Dare I say it? Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe … back on track?
It’s an odd feeling, this. After months—years, even—of uncertainty surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Avengers: Endgame’s saga-defining finale, it finally feels like things are back on track.
Despite a few hits since Endgame’s $3 billion theatrical run, like WandaVision, Loki, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, much of the MCU’s output has floundered, slightly directionless, under the burden of Marvel’s Multiverse Saga. While the Multiverse Saga was expected to open up infinite possibilities for the MCU, something else happened instead. Every movie and show was hyped up to be multiverse-defining, but they rarely were, and for a long time, there seemed to be no end in sight.
Almost every new movie and Disney+ show introduced a new multiversal concept: portals, incursions, the sacred timeline, branched timelines, variants, the TVA, nexus events, nexus beings, absolute points, the void—all of these terms mean something slightly different, and yet they are all supposed to work in tandem with one another, providing ways to make sense of the mess that is the multiverse. Something had to give.
Marvel Studios needed to take control of its narrative; it had to figure out what it wanted the Marvel Television Disney+ shows to be, it needed to take a step back and re-evaluate its movie output, and it had to figure out a way to create a coherent, interconnected narrative once more. That’s not an easy task, made all the more difficult by the studio’s broken relationship with Kang actor Jonathan Majors, but I don’t know … somehow, it feels like the MCU may have finally found a way forward, one that is somewhat less reliant on the multiverse without throwing it away entirely.
Let’s start with the MCU’s recent Disney+ featurette. Featuring new and extensive looks at upcoming live-action shows like Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, and Wonder Man, there’s a real sense of coherence. These shows are wholly their own thing. Sure, they’ll reference the larger goings-on in the MCU (you can spot Kamala Khan’s father in the Daredevil footage, for instance), but they’ll largely be self-contained stories, the same way Agatha All Along is.
The biggest problem with previous Disney+ Marvel shows, like Secret Invasion and yes, even Loki, is that they were too insistent on exploring world- and multiverse-ending threats when the chances of those threats ever really being followed up on was minimal. What Agatha, Daredevil, Ironheart, and even Wonder Man all seem to have in common is the belief that not everything that the MCU makes, especially for Disney+, must impact the wider universe. They can be character studies, and explorations of new corners of the MCU, without forcing the general audience to watch them to understand the films. A behind-the-scenes look, if you will, rather than the main event. Hopefully, Marvel will keep this new trend going.
When it comes to the movie side of the business, I must admit, it’s been a long time since I felt this excited about it. Deadpool & Wolverine was a rousing success, both at the box office and storytelling-wise, and the upcoming slate feels like the MCU of old, but with a new twist. Sam Wilson’s Captain America is deservedly making the jump from the small screen to the big screen, the Thunderbolts* trailer was surprisingly awesome, Fantastic Four will be a breath of fresh air, and even Avengers: Doomsday, despite RDJ’s controversial casting as Dr. Doom, feels like a (safe) return to form, with the Russo bros. back at the helm. The news that Tom Holland’s fourth Spider-Man outing landed Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton is incredibly exciting, too. It feels like we really have something to look forward to.
Of course, there are still some issues, like Blade’s infinite delays or Marvel’s reluctance to confirm anything about Shang-Chi 2, but at least that means it’s not announcing or throwing out projects at random, hoping that something sticks. What the MCU needed most of all after the Infinity Saga was a solid vision of what it wanted and needed to be, a balance of Earth-bound stories and multiversal ones that change our favorite characters’ lives, for better and for worse. Right now, it feels like the MCU has managed to find that balance. Let’s just hope they maintain it.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
