Stan Lee sits on a rock in a spacesuit, telling three enormous strangers about the time he worked for Federal Express. Years later, in a different Marvel universe, Ultron hears a stranger describing his life and turns to see who spoke. Both scenes depend on the same idea. Somewhere, somebody has been paying attention.
The Watchers are an ancient people who record the lives of other civilisations. Uatu, the Watcher assigned to Earth in the comics and voiced by Jeffrey Wright in What If…?, takes a particular interest in what happens here. His people have sworn to observe without interfering. Earth keeps giving him reasons to break that promise.
How to read the timeline. The comics come first, followed by appearances in the MCU’s main history. What If…? is canon to Marvel Studios’ multiverse and follows Uatu across alternate histories, so its cards follow his experience in season order. Other animated realities have their own section. Spoilers follow through 3 November 2026.
The comic book origins of the Watchers
APRIL 1963 · FANTASTIC FOUR #13
The man already on the Moon
Reed Richards and Soviet scientist Ivan Kragoff race to the Moon, each convinced that getting there first will prove something about the country that sent him. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby puncture the premise as soon as the rivals reach the Blue Area of the Moon. Someone already lives there. From his perspective, the Cold War space race amounts to two sets of neighbours arriving on the same afternoon.
The figure the Fantastic Four meet is introduced simply as the Watcher. His immense head and stillness make him an oddity even in a Kirby comic. The Thing and the Red Ghost’s super-apes can hardly occupy a panel without threatening to hit something. The Watcher can command one by standing still. That visual distinction survives almost intact in his screen appearances.
MAY 1964 · TALES OF SUSPENSE #53
Why the Watchers swore to stand aside
The five-page story “The Way It Began!” supplies the missing history. Long before Uatu kept watch over Earth, his people gave the inhabitants of Prosilicus the secret of atomic energy. They believed access to that power would improve life on the planet. When they returned, they discovered that the recipients had turned the gift into weapons and destroyed their civilisation.
The oath grows out of that particular failure. The Watchers understood the technology they were giving away. They understood far less about the people who would use it. Uatu inherits the rule along with a problem its authors could never settle for him. If he can foresee a disaster and chooses silence, how much responsibility does he bear for what follows?
1966 · FANTASTIC FOUR #48–50
Uatu puts the Ultimate Nullifier within human reach
In Fantastic Four #48, Uatu tries to conceal Earth from the Silver Surfer, the herald who searches for worlds to feed Galactus. His deception fails. In #49, he sends Johnny Storm across space to retrieve a device from Galactus’s worldship. In #50, Reed Richards holds up the Ultimate Nullifier and makes Galactus reckon with the possibility of his own destruction.
Look at whose hands the device passes through. Johnny retrieves it. Reed makes the threat. Yet Uatu chose the instrument, knew where to find it and put Johnny in a position to take it. Decades later, when the television Watcher recruits the Guardians of the Multiverse, he reaches for a familiar solution. Find the people capable of saving their worlds and give them access they could never obtain alone.
1975–1977 · CAPTAIN MARVEL #39 AND WHAT IF? #1
The Watcher gets a name and an audience
Captain Marvel #39 identifies Earth’s Watcher as Uatu, twelve years after his debut. In 1977, Roy Thomas and Jim Craig give him a job that changes how Marvel readers encounter him. In What If? #1, he introduces a world in which Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four.
The point of departure comes from The Amazing Spider-Man #1. Peter Parker had already approached the team about membership, only to lose interest when he discovered the job carried no salary. Readers could go back and find the very conversation that might have gone differently. Uatu could see both outcomes. When Jeffrey Wright introduces Peggy Carter’s choice in the first television episode, the series is using the storytelling device this issue established.
2014 · ORIGINAL SIN #0, #1 AND #8
Who would kill the one witness who sees everything?
Original Sin #0 gives young Nova, Sam Alexander, an audience with Uatu. It connects his interest in alternate worlds to his father’s role in the Prosilicus disaster. For Uatu, the possibility that things went differently somewhere else has a painfully personal appeal.
Issue #1 turns the observer into the victim of a murder investigation. Uatu lies dead on the Moon, his eyes taken for the secrets they hold. Issue #8 reveals the original Nick Fury’s part in killing him and taking his remaining eye. Fury becomes the Unseen, bound to the Moon. Marvel could hardly have devised a crueller fate for a spy who spent his life obtaining information so he could act on it.
The Watchers in the main MCU timeline
The first Watchers audiences saw in an MCU cinema were listening to Stan Lee. The earliest sighting in Earth’s history takes place more than a century before that conversation.
1896 · EYES OF WAKANDA · SEASON 1, EPISODE 4
“The Last Panther” and the axe that must reach a museum
Where to look. Early in the episode, look to the sky above Tafari and Kuda. The Watcher’s outline hangs over the two Wakandans before they understand the consequences of their mission in Ethiopia.
Their task is to recover a vibranium axe. A Black Panther from the future needs them to leave it behind. Follow the object far enough and it ends up in the British museum where Erik Killmonger recognises it in Black Panther. What looked like the recovery of stolen material could erase a chain of events on which Wakanda’s future depends.
The episode puts two people who can see beyond 1896 in the same story. The Watcher stays in the sky. The future Panther comes down and argues her case. Tafari and Kuda still have to decide whose account of the future they trust.
Creator Todd Harris on the axe and its connection to Black Panther
2014 · GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 · TWO SCENES
Stan Lee reports to three Watchers
Where to look. During Rocket, Groot, Yondu and Kraglin’s punishing series of space jumps, the film cuts to a rocky outcrop. Stan Lee, wearing a spacesuit, is partway through a story about working for Federal Express. Three bald, robed figures listen. The jump lasts just long enough to make you wonder how long he has been talking.
Stay through the credits. The film returns to the outcrop. The Watchers walk away while Lee protests that he still has stories to tell. His predicament supplies the punchline. A man who can turn up almost anywhere in the MCU now needs somebody to give him a lift.
The FedEx anecdote points to Lee’s delivery-driver cameo in Captain America: Civil War. There is a small wrinkle for timeline purists: Vol. 2 takes place before that delivery. The film also leaves all three listeners unnamed, so there is no firm basis for identifying any one of them as Uatu.
BABY GROOT ERA · I AM GROOT · SEASON 2, EPISODE 5
“Groot and the Great Prophecy” gives Uatu the wrong audience
Listen for Jeffrey Wright. Uatu narrates Baby Groot’s arrival at an ancient Drez-Lar temple with the gravity of someone about to witness the fulfilment of a sacred prophecy. He can see the design of the temple, the dangers ahead and the destiny awaiting its visitor. Groot has his own ideas about what deserves his attention.
The pleasure is in Wright’s delivery as solemn anticipation gives way to exasperation. Uatu can see across universes and still make the elementary mistake of assuming a small child will do what the occasion demands. The short belongs with the Baby Groot adventures around Vol. 2. Its precise day relative to Stan Lee’s report is unspecified.
POST-BLIP NEW YORK · DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN · SEASON 2, EPISODE 4
A face at the window of Fogwell’s Gym
Where to look. During the boxing event, look through the broken window at Fogwell’s. The outline of the Watcher is tucked into a location Matt Murdock will always associate with his father. The violence that overtakes the gathering puts Vanessa Fisk’s life in the balance.
The setting gives the cameo its force. A cosmic observer is easy to accommodate in a story about Galactus. Here, he has come to a boxing gym. The scale of the building tells us very little about the significance of what happens inside it.
AFTER WANDAVISION · VISIONQUEST · EPISODE 6
“Deadlock” hides its observer beside the broadcast
Where to look. In Madripoor, the Client cuts the power and commandeers the screens. As the message plays across the televisions in an electronics shop, look into the dark doorway beside them. A pair of luminous eyes gives the Watcher away. Showrunner Terry Matalas acknowledged the sighting after viewers picked it out.
The shot works because the Client has already told the city where to look. The audience follows the same instruction and can easily miss the stranger who is watching everyone else. The episode supplies no exact date placing this glimpse before or after the one at Fogwell’s, so the two modern cameos are listed in broadcast order.
What If…? in the order Uatu experiences it
Uatu provides the framing voice across all 26 episodes. Ordering the stories by the year on each alternate Earth would put Peggy Carter’s adventures in 1602 before her own origin. Season order preserves the chronology that matters here: Uatu meets these people, gets attached to them and eventually has to answer for what he does on their behalf.
2021 · WHAT IF…? · SEASON 1, EPISODES 1–9
Doctor Strange sees him. Ultron hears him.
Episode 1 introduces Peggy Carter’s decision to remain in the room for Project Rebirth. Episodes 2 and 3 follow T’Challa as Star-Lord and the murders of prospective Avengers. Through these histories, Uatu’s voice feels like a privilege reserved for the audience. Episode 4 quietly withdraws that protection. As his universe collapses, Doctor Strange senses the observer and begs him for help. Uatu refuses. Strange survives in a tiny pocket of reality, alone with the consequences.
Episodes 5–7 cover the zombie outbreak, Killmonger’s rescue of Tony Stark and a Thor raised without Loki. Then episode 8 turns the narration itself into a plot point. Infinity Ultron hears Uatu describing him. A being who has conquered his universe suddenly discovers both a witness and a way out.
In episode 9, Uatu recruits the Guardians of the Multiverse. Among them is the same Strange who once begged him to intervene. Uatu’s plan for saving the surviving worlds depends on asking a favour of the man whose world he allowed to die.
2023 · WHAT IF…? · SEASON 2, EPISODES 1–9
Captain Carter earns the view from Uatu’s side
The first four episodes take Uatu through Nebula’s service in the Nova Corps, a young Peter Quill’s arrival on Earth, Happy Hogan’s Christmas at Avengers Tower and Tony Stark’s detour to Sakaar. Episode 5 returns to Peggy and the Hydra Stomper. Episode 6 introduces Kahhori, a Mohawk woman empowered by the Tesseract, and episode 7 brings Hela into contact with the Ten Rings.
Episodes 8 and 9 bring the threads together. Peggy passes through a version of 1602 and confronts Strange Supreme’s attempt to recover his lost world at the expense of other lives. Afterwards, Uatu offers to take her home. Peggy wants to see more first. The gesture matters because viewers remember where she started: one woman making a decision in a Brooklyn laboratory. Now she can stand beside the being who witnessed it and ask where they should go next.
2024 · WHAT IF…? · SEASON 3, EPISODES 1–8
The Eminence, the Incarnate and the Executioner put Uatu on trial
The opening four episodes cover the Mech Avengers, Agatha in Hollywood, Red Guardian’s encounter with the Winter Soldier, and Howard and Darcy’s extraordinary egg. Episode 5 gives Uatu a smaller and more revealing temptation. Riri Williams is close to despair on a shattered Earth. He lets her hear a few words of encouragement. Consider how little it takes to breach his oath. Uatu understands what those words could do for her. That is precisely why he speaks.
Episode 6 follows Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop on the frontier as the cost of Uatu’s interventions catches up with him. In episodes 7 and 8, three fellow Watchers take centre stage: the Eminence, the Incarnate and the Executioner. Their trial turns a rule Uatu has spent three seasons interpreting into a charge he must answer.
Peggy, Kahhori, Byrdie and Storm come for him. Peggy’s sacrifice gives the trial a consequence no argument about non-interference can dismiss. Uatu ends the series by offering the surviving women a place beside him. Compare that invitation with his debut on the Moon in 1963. The remote figure who once received visitors on his own terms has learned to ask others to share the work.
2024 · INTERACTIVE SIDE STORY · EXACT PLACEMENT UNKNOWN
What If…? – An Immersive Story
The Apple Vision Pro experience reverses the relationship between Uatu and his audience. The Watcher recruits the participant, Wong teaches the necessary magic and the Infinity Stones become objects the player can handle. It belongs beside the television anthology, although its events have no firm position within Uatu’s three-season arc.
Watcher appearances in other Marvel realities
X-MEN ANIMATED CONTINUITY · THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA AND X-MEN ’97
A witness in the sky above Genosha
The original X-Men: The Animated Series slips Uatu into “The Dark Phoenix Saga, Part III: The Dark Phoenix.” That earlier sighting gives his return in X-Men ’97 a history within the X-Men’s own animated world.
Where to look in “Remember It,” season 1, episode 5. Look up over Genosha before the Wild Sentinel attacks. A faint head is visible in the night sky. On first viewing, it is easy to mistake it for cloud and return your attention to the music and dancing. On a second viewing, you know someone is already there to witness the massacre. Gambit, who has none of the Watcher’s foreknowledge, is the one who must decide what he can do in the seconds he has left.
PETER PARKER’S SCHOOL YEARS · YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN · SEASON 1, EPISODE 10
“If This Be My Destiny…” puts the Watcher above New York
Where to look. Watch the skyline beyond Peter and Doctor Strange during their rooftop conversation. The Watcher is visible over the city. Strange’s encounter with Peter and the spider connects the end of the season to its beginning. For once, Uatu is watching a cause and its effect close into a loop. Norman Osborn’s role as Peter’s mentor helps place this Spider-Man in a different history from the Tom Holland films.
2018 OUTBREAK BRANCH · MARVEL ZOMBIES · EPISODE 3
The Watcher sees the survivors reach Wakanda
Where to look. The opening flashback picks up the flight to Wakanda from What If…? season 1, episode 5. Peter Parker, T’Challa and Scott Lang’s disembodied head arrive hoping they can help deliver a cure. Uatu’s silhouette is visible above them.
The placement matters. The series looks back five years for this scene, putting the sighting alongside the original outbreak. There has also been a change of storyteller. Uatu introduced the zombie reality in What If…?. Here Peter provides the recollection, while the cosmic witness stays silent.
Before the MCU: other animated versions of Uatu
From the Fantastic Four cartoons to Avengers Assemble
Fantastic Four (1967). Paul Frees voiced Uatu in the original animated series. Marvel had brought the Watcher from the comics page to television within four years of his debut.
Fantastic Four (1994). Alan Oppenheimer voiced the character. Start with season 1, episode 5, “The Silver Surfer and the Coming of Galactus, Part 1.” Uatu warns the Four about the approaching world-devourer. It is the most direct comparison for readers moving from Fantastic Four #48 to the screen. Episode listing
Silver Surfer (1998). Colin Fox voiced Uatu in a series that could approach the Watchers from the other side of the telescope. The Surfer had once been the herald Uatu tried to hide Earth from. His journeys made the wider cosmos, and the beings who inhabit it, the natural setting for the story.
Avengers Assemble (2010s). Clancy Brown supplied another interpretation before Jeffrey Wright took on the role for Marvel Studios. Listen to Wright after hearing those earlier voices and one difference stands out. His Uatu sounds entirely at home announcing the fate of a universe. The performance gets more interesting when one person inside it asks him for help.
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