Kevin Feige says the next MCU saga will become clear as phase four nears its end
Apparently, "there have been many clues already" as to the post-Endgame direction of the MCU
Aux News Kevin Feige
There’s still a lot of ground to cover in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and no clear overarching connection between all the many movies and shows that have already been released. Remember when it used to be as simple as “spot the Infinity Stones”? Those were the days!
According to Kevin Feige, Phase 4’s equivalent to the stones is out there, if you care to look. In an interview with Total Film, he teases, “I think there have been many clues already, that are at least apparent to me, of where this whole saga is going.”
The clues are apparent to the guy who is planting the clues. That’s a helpful hint. While it’s no surprise to see Feige playing things close to the vest, he does drop one slightly more revealing tidbit: “As we’re nearing the end of Phase 4, I think people will start to see where this next saga is going.”
The MCU’s Phase 4 has been entirely different from the previous three, and not just due to the lack of Infinity Stone-esque MacGuffin. For the first time, there’s no Avengers movie on the docket. There’s also the addition of the Disney+ television series to take into account, making this the most jam-packed phase ever.
There are some evident connections and crossovers between the Phase 4 shows and films; it’s just not clear what those connections reveal about the next big “saga.” Some puzzle pieces that feel important: Kang the Conqueror, who appeared in the first season of Loki and is set to appear in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania. Since Kang has been established as a multiversal villain, he also has likely connections to concepts introduced in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.
That seems like the most obvious direction for things to be heading. But remember, it took three phases to set up Endgame, so it could be a while before all these pieces fit together. As for the clues hidden in the rest of Phase 4, Feige says, “[We’ll] be a little more direct about that in the coming months, to set a plan, so audiences who want to see the bigger picture can see a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more of the roadmap.”
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There’s Kang as the obvious guess, but after Dr. Strange & TMOM mentioned incursions a couple of times, I strongly suspect Kang’s timeline/multiverse shenanigans are going to be interwoven with an MCU take on Secret Wars (and maybe Battleworld thereafter).
The incursions and Battleworld(or something like it) would be a great intro for X-Men and FF.
Yep, and ever since the Fox purchase I’ve been assuming that somewhere down the line they’ll do an MCU version of X v. A.
They’re also clearly setting up Young Avengers and something like the Thunderbolts.
Thunderbolts already got announced iirc
I think that the Wonder Man show and the Thunderbolts movie are tied together.
There was never an official announcement yet, unless I missed it somehow? It’s happening. The production got leaked by Deadline when they hired Schreier as director, but I imagine that Hurt passing after the project was started has delayed any “official” Marvel Studios announcements. Young Avengers vs. Thunderbolts or Dark Avengers seems to be in the cards though, as others have mentioned. They’ve introduced almost all of the characters involved, at least tangentially.
Yeah, we’ve seen versions of all of the “original” Young Avengers except Teddy at this point plus America so that feels like it’s coming. Though the twins are way younger than the rest of them at this point so hopefully they get aged up before a team up.
I think this is what they’re leading up to as well. Each Disney+ show has introduced a (potential) ‘Young Avengers’ member at this point, I think.
Yeah, definitely. Who all do we already have?
Young Avengers:* Billy/Tommy Maximoff* Elijah Bradley* Cassie Lang* America Chavez* Kamala Khan* Kate Bishop* Kid Loki, possiblyI think I’m forgetting one or two more, even.Possible Thunderbolts or Dark Avengers clearly being assembled by Val:* Yelena Belova (recruited but probably already out after the events of Hawkeye)* John Walker* Mac Gargan
* Baron Mordo* Ghost, maybe?
On the Young Avengers side, I’m guessing that some version of Hulkling shows up in Secret Invasion or The Marvels.
Or She-Hulk.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been figuring (hoping? lol I love Teddy) since he’s half Kree and half Skrull.
You can probably add Abomination to the Thunderbolts list.
Right! I knew I was forgetting something obvious. Definitely.
wonder if the eternals are gonna meet galactus wherever they got zapped off to.
I think the Eternals are going to go the planet of the “Let us never speak of this again”
and if that planet gets eaten by galactus we’ve got a win/win on our hands.
Except Kingo because dammit, Kumail Nanjiani signed that life long blood contract with Disney and they are gonna put his ass in everything!
i may not be remembering fully but didn’t kingo get left on earth because he didn’t participate in the big fight? if so this all checks out.
I wouldn’t say that those are causally related events, but rather that both are a result Kingo being more in love with his earth life than any of his comrades. Although in any case I don’t think he’s out as a superhero, he’s just known as his Bollywood persona.
Although just this past week the newest MCU series spoke of them.
The incursions would be much more interesting than Kang (who I found obnoxious when he appeared in Loki) anyway.
Secret Wars/Battleworld makes sense and could be an in for connecting the MCU to the Sony spider verse movies. That’s been my thinking
Indeed, that’s obviously where they are going. Not sure if they’ll go full Battleworld, but you don’t narratively introduce multiverses unless you plan on collapsing them into one universe in some way or another. The concept also allows Marvel Studios to narratively jump through less hoops as to why we haven’t seen recently acquired properties in the mainline MCU. They can all exist in some other multiverses and become part of the mainline MCU when they are all merged in some riff on Secret Wars.
In fact, possibly collapse it with the Illuminati universe (I forget the number). Although since I’d like to see more Krasinski as Reed, maybe not, but we know that universe already has X-Men, the remainder of the FF, and what the hell, better Inhumans, and it would be kind of interesting to put them on a collision course with the MCU, since they’d definitely have a grudge against “our” Avengers for what Wanda did.
When the ScarJo lawsuit over Black Widow hit there was something in the trades about the Russos being hesitant to sign back up with Disney for another movie if it went to streaming and it mentioned “Secret Wars”. So yah eventually Secret Wars featuring Multiverse versions of characters who have already been killed off, probably.
Ant-Man got moved ahead, Kang is slated as the villain. Ant-Man thinks he’s defeated the single Kang, cut to end credits we see an army of Kang variants are coming. Avengers love fighting armies. Cut to announcement of new Avengers film consisting of Sam as Cap, Jane as Thor, etc etc. fighting off the army of Kangs. Now everyone quit your complaining and be patient.
I would be pretty surprised if Portman were on board for being Thor for a whole Avengers cycle. Having to be that jacked all the time for years is a big ask. She’s also already an A-lister so it’s not like she needs the career boost.
Pfft, if memory serves, she wanted nothing to do with the Marvel world after Thor 2. Then they offered her Mjolnir (and probably a boatload of money), and she was in. That said, I could easily see her sticking around for a couple of turns.
You’d be pretty surprised how a dumptruck full of money can change your perspective. Women are already underpaid and A-Lister woman doesn’t equate to the amount of money you think it might. Portman, for instance, hasn’t been in anything film would pay her since Annihilation, and even then it couldn’t have been much more than $500K and with residuals on the back end pushing that plus a mil. She makes far more money on being a contracted make-up and fragrance rep, but you have to stay current to do that. Hence when Marvel says we’ll give you a few mil base, it’s pretty hard to say no.
But complaining and impatience is what being a fan on the internet is all about!
Is Natalie Portman really going to do a bunch of Avengers movies? It’s one thing to do a fun movie with Taika Waititi. It’s another to commit to several very-long shoots when you’re in your 40s and have kids and Oscars.
Men seem to be able to do it.
It’s not about able, it’s about willing. It’s not like Portman is getting a magical second career after disaster like RDJ, say.
Yeah she JUST might be able to scrape enough money for a nanny for a week or two.
I will laugh if Kang is the big overall villian for a few phases. He will always be the dork Doom had killed off quickly in Secret Wars.Doom should be the person they tease since FF will end the Phase and Doom can carry rando people’s attention and even some people who never read a comic have heard of Doctor Doom (even thought like me those people are old!).
Yeah he was a jobber for Doom but realistically an unlimited number of one of the smartest people in the multiverse is pretty scary.
Yeah but will that play to the casual fans of the movies that make the movies make 1 billion dollars? I think he won’t. He isn’t Loki and or Thanos. He at best is a 3rd villian. I could be wrong but I have no interest in Kang and I read comics on and off since 1979 and I can imagine others won’t care about him who know way less than I do.The Multiverse thing and a so so Dr. Strange already didn’t wow audiences.
“Casual” fans had no idea who Thanos was in 2012 either.
That’s actual a good point. Thanos wasn’t someone like Doom who people may have heard from cartoon’s more so than comics and he isn’t Luthor or Joker level as well.I still think Kang won’t be anything Marvel movie fans wish he will be. I think he will be a meh Villian that people have no interest in. We shall see but I think they are clearly on a down trend outside of Spider-man. Since Thor and GG are the end of those series.
As someone who *does* like Kang (and I’d object to the character assassination you have committed repeatedly against him here—j/k), I will say that even though what we got in Loki wasn’t the Klassic Kang that I loved as a comic collector growing up, I think that Jonathan Majors absolutely stole the show at series end. I’m absolutely looking forward to him reprising the role, whether it’s as He Who Remains (or Rama-Tut or Immortus or Scarlet Centurion…) or Kang proper. I think he’ll do a bang-up job and win over the general public the way that Brolin did with Thanos.
I’m more curious to see if he really is the big bad. I get the feeling like Loki he isn’t but some who leads to the big bad.Plus Victor Von Doom is my favorite villian ever and I hope he has someone randomly Kill Kang again! 😉
It still blows my mind that no only did we get connected Marvel movies that they led up to as crazy shit as doing a version of fucking Infinity Gauntlet and that THANOS became a household name. We live in crazy times
seeing normal people reference ‘thanos’ is definitely one of the wildest things.
Yeah, people know who he is even though he never flew his clearly labeled Thanos-Copter in the movies.
Also, “casual” fans had no idea who Loki was before “Thor” was released in 2011.
Forget knowing who Loki was. Casual fans didn’t know who THOR was before “Thor” was released in 2011.
Name recognition is not a thing Marvel concerns themselves with. Nor should it be. It’s actually fun to see a movie about someone you know nothing about.
Loki wasn’t Loki until he was Loki. Same with Thanos, really. The vast majority of people going to see the Avengers didn’t know who that guy was at the end of the movie. The amount of people who know these villains from the comics is fairly small. They can make it work by presenting him as a threat, though as you note there may already be multiverse fatigue.
Fair point, I’ve been reading so long and know Loki from all cartoons that I forget he isn’t Doom, Luthor or Joker level to casual people.Yeah the Multiverse fatigue maybe more of the worry. I actually liked Endgame but didn’t love it as much as most and figured that should have ended the timeline/multiverse thing. But they have gone full bore into it.
I’m not seeing the ‘multiverse fatigue’ thing at all, Dr. Strange 2 has made more money than the first one so it seems to me that people are more willing to pay to see the multiverse stuff than not.
I know it sounds weird to say about a movie that makes a bajillion dollars, but the week to week hold wasn’t as good as expected and the response has been more tepid than a lot of their major releases. I could be way off of course, but it doesn’t seem like they really capitalized off the momentum Spider-Man NWH gave them.
I was vaguely aware of Thanos’s storylines by the time he showed up at the end of The Avengers, but my primary exposure to him had been in the Marvel Superheroes fighting game.
Hardly any of the characters that have made billions of dollars were well known by the general public prior to 2008. Nobody in the general public knew who Thanos was, regular people had never heard of the Infinity Gauntlet. Sure, some of us bought it in the grocery store when it originally came out and have it on our walls now, but that’s not the vast majority of people.
Dr. Strange 2 has already made about $200 million more globally than the first one, so I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Nerd, you bought it in a grocery store! I went to a comic store each week to get it as I was in college! Wait, I’m the bigger nerd! Shit! :)Yeah but Strange 1 was when he wasn’t the center to the whole fucking Marvel universe. Right now he is in the Iron Man spot. 400 million in the states isn’t that much when Top Gunn beat it. World wide is stupid because Fast and Furious and Transformers and Aquaman made a Billion dollars because the Markets over seas love shitty fucking movies (I did enjoy Aquaman).I think after GG 3 we will see Marvel in general fall quite a bit. I could be wrong but I think the worm has turned on it.
The MCU is hardly a universal constant, but people have been been sure its demise is just around the corner since The Avengers. Certainly there were plenty of people predicting the same thing as you for after Endgame as well, but then both Spider-Man movies made well over a billion dollars. Other MCU movies have been dominating less than they were pre-pandemic, but still topping charts just as easily. Plus there’s those 130 million D+ subscribers, most of whom are probably watching the TV shows.I think what you’re predicting is that the MCU is no longer as sufficient box office filler as it once was. Top Gun and Jurassic World are proving that people still want variety in their blockbuster entertainment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a dip in popularity for the MCU.
I think they strangle hold they had on entertainment is slowly falling apart. Spider-man always was bigger than all of Marvel till the MCU changed that and I think the two Chris’s and Downey being gone will show in a few years the movies will do well but they won’t be the be all end all of the popcorn movies. Which is a very good thing as you don’t want one company rulling the world.
I was 10 and lived in the sticks, the closest comic store was 20+ miles away ;)I think Marvel is gonna keep making good money, personally.
when I was ten we had to walk to the local store and the comics would be way to close to the XXX mags! lol! I’m not saying they won’t have 1 of the biggest movies each year but I think we will see them dropping off the top 10 charts soon. Like 2 of the 3 movies they make will be top 10 each year for a while but the 3rd movie in the states will be down the list. Again we will see and that maybe a couple years away. I’m really curious about how Black Panther does because that will be a hard test without Chad.
i agree and disagree.i just don’t ever see the box office returning to pre-pandemic levels. something like captain marvel or black panther doing over a billion on their first movies just won’t happen again.so i agree overall the mcu movies will make less than before, i think they’ll still be top of the charts. now, those charts will pale in comparison to previous years’ charts, but they’ll still be on top. now, most of that has to do with the fact that disney will just strong-arm the movies into every available screening, but that’s a different discussion/problem.
MCU movies will always make bank the same way the SW movies do: because of the millions of fans worldwide that’ll always pony up to watch whatever content they put out whether good or bad. Their problem will be trying to win over the casuals/non nerds, and new fans. The ratings for Captain Marvel are terrible. And while Moon Knights ratings are decent, it was still well below Loki, so as far as the TV shows, fatigue is setting in. And considering how well Top Gun is doing, it seems that people’s appetite for non-comics movies are growing again.
top gun is a weird outlier like american sniper, the greatest showman or passion of the christ. there’s no replicating what they’ve done there and no way to predict when something like that will happen again. obviously, to your point, it is a huge hit and that 120 day theatrical window is looking smarter and smarter as the numbers keep going up.and yes – the new fans thing has been a growing problem for a while, and the strange mid-way attempts to draw in new people don’t seem to move the needle. that being said, i’ve seen the ‘samba tv’ (whatever that is) information that says ms marvel has low ratings, but i’m hesitant to accept that data. according to samba themselves, their data is reached this way: “We gather opt-in viewership data from millions of smart TVs that have our content ID technology embedded in them. These TVs are sold under 24 different brands. Our content identification technology analyzes what’s on a TV in real-time. We measure content that crosses that TV screen regardless of the device used to play it, whether it be an external streaming device, gaming system, or computer. Because our proprietary technology is embedded in the TV itself and identifies what’s seen on the screen, our data leverages household-level TV viewership, but does not identify co-viewing (i.e. the number of people watching within each household).”to me, that’s a long walk to actual viewership numbers and i don’t buy them as accurate in any way. now, i am willing to accept that fewer people are probably watching ms marvel because of how niche that character is, but i’m not buying their 50% less claim.
Except that its not an outlier when you look at also how well Jurassic Park is doing and while we’re on Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible too. So again, sequels to long running action movies are back in vogue again with casuals and non-nerds. So the more they pump out more nostalgia porn sequels to rope in the masses, the more Disney will struggle with newer content. I’m speaking anecdotally here, but I’m not watching or care for Captain Marvel, and so are a lot of people I personally know, and you can go on to Reddit and other forums and get the same response, so I believe and am not surprised by Samba’s numbers. Outside of the fanbase, you just don’t see the buzz and hype for MCU stuff like how you used to. The fact that The Boys is getting more buzz and hype than Captain Marvel and Moon Knight even really says at lot.
The “casual fans” that make these movies pull a billion at the box office are 99% of the audience. The name “Thanos” meant no more to them than “Kang” or whoever other big bad might. The Multiverse thing and a so so Dr. Strange already didn’t wow audiences.What now? Dr. Strange is closing on hitting a billion WITHOUT China, Russia, and most of the Mid-East. And obviously the Spider-Man multiverse stuff also did ridiculously well.
Unless it has been retconned, Kang is also Reed Richards, great, great, …, great, great nephew, although different Kangs might have arisen in different universes.
Again, that maybe hard for people to follow if it’s say explained in a streaming show and not detailed in a movie.
I think it’s currently uncertain whether Kang is a descendant of Richards, Doom, or neither.
If it’s Richards, it’s Nathaniel Richards from whom he’s descended.
I remember when the Disney takeover of Fox Studios was approved, but not finalized that the MCU creative team could start pitching ideas with a character in the background who’s placeholder name they could use as “Dr. Mood”.
As much as I’m not 100% high on Marvel movies right now. My god am I’m begging them to give me a great Dr. Doom on the big screen and a Silver Surfer as well!
Whenever they introduce Doom, they need to have a running gag in the movie that his name is “Victor von Doom.” Like, the heroes are just like, “Sure, this guy is really dangerous… but his name is actually Victor von Doom??”
They should do that for sure.
I think Secret Wars/Battleworld is it but servers as more of the “Civil War” stage of this phase and not the “Endgame” stage. Doom gets introduced in that context, gets handled as the Big Bad in the coming F4 standalone movie, and F4 ends on a post-cred scene of a mysterious, silvery figure who appears to “surf” his way down to Earth, heralding the coming of the one he serves
I’m always a little puzzled by people who are unhappy that they can’t tell what this phase is “leading up” to. The fact that several of the movies lately are closing off more branches than they’re opening feels more like a relief than a burden, to me at least. The fact that we have “The Multiverse” as a connecting mechanism seems sufficient. And even the non-multiverse stories tend to have thematically similar ideas of living up to another “version” of yourself, with the young legacy heroes and passing-the-mantle stories. And Kang seems like a fine villain to build up to. He’s related to the established themes, and I don’t miss the overt-but-meaningless early Thanos teases.
well, to me it’s been simultaneously way more content released way more frequently and that content hasn’t been leading anywhere as much as the previous phases.personally it’s felt like a lot of introductions and not a lot of follow-through.like, even as far back as the original avengers they were teasing thanos as a straightforward eventual big bad, and that was only 5 movies in. there have definitely been times where i’ve been watching recent mcu content and feel a lot of ‘what am i supposed to be caring about overall?’ it’s not fully a bad thing and hasn’t hindered it too much (and probably is necessary all said), but my experience in the last few years has felt a little like wheel-spinning. i think if there had been less mcu stuff overall it wouldn’t bother me, but it’s just felt like a ton of stuff that’s come out that hasn’t really pushed anything much further, especially compared to previous phases.it’s not that i’m ‘unhappy’ i’m just getting a little impatient.
I did this thing where I have enjoyed shang-chi, Hawkeye, etc for the stories they told and not the sequels or events they were setting up
interesting. one of the things i didn’t like about hawkeye was because it was so beholden to setting up other events or referencing previous stuff. and shang chi was as much a direct sequel to iron man 3 as it was it’s own thing.it’s also not an either/or. i’m still enjoying myself moment-to-moment, but now that there are so many pieces in the air it would be nice to start showing me what it’s building towards. between the kang stuff in loki, the eternals being whisked away by some higher power (and that dead god baby in the sea), nick fury doing god-knows-what, (spoilers for dr strange 2) dr strange now off on some multiverse adventure with charlize theron, the other universe-ending stuff going on in what if…it’s just getting a little too convoluted. it’s not that it’s confusing, i can only take so many of these threats seriously before i don’t really care about any of them.
“and shang chi was as much a direct sequel to iron man 3 as it was it’s own thing”Disagree on that. It took the opportunity to use the character and introduce the ‘real’ Ten Rings organization, but it is mostly Shang Chi’s story.
Yah… It’s a shangchi story, not a sequel to IM3.
i only put that line in to see if you guys would fixate on it and ignore everything else i said. and you did!
…. So, you’re not actually interested in a discussion or other perspectives, you’re just talking to hear yourself. Got it.
haha what? i’m just killing time at work man.
i mostly just put that in to be pithy and see if it would get fixated on.
Yah, there are a lot of balls in the air but it’s unclear how connected they are or where it’s going..I suspect Kang and multiversal shit will be the next big teamup movie. It doesn’t matter that Kang is a good in the comics. 3/4 of the MCU is b or c list characters now elevated. And Jonathan price can probably give the role, as he already has on LOKI, the chops to make Kang compelling.
“it’s just getting a little too convoluted. it’s not that it’s confusing, i can only take so many of these threats seriously before i don’t really care about any of them”This is it exactly.They’re spreading themselves extremely thin, by introducing a lot of random stuff. It’s not hard to keep track of, but is very hard to be invested in all of it, or even much of it, at this point.
The best MCU stories have always been the ones that have zero to do with setting up further chapters.
What were the stories they told in those properties exactly? That is my issue with the post Endgame properties, they can’t commit to any one aspect, so they are finding themselves in a messy middle, not able to tell individual stories or a greater story, with any verve.
The problem is when there are MCU installments that aren’t as fun as what you’re citing. My wife and I still haven’t finished Eternals, for instance, and it’d be a lot easier to get through if I knew it was “meaningful.”
(I don’t think Eternals is bad in the ways that Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 are bad, but lordy, is it boring.)
By the second half of the first era of the MCU, even lesser movies were obviously leading somewhere, which helped.
To nitpick, The Avengers was the 6th MCU movie, not the 5th. Thanos’s appearance was the first real hint about where phases 1-3 were eventually headed (even though some people guessed prior to that that the Tesseract was actually the Space Stone). Not only that, but that hint showed up 4 years into the MCU; right now we’re only 2 years into Phase 4, even though there have been 5 movies so far. And of course, at the time, it was by no means certain that they were definitely going to do (an adaptation of) the infinity stones storyline, so it’s a little disingenuous to say “well by 2012 they had already teased what would happen in 2018/2019″ when in 2012 nobody knew for sure what was down the line. For all we know, one of the things we’ve seen in Phase 4 is the same kind of tease about what will show up eventually, but it will take several more years to develop.
I think they said that they weren’t going to do any huge Infinity Saga arcs anymore. Instead we seem to have setup for smaller mini arcs with specific characters.
I’m assuming it’s going to be like individual comics now. With street level characters dealing with their street level big bads, cosmic characters dealing with cosmic threats, magic with magic, and world-spanning characters dealing with world-spanning threats. With some crossover for characters like Strange and Spider-Man who fit multiple roles. I mean, I’d expect Ant-Man to probably run into Loki and a version Kang while playing around with the Quantum Realm. Or Spider-Man, Daredevil, and maybe Shang-Chi to run into each other when dealing with conflict between the Hand and the Ten Rings or something.
Considering at the end of the day, a lot of what were “infinity stone” clues in the original phases were mostly retconned later to be that, I figure they will mostly reverse engineer some shit once they figure out where they want to go. Its very comic book writing in that way.
To be bang obvious, I’d like to know where it’s going as the multiverse stuff has lacked a bit of bite so far, for a casual person who broadly enjoys all the Marvel stuff.
Each movie/show feels a bit more inessential than the last. That could just be superhero fatigue but I think if I understood the through-line and possibilities, it might give me a reason to keep up with it all.
It’s especially silly considering these “What’s the bigger picture” complaints always sound like they’re coming from the same place as “Why is this MCU storyline being shoehorned into this independent movie?”Either you want Thor to go hailing off from the movie to go on a quest to help tie together a narrative arc, or you don’t.
The thing is that right now it feels like the worst of both worlds: individual stories are getting sucked up into the Grand MCU Arc… but the Grand MCU Arc is currently a bit of a mess. The episodic bits are still suffering from the serialization, but the serial story being told isn’t particularly good.“What’s the bigger picture” and “why is this MCU storyline being shoehorned into this independent movie” are two different reactions to the same core problem: interesting stories are being derailed at the service of a messier, less-coherent one. It’s the X-Files mytharc problem. Either get the main story on track or give us some monsters of the week.
I just don’t think that’s very true, and is a matter of historical revisionism and skewed perception. In truth, even though we saw Thanos in the Avengers stinger, the Infinity saga didn’t start to coalesce until Guardians of the Galaxy at best. That was the tenth MCU movie. Aside from most of Phase 1, which were all stitched together by post credit scenes, all of those movies were swimming in each others’ mythos without any real plan for half a decade. It all looks a lot more tightly knit in retrospect, but it certainly wasn’t back then. I can even remember speculation after the Thanos reveal whether they were really going to do an Infinity saga, as it wasn’t announced until years later.
The only real difference now is that we have an expectation for Marvel to keep that level of suspense it had from 2014 up until Endgame, but they don’t actually have to do that. I actually think that they’re not so interested in one Big Bad, and that they’re stacking consecutive Bigs Bad (I’d bet on three, but it might only be two) in order to avoid a drop-off of the same magnitude as IW/E. And that might look scattered and messy right now as it happens, but will probably look a lot more coherent in the future.
look you expressed curiosity as to why certain fans are feeling a certain way and i think we explained it the best we can. it sounds like you even agree to an extent.it IS messy and scattered right now. whether it looks better in the future doesn’t change anything at the moment.edit: it turns out you are not the OP and did not in fact express said curiosity. the head office apologizes for this mistake.
I’m extremely skeptical that this will ever look coherent.The big difference between this period and the one you describe is the number of characters and plot threads involved. It’s drastically higher now on both counts, we even have multiple different “issues with the multiverse” threads which seem somewhat to conflict. And as someone else noted, and I agree, it’s not hard to understand nor confusing, it’s just… antithetical to actually caring, certainly about all of it. It feels like quite a few of these projects have been kind of left-overs, and if they can pull that together, great, but I’m just really not believing it. I also just don’t think you’ll have the same impact as Thanos from 2-3 other villains, especially if any of them are anything less than very compelling.
I can’t and won’t try to dissuade you from feeling the way you do about the way this storytelling is being done. For my part, it’s some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen, and I love pretty much every second of it. But I recognize that’s becuase it happens to align perfectly with my tastes, and it won’t necessarily do so for everyone.But I will note that I and everyone else was very skeptical that Infinity War could be pulled off. It was never a slam dunk, even through the actual filming. It really was a marvel that they managed to pull it off as well as they did.
And as to having the same impact as Thanos, one fairly consistent complaint about Hollywood and their treatment of blockbuster films is that they keep trying to do the same thing to achieve the same ends instead of trying new things. This criticism is even fairly leveled against the MCU in some regards. But objectively speaking, the whole Infinity Saga was an enormous gamble far away from anything Hollywood had tried in decades, and yet after Endgame, Feige basically trashed the whole model and started a dual TV/Movie enterprise to tell these stories instead. Whether you think that’s a good idea or not, whether you think it’s a cash grab or not, it’s clear that he’s not interested in repeating the same formula for success that the first ten years had, and that he doesn’t want another Thanos level impact.
Whether you think that’s a good idea or not, whether you think it’s a cash grab or not, it’s clear that he’s not interested in repeating the same formula for success that the first ten years had, and that he doesn’t want another Thanos level impact.I have no idea how you’ve come to that conclusion. For one, the Infinity Saga wasn’t planned from the start, and it took 3 phases and 10 years to come to fruition. Secondly, OF FUCKING COURSE Feige and Marvel Studios want to build towards another couple box office breaking movies. The idea that they don’t is ludicrous. I don’t get this bizarre impatience. It took a decade to get to the Infinity Saga. There was also this whole global pandemic thingy that delayed and blew the timing of Phase 4 projects all to hell. There is also Marvel Studios getting some pretty huge comic properties back, and surely wanting to introduce them into any future plans.I mean, Feige is literally saying that it is all building to something and it will become clear fairly soon. Going as far to say that the clues are already there. The intent is obviously to eventually to try and makes gobs and gobs of money on some huge event movies.And, really, it is fairly obvious where they are going. You don’t introduce the multiverse unless you’re going collapse the multiverse into one universe like the 2015 Secret Wars comics. The concept has the added bonus of being able to take the newly acquired properties and have their stories be in a different multiverse, then collapse them all together in the culmination of the event.
This post is very adversarial to mine considering it doesn’t substantively challenge anything I said. We’re in lockstep agreement about people just being unnecessarily impatient for clues and big narrative arcs. I’ve read your theories in this thread, and they seem wholly possible and even quite likely (though I lack any foundational comic knowledge to verify). But a “couple box office breaking movies” and “Thanos level impact” are not congruent statements, at least not the way I was using the latter. I merely meant that the next big event Feige is planning for would not be [20 movies -> Big Boss Battle]. He’s structuring the whole thing differently. There might be a big boss battle with Kang, but if so it will only be a prelude to the sorts of things you’re describing, and that will be a fundamentally different formula than the Infinity Saga was.
I just don’t think that’s very true, and is a matter of historical
revisionism and skewed perception. In truth, even though we saw Thanos
in the Avengers stinger, the Infinity saga didn’t start to coalesce until Guardians of the Galaxy at best. That was the tenth MCU movie.
I don’t recall saying anything about Phases 1 through 3. I’m talking about the problems with current MCU storytelling, not the problems of years past.And make no mistake, I’m not under some delusion that Phases 1-3 were in any way ideal. Phase 1 was almost entirely origin stories and Phase 2 had some of the worst movies of the franchise right alongside some of the best. Phase 3 was where you really needed to start keeping up with the entire franchise rather than just individual series within it for things to make sense, but it rewarded that with a story that was generally interesting and moved along at a decent clip, even before Thanos arrived.The current multiverse arc is mostly just… happening, but none of it is terribly compelling. It requires the same amount of attention as Phase 3, but isn’t giving us as interesting a story in return. It doesn’t have the (super)human drama of the Avengers falling apart and fighting with each other, nor does it have a compelling central antagonist to focus on. It’s essentially just a giant natural disaster, which… eh.
I mean, that’s kind of the issue though – “Pick a lane”.Either they’re doing a bunch of stuff that doesn’t have some huge narrative arc tying it together, and is just set in the same universe, or they are making it all part of some huge narrative arc.Right now, what it looks like is they don’t have a huge narrative arc, but they keep saying they do, and introducing random stuff, which doesn’t seem to tie together beyond loose and conflicting “multiverse” theme-ing, and even that’s only arguable.Either not having an arc or having an arc is fine, but it’d be good if they could decide which one.
To be wholly fair, that’s kind of a rod that the MCU has made for its own back at this point. They’re the ones who built a big interconnected shared universe where all the characters keep showing up in everyone else’s stories and all the stories had cute little mid-credits teasers hinting about The Big Thing That Was Coming Up, You’re Gonna Love It. And then, they basically blew up their universe and killed all their main characters off while, as it turns out, clearly not having any real plan for what to do next. For better or worse, the people behind the MCU have gradually created the expectation that everything is a piece in a puzzle which inevitably builds to an amazing climax. So when the feeling starts to sink in that it actually doesn’t seem to be building towards anything at all beyond maybe “Hey! Get Disney+, there’s a whole lot of stuff on there you’re gonna need to see in order to understand the next movie, also maybe Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is gonna show up during the credits,” then people are gonna start feeling a bit gypped and like they’re just being dicked around. Turns out, you don’t get to keep winging it forever while pretending that it’s all part of the masterplan before someone figures it out and starts calling you on it.The MCU are kind of victims of their own success at this point. They’ve built their brand on everything being connected together and building to something big, except it’s by now abundantly clear that they’ve got no real idea where to go next in terms of the big picture and are just throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. It seems less that people want a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and filled with zany magic robots, and more that they just want the MCU to either shit or get off the pot; either figure out once and for all where they’re going next and actually start going there, or stop pretending that everything’s building to something and desperately needs to be linked together when it clearly isn’t / doesn’t at the moment and just go standalone for a while.
Moreover, we didn’t get a hint at what the overarching story was until the very end of Phase I and the post-credit stinger for the first Avengers film with Thanos. Before the first Avengers film, there was no overarching story, other than us knowing that they were building to a team up.It makes sense that we don’t have a grasp of the big picture during the first phase of the new story.
My only problem is that it feels like writers are using the multiverse as a crutch for actually generating new ideas. I mean I get it to an extent because if they’re adapting comics there’s a ton of multiverse-related comics out there in the 60+ years Marvel’s been around, but it feels like all the movies recently have just been like “need a character/plot motivation? Multiverse! Need a new character? Multiverse! Villain? Multiverse!” Why bother with new stuff when we can do the same characters with tweaks? I’m just so tired of the multiverse lately. It’s why my favorite MCU stuff recently has been the smaller scale stuff like Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel.
The fact that we have “The Multiverse” as a connecting mechanism seems sufficient. And even the non-multiverse stories tend to have thematically similar ideas of living up to another “version” of yourself, with the young legacy heroes and passing-the-mantle stories.Except that, this is not good because: a nothing matters. Not death. Not victory. Not defeat. Anything can be undone. Thanos has been reduced to a transient intergalactic thug whose vision was limited by his non-multiversal thinking. As Spiderman showed is that all anyone really smart can do, is screw around with the mulitverse to get the outcome you want, which leads to b: its a way to sneak in the comic book death as far as being able to kill off and resurrect a character without any issue.
I wasn’t trying to go to bat for the Multiverse concept itself, just that it is a thing that is referenced in multiple entries of this phase.But I think Spiderman NWH isn’t a particularly good example for your argument… The two other Peter Parkers are very different people from Our Peter, so they are not fundamentally interchangeable. A death occurs in the film and it feels very significant because while there may be others out there, THIS one died and it matters.Loki and What If muddle this a bit by playing with the notion that a single different choice creates a nearly-identical doppelganger universe. But they both still at least attempt to reinforce the theme that different experiences create a substantially distinct life. Multiverse of Madness also plays up the non-interchangeable nature of the characters, though it’s debatable whether that entirely lands.
But I think Spiderman NWH isn’t a particularly good example for your argument… The two other Peter Parkers are very different people from Our Peter, so they are not fundamentally interchangeable. A death occurs in the film and it feels very significant because while there may be others out there, THIS one died and it matters.The thing is, which is was demonstrated in What If with Black Widow, is that there is, somewhere, a Peter Parker that can be interchangeable. Its too soon to see how this is going to play out and how this leads, but my point is the potential of undoing a death by doing a Rick and Morty style dimension hopping until the right one is found is always there, and its a cheap cop out.
Yeah, I didn’t love What If’s approach at all. The idea that the multiverse comprises a countable number of discrete worlds is a bit more manageable and a little less nihilism-inducing than the infinite barely-distinct worlds created by every choice. Loki was a bit weird because it played with both ideas at once. Wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the Phase-ending event ends up whittling down the number of universes significantly
I pretty much guarantee that’s what’s going to happen. They’re setting up a multiversal collapse/fusion in the vein of the 2015 Secret Wars comics.
also don’t forget they’re introducing that new spider-man animated series that will ostensibly be set in the the mcu-prime-universe (it can’t actually be 616 right?) but will be a slight variant and set a few years earlier.
I think the going idea was that some version of Kang was going to be dealt with in Ant-Man and Loki season 2.
Feige is kinda amazing at his job and one reason for that is that he can spin what is clearly a bunch of different properties shotgunning a bunch of shit out into the world and seeing what people like as “a plan” Its pretty clear post End Game they did not have a real coherent idea for what to do next and decided to just go in a bunch of different directions to see what hit and what missed. My bet is they lean into the Multiverse stuff and Kang, because that seems to be the stuff most people seem to be liking. I suspect we see the Eternals/celestical stuff mostly dropped as well as any more “grounded” stuff like we saw with Black Widow or Falcon and Winter Soldier.
Heck, if you look back on those first phases, they didn’t have a coherent plan pre-Endgame; from what I know it seems like they had some ideas, but there are elements added to movies that were meant to pay off later but got shelved. I think you’re right that they stuck the landing there by staying nimble and course-correcting throughout. With the pandemic shaking up their release strategy, I’m sure the plan seems less obvious, or less gracefully deployed.That said, I miss when the appeal/novelty of these movies was seeing nigh-unfilmable characters introduced to us and then introduced to one another.
I think at least some of that had to do with Feige having to work with Perlmutter and the rest of the former Marvel braintrust that had input like “no one wants to see a female superhero.”
Feige has said as much in interviews that basically after the first Iron Man took off they took a look at what other characters they had, figured out they were mostly traditional Avengers and started laying the groundwork from there.
I’m not a huge fan, but boy – certainly looks like a more coherent plan than what the Star Wars division is capable of.
Hey man “somehow Palpatine returned”
I laugh every time I think about how that plot point was revealed not in any movie, but in Fortnite.
Yeah, in a deep sea of dumb decisions made by the Star Wars team over the various eras, that has to be by far the single dumbest.
I could see them ignoring most of the Eternals moving forward too. My guess is they are leading towards a ‘Young Avengers’ team since they have used the Disney+ shows to introduce many future members of that team: Hawkeye, Lady Loki, America Chavez, Patriot, Speed and Wiccan. (And the new Vision and also with Scarlet Witch thrown in.) And somehow they might introduce another Kang variant: Iron Lad.Plus in the upcoming Ant Man they are going to feature Scott’s daughter who becomes Stature (and/or Stinger).
And they’ve cast the great Kathryn Newton as Cassie which would lead me to believe they have proper plans for her. Similar to how Florence Pugh was never going to be just a cameo in Hawkeye as some suggested.
“decided to just go in a bunch of different directions to see what hit and what missed”If that’s what they do and they just abandon the characters and plot threads which didn’t work out, that’d be good I think.I do feel that there’s been a bit of a lack of real charisma with a lot of the characters they’ve introduced (villains and heroes) though, which worries me slightly. They have a lot of characters in the “mildly likeable” zone and they’re either going to have to elevate some of those, or bring in some stronger ones.
This phase has screamed of a lot of post-Endgame accounting. Like Feige was clearing out the remaining things he had on post-it notes stuck on his whiteboard. Things like “We promised Scarlet a movie, guess we can just make it a prequel,” “The Inhumans really crapped out on us…maybe the Eternals? They’re pretty much the same thing,” and “Asian superhero?” followed by a list of names Feige scratched out because they were all parts of the X-Men or Spider-Man licenses, before circling “Shang Chi.”
I like to believe that Simu Liu willed Shang-Chi into existence simply by tweeting at Feige.
I see it less as Endgame accounting and more as ‘setting up for next generation of heroes.
Like the Eternal, Phastos, could actually be used to explain artifacts like The Ten Rings and Ms. Marvel’s bracers. Particularly if he was prompted to make them by He Who Remains/Kang/Iron Lad/that time traveling guy with so many variant personas.
This whole phase seems to involve greater cosmic concepts and entities. Moon Knight introduced the mechanics behind a new pantheon who actually live up to their godly titles. Thor 4 continues with pantheon shenanigans and space travel. I think Black Panther 2 might continue with that. Shang Chi hinted at the Ten Rings being another cosmic issue, with Ms. Marvel possibly tying into that. Wandavision and Strange did much the same with the multiverse, magic, and outright evil supernatural things.
At the same time, Spider-Man got reset to street level hero when he was on the verge of being Iron Man 2.0 rather than being his own hero (I kinda wish he kept his AI but it wouldn’t be Marvel without resetting Peter Parker back to basic cloth suits after he spent time with some good stuff).
The original Avenger crew is mostly replaced thanks to Cap/Falcon, Bucky, War Machine, Kate Bishop, Yelena and Valkyrie. With potential backup from Shang-Chi, Strange, Spider-Man (maybe?), Ms. Marvel, the Black Knight, the Ten Rings, War Machine, She-Hulk and Hulk.
We also have a potential for the Thunderbolts since a good chunk of those characters have shown up over the years.
Introducing a new generation heroes is helpful, but the act itself has a whiff of accounting to it, given that so many of the new heroes being introduced are explicitly legacy heroes. By the end of this phase, every original Avenger aside from Iron Man will have a more or less same-named replacement (and I wonder if anyone will actually call Jennifer Walters She-Hulk, or if that’s just the name of the series). All of this is important for Marvel’s larger concerns for this phase, which is to avoid the limitation that superhero franchises tend to have that they can only continue for so long before you have to reboot them because the actors age out or get too expensive. If they can manage successful generational baton passing, they can make the MCU a perpetual universe, like the comics, just live action.This is an important business goal for Marvel and Disney, but they haven’t successfully made it a narrative goal. As someone else said, this is a lot like Phase 1 with character intros and origins, except that Phase 1 was building up to The Avengers. Maybe what this phase is supposed to be building to would be more clear if Sony hadn’t forced No Way Home to release before Multiverse of Madness, but right now a lot of the new material feels like expansion for expansion’s sake of a world that was already large enough to be unwieldy.
Iron Man has Iron Heart and whatever the results of the War Machine D+ show are incoming to replace him. Part of the problem is that the MCU takes a long time to release story arcs so actors are naturally gonna wind up needing to be replaced after multiple films. Its pretty clear that they’re setting up a second generation of Avengers since they appear to want a few films/a whole arc before recasting the originals.
They’ve already been able to justify recasting now with the Multiverse. Right now the multiverse also lets them have their cake and eat it since
What If? already confirmed it is possible for multiverse characters to
leave their place of origin permanently in order to refill hero rosters.
Prior to MoM’s release, there was rumor of Tom Cruise being tapped to play ‘The Superior Iron Man’ as part of the Illuminati before he was even confirmed to have been contacted (likely due to the leaked shots of the Illuminati’s ‘Ultron-like’ guards. That didn’t happen for MoM but recently there have been ‘announcements’ of multiple actors getting tapped for future Marvel projects, including Cruise, Eiza Gonzales, and Jason Statham. In general, it seems like the MCU is going all in while providing the setup for a complete canonical reboot (if needed), since that kinda stuff happened in the comics too.
It feels very much to me like we’re going to see the stuff the Countess is working on first — probably as the Thunderbolts, since it’s hard to use that brand name now without some smart alec spoiling what the original comic was about anyway, although Deadline did a great job of not actually knowing what the series was about, amusingly.
Have the Thunderbolts be taken down by what’s going to be the next generation of Avengers — both the Young Avengers characters they’ve been introducing and the legacy Avengers and second stringers — and then give those folks a proper Avengers movie a little bit after that where Kang is pulling the strings but isn’t the overt villain.
Then we have time to worry about Celestials, the Fantastic Four, etc., who can be the big dramatic cosmic stuff to wrap it all up.
Honestly, if we don’t get Galactus hovering over Manhattan, preparing to eat the planet, with all the MCU heroes flying into the sky to attack him, I’ll kind of wonder why Fiege bothered with all of this. 😉
I’m thinking things like the Ten Rings were made for threats like Galactus making their way to earth.
Uh, what? As for “grounded” stuff they just announced they’re doing Daredevil, with Echo coming before that and Kingpin most definetely returning, likely with Kate being involved. And the next Captain America movie is slated to either cap off Phase 4 or open Phase 5. Did you honestly think they were going to “drop” Captain America?And this is clearly wrong: Its pretty clear post End Game they did not have a real coherent idea for what to do next and decided to just go in a bunch of different directions to see what hit and what missed.The idea was to introduce a bunch of new characters, just like phase 2 and 3, while setting up the overarching multiverse theme, which main properties like Spider-Man, Dr. Strange and the upcoming Ant-Man movie were already written to do. Even having a connecting thread that early on is a lot more cohesive than earlier phases, which people weirdly forget. Even huge team up movies like Civil War had nothing to do with Infinity Stones, but people seem to have this rose-colored view that the earlier phase movies were all directly leading to Endgame, when they weren’t.It’s also obvious that where the next phases are heading is to a Secret Wars style multiverse collapse/merging.
I said lean into the multiverse stuff. Not only do that. I’m sure they have more “grounded” shows and movies planned to. No I didn’t think they would drop Captain America, I just suspect the multiverse is the direction they want to head the big plans
I was hoping they were heading toward a fleshed-out House of M, after WandaVision—it did not seem like an unreasonable direction, and I always thought that storyline was pretty fertile and cool.But that went into the garbage can with Doctor Strange. I think? In any case, I gather you’re probably right about leaning into the multiverse/Kang.
no clear overarching connection between all the many movies and shows that have already been released.Other than the constant rotation of characters and references to previous plot points that necessitate at least passing familiarity with all the many movies and shows that have already been released, sure.
Phases 1 thru 3 were the Infinity Saga. It’s very obvious that Phases 4 thru 6 will be Secret Wars. Phase 4 is introducing the multiverse and incursions. Phase 5 will be Kang and/or Doom wreaking havoc on all the different universes. Phase 6 will be individual films set in Battleworld culminating with The New Avengers.Then all the multiversal shenanigans will lead to the awakening of Galactus for the next saga.
“Our plan is to make a lot of money. Next question.”
It’s incursions, setting up for Secret Wars. Which, hey, that’s fine by me. Easiest way to thread the F4 and X-Men into things, plus it was a hell of a ride.
Yea thinking the same. Easily lets them bring in F4 and Xmen in the rearranged universe without having to explain their absence and seeming lack of existence during Civil War and battling Thanos. Doom gets introduced during Secret Wars, setting up the standalone F4 where they take care of him before teasing Galactus
The next saga will be all about Feige taking off his hat. And admitting that baseball hats don’t work with suit jackets. It’s gonna be epic.
It would be really good if people more widely understood that.
Its kids. Avenger babies. Duh
They’re building both the Dark Avengers and Young Avengers right in plain sight, so… that? Along with maybe the Marvel Knights, since that got hinted at in the Eternals post-credit?
It’s going to be Thunderbolts, not Dark Avengers. They already announced the director and writer for it and have it scheduled to film next year.Midnight Suns (assume they’ll keep it gender neutral like the upcoming video game) is also being set up as well. Moon Knight, Blade, and Werewolf by Night are all going to exist. But I would guess that and Young Avengers are going to be D+ shows vs event movies.
Thunderbolts are typically crooks either pretending to go good or being forced to a la Suicide Squad. Dark Avengers would be whatever Val is building with John Walker and Yelena.
I’d bet that the MCU streamlines them both into one thing, though.
I know – just saying Thunderbolts as a project is already a known thing.Also FWIW, the Dark Avengers evolved from Thunderbolts anyways. They renamed the Thunderbolts comic book series to Dark Avengers when the team was revealed. So I would bet Marvel just considers them the same for the movies.
The first version of Dark Avengers launched with a new #1 but the cast was half the previous Thunderbolts team, while Thunderbolts continued with a new cast. The second series called Dark Avengers was a renamed Thunderbolts, continuing the numbering.
Kang might be a mid-boss fight, but to me this feels more secret wars (2015). You can have elements of different multiverses collide and reshape the world. Hey, here’s the FF, and X-men now! It only took the universe rearranging to make it happen.
“Will become clear” my ass; it’s like, already clear. Multiverse of Madness laid it right out there plain as day when Mr. Fantastic says that fucking with the multiverse can lead to disaster, and like half of Phase 4 is just that between Loki, What If, Spidey NWH, MoM, and eventually Ant Man 3. Universes will collide, presto, see Secret Wars (2015) true believer!
“Secret Wars (2015)“Nooooooo, not the BAD Secret Wars, do the good one from the ‘80s!I guess there’s just no way they’re going to do the 2015 one as is, because they don’t/won’t have those universes to destroy by then, and it wouldn’t make sense to destroy them before getting some use out of them anyway.
It did lead to disaster. It was called Eternals, Black Widow, and Shang Chi.
100% but I think secret wars/battleworld is a step along the way and not the conclusion of the next major arc.
I just hope they make more of the ones with the cool pretty colors and less of the ones that are like mediocre action movies.
Given how much the fans seem to adore the mediocre action movie-type ones, I sadly suspect we may be in for plenty more of those.
It used to be these “phases” were made up of movies that were spaced out over six months or so, with some ancillary content thrown in from time to time. Now, I’m expected to commit to 12-20 hours of tv series in between the films in order to keep up. I mean, I guess Moon Knight was “okay,” but it was no WandaVision. I felt like I was just ticking the boxes. I’ll give it a few more years, but if “Howard the Duck” doesn’t get his due soon, I’m gonna cut bait – at least with the shows.
i’m just bothered that all of the movies are boring now.
It would be nice if they made the Kree the next big multi-movie villains. They have been setting them up as huge badasses since GotG, but other than Captain Marvel, which was set in the 90’s, we haven’t really seen evidence of it. I would love to see a build to an Operation Galactic Storm kind of thing.We also have seen two different stories about weird power giving arm jewelry. The 10 rings of Shang-Chi and Ms. Marvel’s bracelet. Maybe in Thor Love and Thunder someone will get a super powered watch.
A super-powered Fitbit.
Well, duh…. They haven’t exactly been subtle, to anyone familiar with the comic stories they’re drawing from, and what’s been announced so far.
All the focus on multiverse would seem to be leading to a Secret Wars/Battleworld showdown. Would also make sense as a way to bring the Sony Spidey-adjacent movies into the MCU officially, for better or worse. I feel like I remember Madame Web being mentioned as a coming movie, which would support this as well. But that could be like, the “Civil War” of this phase and not the “Endgame.” Holding out hope the Endgame/Thanos of the phase they’re setting up turns out to be Galactus, maybe after introducing F4. Could see them then having a Silver Surfer Disney+ series.
They are going to announce a Secret Wars movie and have it be a teamup of all the Phase 4 characters fighting alternate versions of themselves, with cameo alternate versions of characters/actors we thought had retired from MCU, like a Dark Captain America or something.
The Eternals kinda fizzled out, but one major Eternals connection that I see sticking around is that they’re a convenient way for ordinary people to attain superpowers, in lieu of the Immortals being dropped like a hot potato, and until they get their Mutants plan worked out.They haven’t spelled it out yet, but with Shang Chi’s powers coming from a mysterious, golden, ornate, ancient artefact of unknown origins, and Ms Marvel’s powers being retconned to now coming from a mysterious, golden, ornate, ancient artefact of unknown origins… and well – there just happens to be an Eternals inventor who has created a number of mysterious, golden, ornate, ancient artefacts over the past few millennia.The Eternals don’t need to come back really. They’ve been introduced, have been given a plausible reason to just hang around in the background without people wondering why they don’t save the day, and have conveniently left a bunch of magical trinkets throughout time for new heroes to discover, without worrying about Mutants or Terrigen Mists.