Words by Amon Warmann

From Alan Silvestri’s work on the Captain America and Avengers films to Ludwig Göransson’s Oscar-winning score for Black Panther, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has many memorable themes that fans have been humming for over a decade. All of them are heard in some form or another in What If…, a Disney+ series that focuses on various alternate realities that differ from the one we’ve been following in ways both big and small.

But while there are certainly hints of familiar themes throughout the series, there’s a ton of music that’s fresh too. The first thing we hear in each episode is the big and bold intro by Laura Karpman, who composed the score for the series. When we caught up with her, we discussed what went into that ear-catching opening statement, composing a track to honour the late, great Chadwick Boseman, and much more.

Once you booked the meeting for What If..., how did you prepare for it? What went into your pitch?

You know, it was a really interesting part of the process. I like these big popcorn movies, so my relationship with the MCU was that of a fan. I would go, I would see them, I would hear them and enjoy them. Dave Jordan - a music supervisor who works with Marvel - called me and said “listen, I want to put you up for a series. I can't tell you anything about it, but put together a reel that has absolutely everything on it.” 

I put that together, and then I booked it. I don't know if they listened to it or not. I have talked to Marvel about some other stuff in the past. And I think it was time. I think that they saw that I was someone who has diversity in terms of my musical background, and I can write a lot of different styles, and they knew they would need that for a series like this. So I think I was the right call for them. 

How hard was it to make sure your uniqueness shone through while harkening back to the themes and motifs we know and love? 

Not that hard. We talked a lot about Avengers: Endgame and about how Alan Silvestri would quote from the movies as they came up and then moved on. It's not about redoing Captain America. It's about saying, okay, here's this. Now let's do this. Or let's touch on that, but now we're in another action sequence. The third and fourth episodes were mostly original. With Doctor Strange, I was able to use the harpsichord, which is Michael Giacchino’s beautifully chosen sound for that character. I think that the challenges were trying to figure out what each episode was going to do musically because every single one had a different story to tell that required different compositional skills.

When I spoke with Loki composer Natalie Holt recently, she said she was asked to write a suite. Given how much each What If… episode switches things up, I’m imagining you didn’t have to do that. Where did you begin?

I started with the third episode and the main title theme, as those are the first things that were on deck. In our initial meetings before I started writing we talked about how to handle themes, when to use them, when not to use them, and how we might play with them in different ways. 

The Watcher theme is the heart and soul and the connective tissue of every episode. I wrote it to length, not to picture, as we didn’t have Jeffrey Wright’s dialogue at the time. There were specific things that I was told like there would be the sense of shattering glass. So we sampled glass and did some fun stuff to it to make it sound musical. I knew I wanted to have a strong theme, but also a strong motif in that theme that could be tagged and put in a lot of different places. 

When I think about music for Marvel that works, I think it's that. There are these handles that you grab on to that you know immediately is that character. It's almost operatic or Wagnerian, so I knew that we needed that. Then it was really about figuring out how to do a lot in a really short period of time because it's only a minute long. So I wanted to have a complete statement of a theme and then have a B section that was more action-driven. That was more driving, and that was maybe darker. It's almost a question that's not answered but says that there's more coming.

It feels like the first tracks on each of these episodes are so important as a statement of intent, teasing which universe(s) we’ll be playing in and twisting. Do you always try to get a semblance of that in those opening tracks?

I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I think that's right. I think there's a presentational aspect to it, you know, like... the curtain opens. That's kind of the way the show works. You've got The Watcher’s theme, and then the curtain opens, and the world that you're about to enter is described in a way, saying OK, here we are. As a viewer, it helps to know where you are and what you're doing, and I think the music absolutely does reflect that. One way of working is to use title sequences and use the opening of the film to set the stage and tell the story to a certain extent, and launch us on a ride that we will then experience for the rest of the episode or the rest of the film. So I appreciate you noticing that. 

I think there are twists and turns that happen. In episode two, you’ve got Guardians of the Galaxy, and then you’re in Wakanda, and then you’re in a heist movie, and then you’re doing this, that, and the other thing. Whereas episode four is much more of a statement about one aspect of Doctor Strange’s character, and episode three is a whodunnit. The analogy I’ve used is that it’s like driving a Ferrari on a windy road. You know where you’re going. 

I like that! You mentioned opening title sequences there... Do you have a favourite? 

I think a lot of composers look to North by Northwest. The great thing about that opening sequence is that in some ways, you really explore the whole movie. Alexandre Desplat’s opening sequence in Birth is another example, where you literally look at the life of an entire person as they're running. In the MCU I think Chris Beck did it in Ant-Man. It really depends on what real estate you're given as a composer. Like, how much room is there, musically for you to do your thing. When we have the space we can do more and when we don’t we have to play a supportive role and let the project speak without asserting ourselves.  

What If…’s first few episodes have been incredibly varied, from a story set in the ’40s to one set in space. Do you have a favourite, and why?

There's something in every episode that I really love. I like the music in episode three. To do that kind of musical modernism was very cool, and I appreciate that they gave me the sonic space to do that. But I also loved inverting Silvestri’s Captain America theme for the Captain Carter episode. I loved writing the heist music, and dissecting Ludwig Göransson’s score, and finding out what I could pull out of it. I loved exploring the world of Doctor Strange. That episode’s cues are longer. I also loved writing the bar music in episode two. It was kind of like the cantina stuff in Star Wars.

So I think every episode is like oh, okay, so we're doing this now. It's a really interesting show to work on as a composer, I have to say, and one of the reasons why it's interesting is because it's always different. It's never the same thing. And you can't do the same thing. You just can't. It won't work.

How often do you go back and re-listen to the scores which you’re taking inspiration from as you're doing it? 

The music editor Anele Onyekwere has them all stored in his head. So I’d just ask him, “what was that one again?” It's funny because all the actual physical scores were made available to me. But I found myself not using them and wanting to listen by ear. Because I felt like if I broke them down by ear, not only would I understand them better, but I could leave them too. So if I got the theme and didn't necessarily have the same harmonic background, that was right for the MCU. Like, I could re-harmonize something, and that would be right for the show. It wasn't about saying oh, this is my version of it. It was saying this is not that. Like, What If... is not Captain America. What If... is not Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s taking this and saying now, we’ve got to make it different. And so that philosophy has to really permeate the compositional process as well. Otherwise, you're not fulfilling the premise of the whole show. 

What conversations do you have with the directors and sound editors about how prevalent your music is in the mix? 

My time with my music is in my studio, and when I send it off, I have to let go. I could sit there on a job and say “oh no, it needs to be louder there.” But generally, at a certain point, I think you have to trust your filmmakers to do what they want to do with the music. We are in service to the vision of others. But I will definitely be helpful if I'm asked.

The way you play with and twist the Doctor Strange theme in episode 4 is especially impressive. It’s dark, it’s tragic, it’s sad, and it’s beautiful. What are some of your go-to’s when you’re experimenting and trying to nail a particular inflection?

I think what you have to do first is figure out what is iconic and what a fan is going to need. For Doctor Strange, that was just the harpsichord. It really isn't the theme or a theme. It's the sound of that instrument. A lot of the sound is carried by the piano. The harpsichord becomes almost like an accent rather than the mainstay of it. I think it's about figuring out what is essential. And then it's just like I said - how do you depart from it? Where do you leave it aside? How do you move on from that?

What instrumentation were you typically playing with and how drastically would it change from episode to episode?

I think that the symphony orchestra is the meat and potatoes of the show. And then everything else is added on. So you know, there's synthesizer work, there's sampling, there's choir stuff, there are keyboards, there's percussion, there are all kinds of stuff.

‘A Prince Goes Home’ is a beautiful track. You recently tweeted that you wrote that in Chadwick Boseman’s memory. Can you talk about what went into that track and what you were conveying, musically?

Chadwick meant the world to so many people and meant the world to our show. He was a King in life and in character, and so I just wanted to honour him. It’s that simple. So it was original music, kind of a falling theme. Musically, the appoggiatura is a sigh. It continually falls. So it's kind of like that sense of tears falling out. Then The Watcher theme comes on top of that. To me, that's our show. It's our little corner of the MCU where we want to say thank you, and goodbye.  

You’ve talked in the past about how you enjoy co-composing – I know you’ve done a lot of work with Raphael Saadiq. Is there any benefit to working on a score on your own vs. co-composing?

It's just different. In some ways, I did co-compose the score because I had to bring in different themes from different people, even though it amounts to a very small part of the score. It depends on what you're working on. Because Raphael is somebody who comes with a completely different musical background than I do, he brings a very different perspective. I work a lot with my wife who comes from a similar musical background, but even her background is different, so she brings a different perspective to things. So I like it. I never thought I would, but I actually really do because it also stimulates you. That's why this idea of embracing the community of music makers is something I'm all about.

Congratulations on your Emmy nominations for Lovecraft Country. What was your favourite memory when it comes to working on that show? Had you already started to think up ideas for season 2 before it was cancelled?

I had. I guess I wasn't surprised when it was cancelled because I hadn’t heard about season 2 for a long time. So it was kind of like, what's going on here? But Misha Green, who is the showrunner on Lovecraft Country, is a genius. And she is going on to other fabulous things, and that's great. So I suppose it's okay that it ended the way it did because at least that part of the story was done, you know? But disappointing. 

Lovecraft Country and What If…? have been like the last few years of my life, and they've been beautiful shows to work on. I've loved them both. And they have both given me the opportunity to shine as a composer in a way that I have not often gotten before. They both gave me the opportunity to use the orchestra - which is a tool that I adore and that I'm really good at - and to be able to unabashedly come out of the closet as an orchestral composer in the way that I am and have the budget and the support to do that. That's been amazing. 

With Lovecraft, there were so many incredible moments in that show. I think probably scoring episode nine, which is the episode that I was nominated for when I'm writing the opera for the victims of the Tulsa 1921 massacre. That one felt like a mission, and it was incredible. It was a great show to work on. 

It does feel like Marvel and others are giving more opportunities to women composers to shine, with Holt on Loki and Pinar Toprak on Captain Marvel. Do you feel the landscape changing, and what else would you like to see happen in this regard?

The very fact that we're talking about Marvel and multiple women composers is complete evidence that the landscape is changing. Action superhero films have been a really difficult genre for women to break into, and I think now that we're in the Marvel Universe, and we had Hildur Guðnadóttir in the DC universe, we'll see those break open even more. To the point where we don't have to even ask the question anymore, because we're doing good work, and nobody needs to panic about hiring a woman or other underrepresented groups to do genre films. 

I think we're starting to really move the dial on TV. I did a panel recently for the Alliance for Women film composers, and we were talking about women composers nominated for Emmys. And it’s like OK, there’s more than one of us. That’s massive progress. I want to see the top end of the feature world open up more because our numbers are still really small there. And even with Pinar, Hildur, and myself, three is not enough. We have to have enough so that we're not asking the question anymore.

Do you have a favourite memory from working on What If…? 

There are many. I had just started the show and I had just written my first iteration of the theme. I went away for a few days. I think it was maybe Labor Day a year ago or so, but I have a place up in the mountains and I was driving. I got a call - “Bryan Andrews [director] and A.C. Bradley [writer] want to talk to you right now. Can you talk?” And I’m thinking oh shit, that's it. It's over. They both got on the phone, and it's like “Laura, about the theme... we love it!” So that was one of my favourite moments.