The Marvel Cinematic Universe is using the Multiverse as a crutch, not a tool
The recent news that Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell will both be returning for Avengers: Doomsday has left me feeling … disconcerted.
I know, I know—it’s unlikely they’ll be back as their sacred timeline characters. Instead, they’ll probably return as variants from some other far-off universe. Perhaps Atwell will reprise her role as Captain Carter as she did in What If …? and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Maybe Evans will return as Johnny Storm again, as he did in Deadpool & Wolverine, or he’ll show up as a never-before-seen version of Steve Rogers. Maybe he’ll only return as Skinny Steve™. I do like Skinny Steve.
All in all, none of these options will really affect the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s continuity, and having characters return multiple times is par for the course in the comics. And yet, Evans’, Atwell’s, and Robert Downey Jr.’s return in the next Avengers movie, so soon after all their stories ended in the last Avengers movie, feels wrong somehow. Almost as if, after the rocky road the MCU has had over the past few years, it wants to hark back to the days of old when people bought MCU tickets months in advance and they put their lives on hold to watch the latest Marvel trailer on their phone.
I get it, honestly, and I’m not saying that everything the MCU has produced in the Multiverse Saga has been bad or pointless. Far from it! But the Doomsday news, coupled with this year’s Deadpool & Wolverine release, makes it clear to me that the MCU is using the concept of the Multiverse as a crutch, rather than a narrative tool. Bringing back familiar faces will surely lure people to the cinema, right? Variants are the answer to everything!
Audiences loved seeing the old Spider-Men in Spider-Man: No Way Home, so why not bring back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine for the umpteenth time? (I say this as someone who genuinely enjoyed Deadpool & Wolverine—it made me smile on a shitty day). Why not bring back Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. and let people feel nostalgic for something that only ended a few years ago? Shang-Chi will have to wait for his sequel. The Eternals may never be heard from again. Mahershala Ali’s Blade will probably never make it to the big screen. It doesn’t matter, so long as we make it to Avengers: Doomsday and watch Downey Jr. in action as Dr. Doom.
The Multiverse isn’t just an excuse to bring back old actors, though. It should be used as a narrative framework. It’s a way to ask interesting questions. What If …? has the right idea, though some of the show’s concepts feel lacking or unimaginative. Instead, what Marvel has done is create an incredibly complex web of terms and ideas, like the sacred timeline, branched timelines, anchor beings, incursions, variants, nexus beings, absolute points, and more to create an overarching story that’s pretty hard to follow if you haven’t been keeping up with the MCU’s latest releases.
I’ve come to realize that one of the reasons I’m so looking forward to the upcoming slate of Marvel projects, including Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts*, and most importantly, Daredevil: Born Again, is because it’s highly unlikely the Multiverse will play a significant role in any of these stories. I hope the Multiverse doesn’t play too big a role in the Fantastic Four’s introduction, either.
Now that the Multiversal can of worms has been opened, the MCU will never be able to move on from it entirely. It makes me wish, to a certain extent, that Marvel Studios had opted to introduce the Multiverse as its years-off swan song, rather than its reboot after the all-encompassing Infinity Saga. There were other ways to bring in the F4 and the X-Men, truly. The Multiverse should be the story to end all stories; instead, the MCU has tied itself to a narrative device that’s hard to understand and even harder to use innovatively.
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