What If? Writer Admits She Gets Hate Mail Over Iron Man's Role in the Series

10/07/2021 06:51 pm EDT

The first season of Marvel's What If...? came to an end this week and things didn't go very well for Tony Stark throughout the nine-episode tun. The character, who was voiced by Mick Wingert instead of Robert Downey Jr., died multiple times during the multiverse story. Many fans were not pleased with having to watch Tony die again and again, especially after the character's big sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame. In the show's finale, "What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath," The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) gathers multiple heroes from across the timelines that we've seen throughout the season. Among them was an alternate version of Tony and Gamora (Cynthia McWilliams, not Zoe Saldana), which somewhat confused and frustrated fans since their stories hadn't been told before. Turns out, their episode wasn't finished due to COVID complications, but head writer A.C. Bradley promises we'll get to see the "prequel" episode next season. Bradley also revealed while talking to Entertainment Weekly that she's received some hate mail over the treatment of Tony Stark.

"Yeah, due to the pandemic one of our core production houses was hit very hard, and could not finish animation on one of our episodes that was supposed to air earlier in the season. That episode featured Tony and Gamora. It was a lighter episode! We didn't murder Tony horrifically in this one, I promise! Big spoiler. [Laughs] But I'm getting hate mail," Bradley shared.

"It's a great episode; it's funny," director Bryan Andrews added. "It was supposed to be the fourth episode so Strange would have been fifth and everything else would move back in that order it was. But it's an exciting Tony adventure with Gamora and then we would go into Doctor Strange and get a little bit darker. But it's coming - I was seeing some shots on it just the other day so it's coming. It will be there for our second season."

Previously, Bradley spoke with ComicBook.com about the missing episode. 

"We definitely will," Bradley replied when asked if we'll see more of Gamora. "What happened with the Gamora episode, there was originally supposed to be — early on in the season — a Tony and Gamora-centric episode ... We were left with two choices: push the entire season to later this year, or push this one episode to Season 2. We made the choice to push that episode to Season 2 and hoped that seeing Gamora in the finale serves as a teaser for what is to come. In Season 2, it'll almost be like a little bit of a prequel, we'll see how Tony and Gamora became friends because those two don't even interact in the main MCU universe."

"Given all the upheaval that we've been through in the past two years, pushing an episode is nothing, and we completely understand," Bradley continued. "Our animation houses have been absolute rock stars in pulling off this show."

Marvel's What If...?'s first season is streaming on Disney+. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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