Disney+ has been quietly teasing its What If…? animated series for a while now, having released a quick teaser late last year that was fairly light on the wacky potential of Marvel’s What If brand. Today, though, Marvel Studios celebrated the long-awaited announcement of the show’s premiere date (August 11!) with an extended trailer that cuts right to the chase—and by “the chase” we mean good shit like Killmonger saving Tony Stark from the attack at the beginning of Iron Man, T’Challa leading the Guardians Of The Galaxy (and wearing a much cooler coat than Star-Lords, let’s be honest), what appears to be a Hawkeye Hulk (Hulkeye?), and, best of all, the arrival of Captain Peggy Carter. The idea, like the What If comics that the series is named after, is that these are alternate versions of the stories shown in the movies, presumably with easy hooks like “What if Peggy Carter got the super-soldier serum?” or “What if Hulkeye?”
Jeffrey Wright is playing Uatu The Watcher, here giving the usual “I’m just here to see what happens, I will never, ever, ever intervene” speech that comic readers know is complete and utter bullshit. The rest of the cast is similarly impressive, with Marvel Studios calling in pretty much everyone who has ever been in one of these movies who isn’t Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, or Robert Downy Jr—as far as we can tell. Some of the voices are immediately recognizable (nobody does a classic “Michael Rooker voice” like Michael Rooker, and that’s very clearly Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter), but IMDb, as untrustworthy as it is, also promises Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Jeremy Renner, Mark Uffalo, Paul Rudd, Sebastian Stan, and even Chadwick Boseman. We’ve reached out to Disney for confirmation on the cast list, but if it’s really him, it would mean this will be the last chance to hear him playing T’Challa and that this will be his final role.