The Marvel Cinematic Universe is now deep into its Multiverse Saga, the broad and intertwined follow-up adventure after the events of Infinity War and Endgame. Avengers: Secret Wars will be the conclusion of this new saga, and is set to arrive in May of 2026. However, this release date is still too soon after Avengers: Endgame came out, only adding to the feeling that this new saga is rushed and lacks the fluid and well-paced nature of what came before.
Marvel’s Multiverse Saga so far hasn’t been as well received as some of their previous work, seemingly for a variety of different reasons. Despite being centered around the concept of the multiverse, Phase 4, which ended in November with the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, hasn’t exactly had a clear focus. The multiverse has been part of the story in Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, and was used largely as misdirection in WandaVision. Despite that key similarity, there wasn’t much, if any, linkage between those MCU projects or their stories.
The same can largely be said of the rest of Phase 4. It seems that what drew many people to Marvel in the first place, the idea that everything was neatly intertwined and connected, each story building on top of one another, is now largely absent. The fact that the ending of Eternals, where a celestial event of sorts comes to Earth, hasn’t been referenced in any other MCU story since is a prime example of this. Many fans expected what happened at the end of Loki, where the multiverse was opened up fully, to set up the arrival of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in No Way Home. However, the arrival of Raimi and Webb era characters was explained in a contained manner in that film; in other words, everything was kept in house, thus the lack of that interconnected nature that so many people loved previously.
Regardless of whatever the current issues with the MCU might be, the decision to have Secret Wars release just seven years after Endgame appears that it could turn into a startling misstep. By the time that film comes out, the Multiverse Saga will have had a significant amount more content than the Infinity Saga, something that is already the case now (particularly to the length of the television shows on Disney+.). There’s more Marvel than ever, which seems to be making Kevin Feige and co. believe that they can naturally get to that place in Secret Wars within the next few years.
However, the number of movies and shows and the amount of time fans spend watching the MCU in the Multiverse Saga won’t set up Secret Wars with the same wave of excitement in the same way that Infinity War and Endgame were set up in that regard. What made Infinity War and Endgame such huge pop culture events was the fact that the MCU had been inching closer to that conclusion for a decade or more. It’s that many fans saw Thanos in the post-credits scene of The Avengers in 2012, and then all those years later the payoff came as he arrived in Infinity War, where he was essentially the main character.
Most fans were at different points in their lives in 2008 or 2012, two monumental years in the MCU with the releases of Iron Man and The Avengers respectively, and that time-lapse from then until the conclusion of the Infinity Saga made it all that more special. For younger MCU fans, it felt as if this story and those heroes had been around for almost their entire childhood, which only added to what eventually became a unique and memorable experience.
The Multiverse Saga is, unfortunately, sorely lacking that. Phase 4 only began in 2021, and yet the entire Saga will conclude in 2026, just five and a half years later. It’s now 2023, and there are only a few years until The Kang Dynasty and the beginning of the end of this multiverse story, and even though there’s already so much content in the new era, and more on the way, it still doesn’t feel nearly as impactful or special as what came before.
Still, it’s possible that the upcoming MCU projects move the franchise into the right direction to help make up for certain missteps. Up next is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which seems to finally push the multiverse story forward as another Kang variant arrives and begins to wreak havoc on the tiniest member of the Avengers. What If season two, the second outing of the MCU animated series, is also expected in the early moments of this year. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3, Echo, Loki season 2, The Marvels, IronHeart, X-Men ‘97 (another animated show), and Agatha: Coven of Chaos are also all expected in 2023.
