Way back in December 2019, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige confirmed that What If...?'s first season would run for a total of 10 episodes. Unfortunately, that's now changed, and thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the animated series is only going to receive a total of 9 instalments on Disney+.
On the plus side, this news is accompanied by confirmation that the second season will also be 9 episodes, so at the very least, we're getting 18 visits to the MCU's newly created Multiverse!
Talking to Collider, What If...? executive producer Brad Winderbaum explained what led to the change.
"We had to push an episode into Season 2. It was just, honestly, like everything else, that was a COVID impact," he confirmed. "There was an episode that just wouldn't hit the completion date, but luckily we do get to see it in the second season of the show."
In the same interview, Winderbaum also addressed the running time of each episode and how that impacted the number of them we're getting. "We targeted a half an hour for each episode. Some of them come in a little longer, some of them come in a little shorter," the Marvel Studios veteran explained. "We wanted to tell as many stories as we could and we had a certain budget we had to work with so it felt like that 10-episode — now 9-episode run — was the right quantity."
This means What If...? will wrap up on October 9, and from there we won't have too long to wait until Hawkeye arrives on November 24 (remember, Eternals will debut in theaters on November 5).
Here's our reaction to the first three episodes. The review embargo lifts on August 10.
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