Disney+ is returning to the Super Bowl with another spot that leans into the iconography of its franchises. Similar to its 2024 Big Game campaign, the streamer is taking a scaled-back approach to promoting the integration of Hulu and ESPN content into Disney+, portraying the blandness of reality without Marvel heroes, animated princesses or sports stars.

“The spots in the Super Bowl can be very loud,” said Samantha Rosenberg, executive VP of marketing for Disney+. “We found that a more quiet approach helps us not only cut through the loudness of the game, but lets people remember and focus on their own experience with [Disney] stories.”

Disney+ will air a 30-second spot in the first half of the Super Bowl, likely at the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second depending on the game, according to Rosenberg. The ad was again made with agency Ultrabland and will kick off a multi-month campaign meant to build awareness of Disney+’s growing library as Hulu content and then ESPN joined the service.

An extended version of the Big Game spot, called “What If,” cycles through familiar scenes—R2-D2 and C-3PO wandering the dunes of Tatooine, Elsa swirling frost around her, Captain America, Iron Man and crew standing amidst the rubble of a great battle and other recognizable characters from “The Lion King,” “The Bear,” “The Simpsons” and “Only Murders in the Building.”

In each scene, the characters slowly fade away to only depict a barren desert, a cyclone of ice or a ruined city street as Olaf actor Josh Gad mournfully wonders, “What if there was no galaxy far, far away?” or if “no one ever did get murdered in this building. Then that would really suck wouldn’t it?”

The mood of the spot turns around as the piano rendition of “La Vie en Rose” (a track featured in Pixar’s “Wall-E”) accelerates and Gad takes a livelier tone to say that these characters and stories really did happen.

“Best of all, a whole bunch of people did get murdered in this building, and aren’t we lucky for that,” Gad says as bodies drop across scenes pulled from “Only Murders in the Building.”

The spot ends with Disney+’s tagline that launched during its Olympics campaign: “The greatest stories live here.”

While Disney+’s 2024 Super Bowl campaign focused on connecting Disney and Hulu franchises in consumers’ minds, this year’s adds ESPN’s library, showcased in the spot through clips from “In the Arena: Serena Williams.” 

Over the next few months, new iterations of the ads will dive deeper into certain genres or audiences, such as spots highlighting mature content on Disney+ or shows with female-skewing audiences, according to Rosenberg. The campaign will also promote new series such as “Andor” and “Daredevil: Born Again” or the upcoming sixth season of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

While some streamers focus on trailers or content sizzles for their marketing, Rosenberg said Disney+ has found broader brand campaigns “tell the story of who we are, as opposed to what we have,” particularly as Disney+ has evolved to now include live sports, news and mature content.