After 37 movies and 17 shows stretching all the way back to Iron Man in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is preparing to end an era that has defined the franchise’s entire history. The MCU is one of the largest and most profitable film franchises in history. It essentially kickstarted the superhero genre into being the dominant force at the box office, it’s made billions of dollars in total, and it’s told one of the most engaging and compelling stories of any shared universe.
Over the 18 years it has been around, the MCU has released 37 movies. They’ve ranged wildly in quality, from the highs of Black Panther to the lows of Eternals, but they’ve all been telling one larger, interconnected story. The Infinity Saga came to an end with Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, and the multiverse saga is about to reach its climax through Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars.
Though there are a slew of upcoming MCU movies ranging from Spider-Man: Brand New Day to Doomsday, the franchise is also reaching the end of an era. It’s no secret that the MCU has been struggling, especially in the wake of box office bombs like The Marvels and poorly-received shows like Secret Invasion. Marvel Studios and Disney need to change something about the MCU, but the solution they recently revealed is much more drastic than we had anticipated.
Kevin Feige Claimed That The MCU Will Have A New, Simplified Universe After Secret Wars
During an interview with the Chinese outlet Watching Hollywood, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed that the MCU is going to “establish a streamlined, simplified, single universe that’s easier for audiences to follow” in Phase 6, after the upcoming movie Avengers: Secret Wars. Feige continued by saying that “Some aspects will feel familiar. But many, many things will be entirely new,” and that the X-Men will be the “core” of that new universe.
It’s impossible to tell what the MCU has in store post-Secret Wars based on that one interview, but this is still a big deal. Kevin Feige is outright confirming that the MCU will have some sort of reset for Phase 6 for the first time. Based on the Secret Wars comics the upcoming Avengers movie is based on, it seems likely that Doomsday and Secret Wars will introduce a new reality that collides with the main Earth-616, and that the new reality will be the one to survive.
Feige also didn’t reveal exactly why the MCU is deciding to reset the franchise in some way, but there are some fairly likely answers. The MCU has gotten incredibly complicated over the years; as previously mentioned, there are already 37 movies and 17 shows totaling up to several days’ worth of runtime. There are dozens of characters, all with their own backstories to remember, dozens of events that influence those characters, and countless pieces of lore to remember.
Resetting the MCU in Phase 6, as Feige indicated, should be a way for Marvel Studios to simplify things and lower the barrier to entry for new viewers. Audiences won’t have to be familiar with hundreds of hours of content anymore once there’s a new universe in place; they’ll only need to know about Doomsday, Secret Wars, and whatever comes after. It should help with the MCU’s bloat and be a way to counteract superhero fatigue more broadly, and it seems to be an effort to revitalize the MCU after its recent string of troubles.
Doomsday & Secret Wars Will Be The End Of The MCU As We Know It
While we don’t yet know how exactly Kevin Feige plans to start a new and simplified universe for the MCU, it’s already clear that this is the end of the MCU as we know it. Making a new universe necessarily means that parts of the MCU up to this point will be left behind. Entire characters, formative moments in the MCU timeline, and possibly even entire movies or shows could be on the chopping block.
It currently seems like the MCU is going to be divided into two very clear segments; the first one being pre-Secret Wars and encompassing the 37 movies and 17 shows that have already been released, with the second being post-Secret Wars. Feige did say that “some aspects will feel familiar,” but that could easily just mean that some characters will roll over into the new universe, or that we’ll see new versions of familiar faces from another universe.
The interconnected story that the MCU has been telling for 18 years now, since Iron Man in 2008, is about to effectively end. The old guard of heroes we know and love and, presumably, Earth-616 as a whole, isn’t going to be the focus of the franchise anymore. Again, almost all the details are still up in the air, but Kevin Feige wouldn’t have teased a “streamlined, simplified, single universe” if he wasn’t confident that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to fundamentally change.
- Movie(s)
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Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Avengers: Doomsday, Werewolf by Night , The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, The Punisher: One Last Kill
- TV Show(s)
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Inhumans, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Secret Invasion, Agatha All Along, Ironheart, Daredevil: Born Again, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Wonder Man, Echo, Marvel Zombies, Eyes of Wakanda
- Cast
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Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Clark Gregg, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Simu Liu, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, Ma Dong-seok, Brian Tyree Henry, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Jonathan Majors