LOS ANGELES – The second season of award-winning animated anthology series What If…? (2021 to present) – which imagines how moments in Marvel’s superhero films would play out in alternate timelines and universes – once again boasts an all-star voice cast.

Reprising their roles from various live-action Marvel superhero movies are Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch and Cate Blanchett as Hela.

And Jeffrey Wright returns as the voice of series narrator the Watcher, an alien who observes the multiverse but does not interfere.

For the second season, which is available on Disney+, the show’s creative team promises things will depart even further from the films.

One episode is titled What If… The Avengers Assembled In 1602?, and the writers and producers had fun envisioning different versions of the famous superhero team.

“We play around with a slightly different crew (from that in the 2012 movie) The Avengers,” teases the show’s creator, American writer-producer Ashley Bradley, at a press event.

In the movies, the Avengers are made up of heroes such as Captain America, Thor, Captain Marvel and Hulk, but What If...? imagines different combinations of characters that moviegoers have not seen.

This is something many fans of the films and comics do anyway, notes American writer-producer Matthew Chauncey.

“I think casting different Avengers line-ups is something we all do as fans, and we ended up doing it in the writers’ room.

“Early on in Season 1, one of our ideas was: What would an Avengers movie look like if it took place in a different era, and if there was an Avengers-level crisis in the 1980s?

“And so the idea of setting an episode in the 1980s was something that really excited us.”

The writers mined the movies and comics for individual character details.

“Then the fun of it was getting to craft a story that narratively and aesthetically mirrored 1980s action movies – sort of like ‘What would a Marvel movie look like if it were made in the 1980s?’” says Chauncey.

For this, What If...? also deployed the voices of two actors who were big movie stars in that decade: Michael Douglas and Kurt Russell, with Douglas reprising his role as Hank Pym from the Ant-Man films (2015 to 2023) and Russell returning as Ego from Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

Some characters are voiced by different actors from those in the films – Iron Man is brought to life by Mick Wingert rather than Robert Downey Jr and Black Widow by Lake Bell instead of Scarlett Johansson, for instance.

But the writing strives to maintain a consistent personality and tone for each character no matter who is playing him or her.

And it was able to do so because the writers “came to this as fans”, Bradley says.

She and some of the other writers had already worked together on other Marvel projects and had a shorthand.

“So we came in already from a deep place of love and, from there, you just kind of watch the movies; you read the scripts; you read the comic books.

“And definitely, you’re writing from a very fun place and from deep in the heart,” adds Bradley, who worked with Chauncey on the Disney+ miniseries Ms Marvel (2022).

With its playful remixing of Marvel mythology, What If...? – which has won an Annie animation award and a Creative Arts Emmy for the late Black Panther (2018) star Chadwick Boseman – also brought out the inner child of the writers.

“Creatively, it’s as close as you can get to reconnecting with that sense of play that we all fell in love with Marvel with as kids,” Chauncey says.

“Working on the show, it’s kind of like we’ve all got our action figures out and are dumping them on the carpet and mixing and matching.

“You get to work on all the different characters, all the different tones.”

• What If...? 2 is available on Disney+.