Avengers: Secret Wars is a title directly lifted from one of the best Marvel Comics stories in recent memory, an epic that pits the primary Marvel Universe against the newer Ultimate Universe, where a few fan-favorite characters like Miles Morales originated.Īs exciting as the idea of a multiverse is, there’s nothing multiversal in these movies to get excited about - nothing lasting or endearing or important. Thus far, they have been more suggestions than actual places, often seen so briefly that few audiences would be invested in rooting for them to survive, if any of them has to square off against the primary MCU.Īnd those are the kinds of ultimate stakes implied in Marvel Studios’ new lineup. This is a messy premise to build the next three years of movies around, only partly because audiences haven’t yet spent that much meaningful time in these alternate universes. Eventually, the film implies, that cosmic disaster will come for the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’ve already come to know. As Reed explains, universes are collapsing into each other, wiping out entire alternate worlds. Conveniently, the ultimate stakes of this saga were already plainly laid out by the version of Reed Richards (John Krasinski) who appeared in Multiverse of Madness.
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The multiversal ideas being probed in What If…?, Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will only grow in significance as the films and TV shows continue to roll out over the next few years. Those two bits of info are enough to let informed comics fans grasp the shape of what’s in store over the next three years. Hence, The Multiverse Saga, and its Endgame equivalent: Avengers: Secret Wars, currently scheduled for Nov.
The studio’s Hall H presentation was largely about the MCU’s future structure, recasting a formless void of upcoming movies and shows as Phases and organizing those three Phases into a new Saga. If any one overriding purpose drove Marvel’s bevy of San Diego Comic-Con announcements, it was the need to address the MCU’s lack of direction. What the MCU needs right now is more of a human touch - and it’s the most bafflingly absent part of the Marvel Studios equation. But slightly more plot focus isn’t enough to carry the MCU forward, not when it’s built around a concept as diffuse and inherently unfocused as the idea of infinite multiverses. The bet is that this will all establish the foundation for something a little less aimless. By this rationale, Phase 4 has been about introductions, both to new people and also new places and new ideas. Currently - and this is something the studio’s Comic-Con presentation made clear - it’s focused on introducing new characters to fill the void left by those who’ve moved on in one way or another. The end of Marvel Studios’ 11-year Infinity Saga is the kind of soft reset the studio needs until it decides to risk a bigger one. Unlike in comic books, where characters can stick around in perpetuity and show up for cosmic traffic jams ad infinitum, actors cannot commit to an endless stream of films. Or Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman in Eternals is set up for a larger role in a future film, thanks to a post-credits scene where he’s about to claim a magic sword.įrom a charitable point of view, this aimlessness is just part of the buildup process. The origins of Shang-Chi’s 10 rings are kept a mystery, but still teased as important. Instead, audiences have just been teased with the idea that these characters will matter. When recent projects like Eternals and Shang-Chi have introduced new characters, those projects have largely been unconcerned with the big picture, the question of how the new arrivals will factor into the comic book world we’ve been getting to know. For years now, the franchise has focused on Endgame cleanup, telling stories around and after what’s already happened, and mostly looking backward: What happened to Wanda Maximoff after she was forced to kill her husband? What’s Hawkeye been up to? What did the late Black Widow feel so guilty about all this time? While the road to Infinity War and Endgame was long and circuitous, there was always some kind of destination clearly signaled to the audience.Ĭurrent MCU projects don’t have these visible goal posts.
Once they did, in 2012’s The Avengers, that film’s post-credits scene introduced a new apparent focus for the MCU: the arrival of Thanos, who was eventually revealed to be after the Infinity Stones. To a certain extent, this is a problem fans can only have with the benefit of hindsight: When Iron Man premiered in 2008, the only big promise made was that the Avengers would eventually show up in the franchise. One of the longstanding complaints about the post- Avengers: Endgame era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that, three years in, it seems to lack direction.
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