Is Marvel Studios' What If...? ending with season 3? A new interview calls it "the completion of a trilogy" and an end for the Watcher

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Yes, there were Marvel cartoons before Disney+'s What If...?, and as any X-Men '97 fan will eagerly tell you, there have certainly been Marvel cartoons since then, but to Marvel Studios management, What If...? is symbolic of the quintessental type of animated series the company wants to make. And in an interview, Marvel Studios' head of streaming, television, and animation Brad Winderbaum talks about the show, and frames its upcoming third season could be its end.

"[What If...? season 3] feels like the completion of a trilogy," Winderbaum says in the latest episode of the Official Marvel Podcast. "It takes us to places that you'd never expect. It goes beyond the first two seasons and its exploration of the multiverse, and it pulls in characters that are very unexpected, and has a, what I think is, extremely moving and fulfilling culmination for a while to the Watcher."

That last bit - an "extremely moving and fulfilling culmination" for the Watcher, voiced throughout the series by Jeffrey Wright - definitely sounds like an ending for the cosmic character. Not a definite ending per se, especially given his "for a while" caveat, but Winderbaum does seem to be signaling the end of the Watcher's What If...? show with these latest comments. After all, he also calls the season the "completion" of the series to date...

The release date of What If...? season 3 hasn't been announced, but lead director Bryan Andrews has said its psosible for a "late 2024" release. If true, that it would be a tight turnaround, but stranger things have happened...

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights: Disney CEO Bob Iger is promising Deadpool & Wolverine will be MCU's biggest movie "in a long time", how Marvel Studios is now working "much more closely" to sell Marvel comics, how Marvel Comics' boss said it was lost in 2023 (and how its finding itself again), Inside Marvel Comics' plans to fix its pricing issues, Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak, and the biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows.