But the other issue is that having so many projects means Marvel doesn’t have a clear idea of where everything is headed. Dedicated Marvel fans are happy to watch a new episode of an MCU show on Disney+ every week, and they’re happy to shell out a few bucks to watch a new movie every couple of months, but Marvel Studios’ output has felt frustratingly aimless for a while now. Every new movie and streaming show seems to be setting up something else. Unlike the focused interconnected storytelling of the Infinity Saga, the multiversal shenanigans of Phase Four aren’t headed in any particular direction. What is the next big event? What is it all building toward?
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Marvel seems to be throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. The Infinity Saga had a clear beginning, middle, and end. From Phase One to Phase Three, the MCU was singularly focused on setting up the threat posed by Thanos. Even outliers like Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange set up crucial plot points that fed into the backbone narrative of the Mad Titan’s search for the Infinity Stones. At the climax of Phase Three, the double whammy of Infinity War and Endgame brought all the characters together with a common goal. Back then, the MCU only pumped out two to three movies a year and a few self-contained streaming shows that were easily skippable. This gave audiences a manageable number of story threads to follow.
But Phase Four is all over the map. There are way too many characters and storylines for casual fans to keep track of in today’s MCU, and most of them don’t seem to have a resolution in sight. The last handful of post-credits scenes introduced Harry Styles as Thanos’ brother, Brett Goldstein as Hercules out for Thor’s blood, and Charlize Theron as Clea trying to prevent the destruction of the universe. The MCU is getting too big for its own good. The Norse gods have been joined by Greek gods, Egyptian gods, and Celestials. The Sacred Timeline has branched out into countless alternate universes. And according to Ms. Marvel, dimensions aren’t the same thing as universes.
Phase Four has used the multiverse as a fun device to allow actors like Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston to play goofy variants of their characters, and to allow Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men to mentor Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. But it’s getting harder for Marvel to keep its storytelling coherent in the context of a sprawling multiverse. In the multiverse, nothing means anything. Whatever happens in one universe, there are countless other universes where everything is fine.
The MCU’s Avengers roster keeps getting bigger and bigger with the introduction of new heroes left and right. Far more characters are being introduced than retired. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers spent a decade in the spotlight before their MCU arcs came to a wildly satisfying conclusion. Not every Marvel hero can hope to be extended the same courtesy. Eternals established 10 all-new superheroes in a single movie.
Endgame is about as big as an ensemble can get without feeling overstuffed. And even then, half of the established MCU characters spent the majority of the runtime as dust. There’s no chance a future team-up project will be able to pull together all the superheroes that the MCU has up in the air right now into a single movie. They could split up into a few different Avengers teams (Young Avengers, Secret Avengers, West Coast Avengers, etc.), but then the storytelling will keep feeling aimless and episodic, with no real conclusion on the horizon. Marvel fans are speculating that the next big team-up movie will be Secret Wars. In the Secret Wars storyline, every mainstream Marvel hero is teleported to “Battleworld” for a big battle royale. This would allow every MCU star to appear on the same marquee, but it might make for a messy movie.
Kevin Feige reported via GamesRadar that Phase Four is, indeed, heading somewhere: “As we’re nearing the end of Phase Four, I think people will start to see where this next saga is going… 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.” There’s reason to keep the faith. Feige is the one who masterminded the Infinity Stones storyline in the last saga and gave audiences the emotional closure that came with Endgame. But he might have bitten off more than he can chew this time.
Ironically, the MCU might be the Hollywood Hydra. In Greek mythology, when a valiant hero cuts off one of the Hydra’s heads, two more grow back in its place. Every Marvel movie and streaming show sets up multiple sequels and spin-offs. At a certain point, it’ll become unsustainable. 50 hours of content into Phase Four, the franchise may have already reached that point.
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