> 00:20:59.400 so it seemed like the best way to achieve what we wanted to achieve, 00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:03.150 which is to buckle down, have some really hard discipline, 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:05.110 just make something rad 2D, 00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:10.410 so that we would have the artistic freedom to have it look as rich as we wanted. 00:21:12.790 --> 00:21:14.250 Packs quite a wallop, does it not? 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:20.170 The earliest conversations I had with Bryan Andrews 00:21:20.250 --> 00:21:21.300 were all about light. 00:21:21.380 --> 00:21:24.670 And quality of light and how the light would kind of blow out 00:21:24.760 --> 00:21:26.630 and the atmosphere of the show itself. 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:31.140 Bryan was searching for this cinematic style, 00:21:31.220 --> 00:21:34.230 using bokeh lenses and anamorphic lenses 00:21:34.310 --> 00:21:36.810 or emulating them in an animated space 00:21:36.890 --> 00:21:39.360 to try to give the world of What If...? 00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:44.240 a real cinematic quality, um, that we rarely see in animation. 00:21:44.320 --> 00:21:47.280 Play with light and shadow, play with... Play with focus. 00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:49.870 Play with the fact that's like, even though it's animated 00:21:49.950 --> 00:21:52.160 and we didn't shoot it with an anamorphic lens, 00:21:52.240 --> 00:21:54.580 maybe we're making it look like we did, 00:21:54.660 --> 00:21:57.290 because that has a voice and that has a language. 00:21:58.420 --> 00:22:00.840 We've grown up watching movies shot a certain way, 00:22:00.920 --> 00:22:02.840 and now it's become second nature. 00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:06.260 So now when we see things that are speaking that language, 00:22:06.340 --> 00:22:09.300 without even realizing it, we'll start relating to that. 00:22:09.390 --> 00:22:11.640 Charge! 00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:13.890 Cinematic storytelling is becoming a thing 00:22:13.970 --> 00:22:17.770 where you don't have to just go to a movie to see cinematic storytelling. 00:22:17.850 --> 00:22:21.810 We're actually seeing it on the streaming screen and the small screen, 00:22:21.900 --> 00:22:26.820 and there's so many shows out now that are just borrowing the cinematic language. 00:22:26.900 --> 00:22:30.950 So they are, even though they're quote-unquote episodes of a show, 00:22:31.030 --> 00:22:34.490 they feel like, in a way, mini movies when they do it right. 00:22:44.710 --> 00:22:46.210 Wakanda forever! 00:22:46.300 --> 00:22:50.010 It's pretty exciting when you, you know, see it all come together, 00:22:50.090 --> 00:22:51.760 and the laying on works, 00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:54.260 and everything layers together well in this 00:22:54.350 --> 00:23:00.230 really beautiful, kind of, richly cinematic quality to the animation. 00:23:00.310 --> 00:23:04.270 And there're some wonderful sound effects that are used too, 00:23:04.360 --> 00:23:06.150 at times with the voice. 00:23:06.230 --> 00:23:09.450 And to see it all come together, these kinds of diverse perspectives, 00:23:09.530 --> 00:23:13.740 diverse range of heroism and villainy. 00:23:13.830 --> 00:23:17.250 I think it's gonna be, uh, pretty exciting stuff. 00:23:19.160 --> 00:23:21.670 You will listen to me. 00:23:23.170 --> 00:23:24.920 My mother is coming. 00:23:25.590 --> 00:23:26.590 Frigga? 00:23:26.670 --> 00:23:28.970 And she is not happy. 00:23:29.630 --> 00:23:33.390 Right off the bat, there were some ideas that we had 00:23:33.470 --> 00:23:35.300 that became episodes in the show. 00:23:35.390 --> 00:23:41.020 Peggy Carter becoming Captain Carter was a very, very early concept. 00:23:41.100 --> 00:23:45.940 Also, right on the heels of that, in the "then what" half of the story was, 00:23:46.020 --> 00:23:47.780 well, then what happens to Steve Rogers? 00:23:47.860 --> 00:23:48.940 He stays skinny. 00:23:49.030 --> 00:23:50.820 She gets the Tesseract early. 00:23:50.900 --> 00:23:53.320 Howard Stark's there. Maybe he builds an Iron Man suit. 00:23:53.410 --> 00:23:55.070 What powers it? Maybe the Tesseract. 00:23:55.160 --> 00:23:56.740 Suddenly, the HYDRA Stomper is born. 00:23:56.830 --> 00:23:57.830 Steve! 00:23:57.910 --> 00:23:59.660 Hey, Peggy! Now you owe me one. 00:23:59.750 --> 00:24:03.330 And then we get to tell that story of the tragic love affair, 00:24:03.420 --> 00:24:06.290 this dance that Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers have through time, 00:24:06.380 --> 00:24:09.460 where they don't ever get to fulfill their relationship 00:24:09.550 --> 00:24:12.180 without some event that gets in the way. 00:24:12.260 --> 00:24:13.720 You owe me a dance lesson. 00:24:13.800 --> 00:24:16.300 Yes, Saturday night. 00:24:19.560 --> 00:24:21.890 Oh, it's a great story because it is exploring 00:24:21.980 --> 00:24:23.980 the relationship between Steve and Peggy, 00:24:24.060 --> 00:24:26.400 with this time Peggy being the Super Soldier. 00:24:26.480 --> 00:24:30.860 And it's also nice because we get to have a female hero, superhero. 00:24:30.940 --> 00:24:34.320 And what does that look like in the 1940s? 00:24:34.410 --> 00:24:35.740 How is she treated? 00:24:35.820 --> 00:24:40.950 What's the battles that she has to fight that are singular to her being a woman 00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:43.460 that Steve never had to deal with? 00:24:44.420 --> 00:24:46.380 Where have you been all my life? 00:24:46.460 --> 00:24:48.500 The Allies must be desperate, 00:24:48.590 --> 00:24:51.340 sending in a fragile Fräulein to fight for them. 00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:52.510 "Fragile"? 00:24:55.220 --> 00:24:57.390 Exactly. 00:24:59.310 --> 00:25:03.020 Another idea that was super early on was T'Challa as Star-Lord. 00:25:03.100 --> 00:25:05.350 We knew we wanted to do something with T'Challa 00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:08.230 because Chadwick was so amazing to work with, 00:25:08.310 --> 00:25:11.650 that it just felt like he would embrace the idea 00:25:11.730 --> 00:25:13.400 and wanna do something fun. 00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:17.780 At a certain point, we realized he was around the same age as Peter Quill. 00:25:18.450 --> 00:25:19.740 And that the Ravagers, 00:25:19.830 --> 00:25:22.910 who were a bunch of buffoons, had accidentally gotten off course. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:24.290 Cool. 00:25:24.370 --> 00:25:26.960 And what if they kidnapped T'Challa instead? 00:25:27.040 --> 00:25:29.290 - Ravagers! - Ravagers! 00:25:29.380 --> 00:25:32.090 It quickly became one of our super favorites. 00:25:32.170 --> 00:25:35.550 Just the idea of, like, if T'Challa was out there in the universe, 00:25:35.630 --> 00:25:40.260 how much can he actually change just by him being awesome? 00:25:40.350 --> 00:25:42.680 And everyone just wanting to be part of his awesome. 00:25:42.770 --> 00:25:45.390 Wait. You are the Star-Lord. 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:47.650 You saved my home world from a Kree invasion. 00:25:47.730 --> 00:25:48.600 All in a day's work. 00:25:48.680 --> 00:25:52.310 No, it took several days. Six, in fact. Let us take a picture. 00:25:52.430 --> 00:25:56.360 The reason we love T'Challa is he's always a character of high morals, 00:25:56.440 --> 00:25:59.230 of knowing what's right, of doing what's right, 00:25:59.320 --> 00:26:00.440 and he's always regal. 00:26:00.530 --> 00:26:02.780 He was a man born to be king, 00:26:02.860 --> 00:26:07.620 even if he's with the Ravagers, across the galaxy, 00:26:07.700 --> 00:26:10.410 he still has that presence of a natural ruler. 00:26:10.490 --> 00:26:13.290 So his costume is a little bit cleaner, 00:26:13.370 --> 00:26:14.870 he's a little bit more poised. 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:17.970 The Ravagers are less space pirates and more space Robin Hoods. 00:26:18.450 --> 00:26:19.830 You know as well as I, 00:26:19.910 --> 00:26:23.460 no treasure is worth as much as the good that can be done with it. 00:26:23.540 --> 00:26:26.040 That's my boy. 00:26:26.130 --> 00:26:28.920 So you get Yondu, but you get a slightly different Yondu. 00:26:29.010 --> 00:26:32.800 A Yondu that was influenced by T'Challa, who had grown up in Wakanda. 00:26:33.470 --> 00:26:38.640 You get a Nebula who was changed by her relationship with T'Challa, 00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:41.140 who she calls Cha-Cha, which is very funny. 00:26:41.230 --> 00:26:44.400 Something Karen Gillan came up with on the day during the record. 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:47.360 And, most exciting, you've got Thanos. 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:49.400 T'Challa here showed me there was more 00:26:49.480 --> 00:26:51.780 than one way to reallocate the universe's resources. 00:26:51.860 --> 00:26:55.870 Sometimes the best weapon in your arsenal is just a good argument. 00:26:55.950 --> 00:26:57.450 Aye, aye, Commander. 00:26:58.580 --> 00:27:02.500 Chadwick loved the idea of doing the voice to T'Challa in the series. 00:27:02.580 --> 00:27:04.170 We sent him the scripts. 00:27:04.250 --> 00:27:05.710 He loved the voice of T'Challa. 00:27:05.790 --> 00:27:08.750 It was slightly different than it was in the first film. 00:27:08.840 --> 00:27:13.470 He really was excited about evolving and seeing where the character could go, 00:27:13.550 --> 00:27:18.390 and he loved the swagger that the Star-Lord version of T'Challa had. 00:27:18.470 --> 00:27:23.270 And he came in numerous times and did four episodes for us. 00:27:23.350 --> 00:27:27.940 You may be the soul of this ship, but I am still the Captain. 00:27:28.020 --> 00:27:31.320 We are Ravagers. We do not back down from a fight. 00:27:31.400 --> 00:27:37.320 In watching this, the over-riding thing for me was just hearing his voice, 00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:40.370 um, as that character again. 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:44.580 Um, just the mysticism of the character, 00:27:44.660 --> 00:27:49.540 and really a kind of mysticism that has become his life. 00:27:49.630 --> 00:27:52.460 It's a really... It's a really wonderful blend. 00:27:52.550 --> 00:27:53.590 Nice to hear him again. 00:27:53.670 --> 00:27:56.630 I was the one who told you I wanted to see the world. 00:27:56.720 --> 00:27:59.850 All you did was show me the universe. 00:28:11.770 --> 00:28:16.110 One of the first What If...? scenarios we came up with early on is, 00:28:16.200 --> 00:28:18.110 what if Thor was never banished? 00:28:18.200 --> 00:28:19.410 What does that look like? 00:28:19.490 --> 00:28:22.080 And actually, it was in my initial meetings with Marvel, 00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:25.120 they pitched that to me. They're like, "We're trying to figure out, 00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:26.660 "what does an evil Thor look like?" 00:28:26.750 --> 00:28:29.920 And my response was, "I don't think he looks evil. 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:31.710 "I think he looks like a douchebag." 00:28:31.790 --> 00:28:33.250 You're Thor? 00:28:33.340 --> 00:28:35.970 As in Thor, the Norse god of thunder? 00:28:36.050 --> 00:28:40.350 I don't know anything about horse gods, but I do know how to bring the thunder. 00:28:40.430 --> 00:28:42.060 - Uh... - Huzzah! 00:28:42.140 --> 00:28:43.890 Huzzah! Thor! Thor! Thor! Thor! 00:28:43.970 --> 00:28:47.270 He's just taking over planets, throwing a party, 00:28:47.350 --> 00:28:50.060 trashing the place, not paying his bills. 00:28:50.150 --> 00:28:53.270 Just basically, everything is Saturday night at 1:00 in the morning. 00:28:53.610 --> 00:28:54.610 Huh? 00:28:54.690 --> 00:28:55.780 Release the foam. 00:28:57.110 --> 00:28:59.860 They finally had to press the button. 00:28:59.950 --> 00:29:01.320 It's done. 00:29:01.410 --> 00:29:03.580 And call in Captain Marvel to clean up the mess. 00:29:06.200 --> 00:29:10.000 You know, there's a Midgardian word for women like you. 00:29:11.750 --> 00:29:12.920 Party pooper. 00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:15.420 Okay, this one's for Fury. 00:29:18.170 --> 00:29:21.890 In these episodes, we want them to hit different genres, in a way. 00:29:21.970 --> 00:29:24.390 And for the Doctor Strange one, that was the one 00:29:24.470 --> 00:29:28.180 that we wanted to really lean into, like, you know, the horror, the macabre. 00:29:28.270 --> 00:29:33.310 So bringing in aspects of, you know, H.P. Lovecraft's sensibilities into that 00:29:33.400 --> 00:29:35.730 and really going there with some of the magic 00:29:35.820 --> 00:29:38.900 and some of the, like, monsters and the frightfulness. 00:29:38.990 --> 00:29:40.990 Those beings have what I need. 00:29:42.490 --> 00:29:44.620 Is she worth the pain? 00:29:46.580 --> 00:29:50.160 A man does not suffer like this for his own glory. 00:29:51.290 --> 00:29:53.040 Every moment of it. 00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:58.920 Doctor Strange basically becomes obsessed with his own power 00:29:59.010 --> 00:30:00.430 and creating more and more of it. 00:30:00.510 --> 00:30:04.220 It's a mixture of, like, Dorian Gray and Voldemort. 00:30:04.300 --> 00:30:08.810 And basically, he becomes this H.P. Lovecraftian version of himself. 00:30:08.890 --> 00:30:11.390 The fun twist in the episode is, 00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:16.320 a version of Doctor Strange earlier in the timeline is the one that has to stop him 00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:19.280 because the Lovecraftian Strange is gonna destroy the world. 00:30:19.360 --> 00:30:20.700 You need to let go. 00:30:20.780 --> 00:30:24.530 I've gone too far to turn back now. 00:30:24.620 --> 00:30:28.790 What If...? gives us an opportunity to tell stories 00:30:28.870 --> 00:30:34.000 with a whole new idea of what the physical reality of the universe is. 00:30:34.080 --> 00:30:39.590 That is something that's gonna be explored in other ways moving forward in our films. 00:30:43.890 --> 00:30:46.010 You, you can stop this. 00:30:46.100 --> 00:30:47.510 You, more than anyone else, 00:30:47.600 --> 00:30:53.850 should understand that meddling with time and events only leads to more destruction. 00:30:53.940 --> 00:30:56.270 No. No! 00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:59.940 It's kind of interesting that for me that, you know, 00:31:00.030 --> 00:31:04.610 the Watcher is compelled in a new way 00:31:05.490 --> 00:31:09.290 by Doctor Strange's decisions. 00:31:09.540 --> 00:31:12.620 Uh, so I guess we kind of overlapped in our interests there. 00:31:12.710 --> 00:31:18.500 But I just found it to be, um, uh... really complex 00:31:18.590 --> 00:31:24.930 and moving and tragic and powerful bit of animation there. 00:31:25.010 --> 00:31:27.050 Yeah, that one got me. That one got me. 00:31:28.550 --> 00:31:32.180 One life, one choice, one moment... 00:31:32.270 --> 00:31:35.600 -Christine. -...can destroy the entire universe. 00:31:41.070 --> 00:31:45.530 What If...? also gave us a way to do a big fan favorite 00:31:45.610 --> 00:31:48.410 that we've not done before, which is Marvel Zombies. 00:31:48.490 --> 00:31:52.950 When Hank Pym went down to the quantum realm to get Janet back, 00:31:53.040 --> 00:31:55.710 she had been infected with this zombie virus. 00:31:55.790 --> 00:31:59.090 And when he brought her back, he accidentally infected the world. 00:31:59.170 --> 00:32:01.090 - Holy-- What the-- Hank! - And fans know 00:32:01.170 --> 00:32:03.710 that Marvel Zombies is a great, great comic series 00:32:03.800 --> 00:32:07.430 where you get to see the zombified versions of all of our heroes. 00:32:07.510 --> 00:32:12.010 Marvel Zombies can stand on its own as a story, 00:32:12.100 --> 00:32:15.770 but it was always a parallel universe. 00:32:15.850 --> 00:32:20.270 It was always its own "what if" scenario, actually. 00:32:21.070 --> 00:32:23.990 It was a spinoff of the ultimate run in the comics, 00:32:24.070 --> 00:32:27.360 and it always existed in its own bespoke reality. 00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:31.490 So, we felt like we could use the What If...? structure 00:32:31.580 --> 00:32:37.160 to sneak in our first foray into the Marvel Zombies universe, 00:32:37.250 --> 00:32:39.580 based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:46.010 Oh, no. 00:32:46.090 --> 00:32:48.180 Oh, I'm gonna vomit. 00:32:49.220 --> 00:32:52.220 For fans of the Marvel Zombies comic series, 00:32:52.310 --> 00:32:56.749 you'll see certain similarities and Easter eggs 00:32:56.773 --> 00:32:58.773 that allude to the original run. 00:32:59.060 --> 00:33:01.610 The state in which they find T'Challa being a big one, 00:33:01.690 --> 00:33:04.280 certain people's heads in jars. 00:33:04.360 --> 00:33:06.360 Ta-da! See for yourself. 00:33:06.440 --> 00:33:08.150 -Wait, who said that? -Was that ghost? 00:33:08.240 --> 00:33:10.280 Oh, damn. Hey, would somebody turn me around? 00:33:10.360 --> 00:33:11.660 We messed up my entrance. 00:33:11.740 --> 00:33:14.240 You know, I need to get this thing motorized. Hey! 00:33:17.370 --> 00:33:19.790 As we were developing the Marvel Cinematic Universe 00:33:19.870 --> 00:33:23.380 and all the projects that went into creating this big tapestry, 00:33:23.460 --> 00:33:28.970 it was a very, you know, specific house of cards, in a way. 00:33:29.050 --> 00:33:29.980 In What If...?, 00:33:30.004 --> 00:33:36.470 we get to take a baseball bat to that entire structure, and just shatter it into a million pieces 00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:44.320 and see what's left and rebuild in our own mutated, interesting, unexpected forms. 00:33:51.700 --> 00:33:53.280 We've seen this before, 00:33:53.370 --> 00:33:56.580 a universe in the final days of destruction. 00:33:56.660 --> 00:33:59.660 But this particular story... 00:34:00.410 --> 00:34:02.960 This, this one breaks my heart. 00:34:03.040 --> 00:34:05.920 I think in some ways, everything is surprising about the series, 00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:09.170 that's what's wonderful about this concept, this What If...? concept. 00:34:09.260 --> 00:34:13.550 We have these known stories, these known characters, these known arcs. 00:34:13.640 --> 00:34:17.600 Doesn't matter. Anything can be explored. 00:34:17.680 --> 00:34:21.190 And so in some ways, surprise is the whole point. 00:34:21.890 --> 00:34:24.230 In the story of season one, 00:34:24.310 --> 00:34:28.900 the Watcher makes it very clear to us that he is not gonna get involved. 00:34:28.990 --> 00:34:30.610 He's on the wrong path. 00:34:30.700 --> 00:34:33.110 I could warn him, intervene, 00:34:33.200 --> 00:34:37.200 but the fate of his universe is not worth risking the safety of all others. 00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:40.540 But it just so happens that there is a story 00:34:40.620 --> 00:34:44.670 that culminates our first season that requires the Watcher's intervention. 00:34:45.500 --> 00:34:50.510 We reimagine a world where Ultron got the Vision's body 00:34:50.590 --> 00:34:54.640 as he meant to do in Age of Ultron, the film. 00:34:54.720 --> 00:34:57.850 And when Thanos inevitably comes 00:34:57.930 --> 00:35:02.060 to get the Infinity Stone from his forehead, he defeats Thanos. 00:35:02.140 --> 00:35:03.980 Fascinating. 00:35:05.560 --> 00:35:08.270 And gets all six Infinity Stones. 00:35:08.360 --> 00:35:12.820 Once he does that, he's able to wage war against the entire cosmos 00:35:12.900 --> 00:35:17.700 and create an entire universe devoid of all life. 00:35:17.780 --> 00:35:22.120 So devoid of life that he can actually hear the voice of our narrator. 00:35:22.200 --> 00:35:24.920 Basking in the boundless silence of his universe, 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:28.920 Ultron ascended to a previously unattainable level of consciousness. 00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:31.130 He became aware of another. 00:35:32.510 --> 00:35:35.260 He became aware of the... 00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:37.600 I see you. 00:35:38.970 --> 00:35:41.180 And when he's aware of the Watcher, 00:35:41.270 --> 00:35:46.400 he can break through the universal wall and wage war on the Multiverse itself. 00:35:46.480 --> 00:35:50.070 Which forces the Watcher into a position he's never been in before, 00:35:50.150 --> 00:35:54.740 which is to defend the very thing that he's sworn an oath to only observe. 00:35:54.820 --> 00:35:58.530 And it just so happens, the perfect cocktail of heroes 00:35:58.620 --> 00:36:02.370 that he needs to defeat this Multiverse-destroying bad guy 00:36:02.450 --> 00:36:06.790 happen to be the same heroes whose stories we've been watching all season long. 00:36:06.870 --> 00:36:08.830 And they become the Guardians of the Multiverse. 00:36:08.920 --> 00:36:11.670 - To the Guardians of... - Yeah. 00:36:11.750 --> 00:36:13.840 - The Multiverse. - ...the Multiverse. 00:36:15.010 --> 00:36:18.640 The Multiverse. 00:36:20.510 --> 00:36:24.270 I really believe that deepening fictional mythologies 00:36:24.350 --> 00:36:28.190 is a way to appreciate them more, is a way to understand them more, 00:36:28.270 --> 00:36:29.770 look at them in a different way. 00:36:29.860 --> 00:36:34.440 And they've got now two seasons of What If...? ideas underway 00:36:34.530 --> 00:36:37.150 that's some of the best storytelling we've ever had, 00:36:37.240 --> 00:36:40.320 and you may see spin into other mediums. 00:36:40.410 --> 00:36:45.500 But it's really the most uniquely beautiful animated series I've seen in a long time. 00:36:50.170 --> 00:36:53.250 We set out to make season one, 00:36:54.260 --> 00:36:57.970 believing that it might be our first and last season. 00:36:58.840 --> 00:37:04.430 So we wanted to tell a complete story in those ten, now nine, episodes. 00:37:04.520 --> 00:37:06.930 When we got greenlit for the second season, 00:37:07.940 --> 00:37:10.400 we had to really look at the characters 00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:16.740 and really justify why we would keep telling stories in this fashion. 00:37:17.490 --> 00:37:21.120 Obviously, you could spin out any number of What If...? stories. 00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:23.160 And it's exciting to do so. 00:37:23.240 --> 00:37:24.450 Bucky! 00:37:24.540 --> 00:37:27.330 But we were searching for that central thread 00:37:27.410 --> 00:37:33.630 that could make it feel like essential viewing for the MCU. 00:37:33.710 --> 00:37:39.470 And what emerged was the relationship between Captain Carter and the Watcher, 00:37:40.380 --> 00:37:43.050 which is something that evolves, 00:37:43.140 --> 00:37:47.560 uh, in a grand fashion in the second season of the show. 00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:49.940 You'd rather return to another time. 00:37:50.600 --> 00:37:52.560 Haven't I earned my happy ending? 00:37:53.770 --> 00:37:57.990 Trust me, that world, that time, 00:37:58.070 --> 00:37:59.900 needs Captain Carter. 00:38:01.030 --> 00:38:05.870 I love how richly invested fans are in these stories 00:38:05.950 --> 00:38:09.120 and the characters and the films. 00:38:09.210 --> 00:38:12.210 One of the things about Marvel fans, 00:38:12.290 --> 00:38:17.630 I think, is that they have Marvel universes in their heads as well. 00:38:17.710 --> 00:38:20.470 They have what exists on film, what exists in the comics, 00:38:20.550 --> 00:38:22.470 but then in their heads, they have these other, 00:38:22.550 --> 00:38:26.470 you know, imaginings and stories that they tell too. 00:38:26.560 --> 00:38:30.480 And I think that's all a part of the storytelling universe. 00:38:30.560 --> 00:38:34.940 And so the opportunity for us to begin to explore 00:38:35.020 --> 00:38:38.440 these alternate realities in ways that might touch on some ideas 00:38:38.530 --> 00:38:40.570 that fans have had, or don't, 00:38:40.650 --> 00:38:46.450 or surpass those expectations, is gonna be really cool. 00:38:46.530 --> 00:38:48.870 And it also opens the door 00:38:49.700 --> 00:38:54.420 and a series of doors to other endless possibilities. 00:38:58.550 --> 00:39:04.010 You, your stories, they are everything to me.