Few events are as anticipated for fans of superheroes than Marvel’s presence at San Diego Comic Con, and this year was certainly no exception. Marvel laid out their plans for the next few years (and phases) of the MCU, which was all welcome information as fans have been wondering what direction the MCU is headed in after the Infinity Saga. This era is being dubbed “The Multiverse Saga”, and will consist of Phases 4 through 6.
Importantly, Marvel finally answered the question on a lot of fans' minds - when will there be anotherAvengersmovie? Obviously, the original line-up of Avengers has broken up, but with so many new heroes being introduced, fans really wanted to seeanother team-up moviesometime in the future, and it seemed like a logical direction to head in since theAvengersmovies are integral to the first 3 Phases of the MCU.Avengers: Secret WarsandAvengers: The Kang Dynastywill be released at the very end of Phase 6 in (year) as a way to cap off the Multiverse Saga. This is a great way to integrate an Avengers story back into the MCU, and to end the Saga off on an exciting note.
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Thespecific plots of these two moviesaren’t known yet, but there are clues (such as the storyline of theSecret Warscomic series and the educated guess that Kang the Conqueror will be a main player inThe Kang Dynasty) that lead to the conclusion that Phase 6 will be ending with a bang, and in fact with some of the biggest stories that the MCU has covered so far. It makes sense that they’ll need a bit of time to lead up to that kind of bombastic ending, and so placing these movies at the very end of this Saga gives Marvel time to really build the story and set everything into place so that all of the pieces fit together perfectly.
A lot of fans have been wondering how (and even if) Marvel would be setting up the nextAvengersteam-up movie. So many new characters have been introduced in Phase 4 already, and it was puzzling some fans how they would manage to fit it all together into anAvengersmovie. So many of the heroes seem disconnected from each other, andany potential teamwould just seem less balanced and make less sense thanThe Avengersdid in 2012, though perhaps the originalAvengersonly seems to work so well with the benefit of hindsight. Putting the new team-up late in Phase 6, however, gives the MCU time to expand the characters and perhaps allows them to have some more interactions before they come together for a team-up.
While the original six Avengers didn’t all know each other before their team-up, the threads of that team were set into motion from the beginning, and many of them appeared in each others' stories (for example, Hawkeye inThor, Black Widow inIron Man 2, etc.). The MCU hasn’t really done that with Phase 4 yet, and it seems like they’re keeping the stories mostly separate. This would be problematic if they were planning on doing a team movie any time soon, but leaving the nextAvengersmovies until the end of the Saga means that they don’t have to rush the ways in which they start toweave these stories together. Hopefully they can manage to do it without unnaturally forcing the characters together or doing constant cameos when they don’t help the story in any way.
This newest phase of the MCU doesn’t exactly lend itself to a lot of Avengers team-ups because of how the stories are a little more disconnected, and there are so many more of them. Trying toconnect all of the TV shows and the movieswould be a massive undertaking, and so it makes a lot more sense to do fewerAvengersmovies in the next few phases and just focus on telling the individual stories instead. This way, they can set up who the major players are going to be before they get thrown together in a team-up.
It also makes sense to leave any newAvengersmovies until the end of Phase 6 because of how the Infinity Saga ended.Avengers: Infinity WarandEndgameweresuch huge events- both culturally and within the MCU itself - that anyAvengersmovie that comes after them might feel underwhelming, especially if a lot of the main heroes that fans have gotten used to aren’t in it. However, having the next few phases build up to an Avengers team-up (especially one on the scale they’re planning) means that it will inherently feel more exciting when that next installment happens because there has been such a long gap.
Leaving theAvengersmovies until the end of the Saga will also help differentiate these next few phases of the MCU from the previous Infinity Saga. The Multiverse Saga will be less Avengers-focused and will be focused on introducing new characters. It might be beneficial for theMCU to try different aestheticsand storytelling methods as they seem to have been doing recently, otherwise the MCU fatigue that many viewers have been feeling might get worse. The best way to prevent it might be to make this particular era of the MCU feel as different from the previous one as possible.
The stories themselves are also going to be huge, presumably, which will be a good cap-off to Phase 6 in the way thatInfinity WarandEndgamewere to Phase 3.The MCU itself is so built upat this point, with so many worlds and characters with fantastical powers that it makes the firstAvengersmovie (that was exciting and new for its time) seem almost quaint and small-scale in comparison. Adding the multiverse to the mix is only going to complicate things further - hopefully in a good way - which means that Marvel needs to be careful about how they choose to integrate all of their stories together to ensure that things flow properly and don’t feel gimmicky. At this point, it seems like they do have a solid plan in mind as far as another team-up movie goes, but only time will tell whether or not this Avengers team will work as well as the first few go-arounds.
