Marvel Promises New Suits in X-Men ’97 Season 2, New Characters in What If…? Season 3 | D23 2024

Marvel Animation came to D23 2024 with a behind-closed-doors look at upcoming Disney+ shows like What If…? Season 3, Eyes of Wakanda and X-Men ’97 Season 2.

Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, showed up today for a panel about the company’s animation projects, where he revealed some key details about how they’ll continue Marvel’s long history of animation. While fans have already fallen in love with shows like X-Men ’97 for their visuals, he says that not all shows will have the same art style.

“We get to create a style for each show,” Winderbaum explained. “We’re never going to have a Marvel style, but a vision from the filmmakers. It allows us to embrace all the art styles that Marvel has had and go to amazing places across the universe.”

Images from Eyes of Wakanda reveal that it will use 3D animation to tell its Wakandan story, for example. What If…? Season 3, meanwhile, will retain the cell-shaded style that fans have grown accustomed to when playing with visuals. It will also put new spins on the stories of characters like Moon Knight, Ironheart, Shang-Chi and White Vision.

Brian Andrews of What If…? showed off footage of Transformer-esque Avengers teaming up in new and interesting ways, as well as old-school takes on some of Marvel’s biggest heroes. The third and final season of the Marvel spin-off show gives the team another chance to dream up some weird scenarios that could only be imagined in the world of comics.

“If you go through Seasons 1 and 2, you learn how much the fans love these characters and these stories. That gave us a lot of fuel,” Andrews said. “We learned that we can hit big shots. The wilder and crazier the What If…? got, the better the response. We’re really playing with imagery. A little bit of Western stuff, a little bit of mindless robot stuff.”

Eyes of Wakanda, set to premiere later this year, will expand the lore of Black Panthers at home in a four-part series that explores different generations of Wakanda. That means the show’s lead actors Ryan Coogler and Todd Harris will be able to introduce new elements to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), like the Wakandan protectors the War Dogs.

It’s a show that’s focused on giving audiences more background on existing characters, but X-Men ’97 has a chance to expand on the stories established in Season 1 earlier this year. Little has been revealed about the upcoming season, but Marvel says we can at least expect outfits based on Grant Morrison’s suit designs. Footage shown at D23 also revealed shots of Magneto during the trial before declaring that the “X-Men are here to stay.”

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