Now that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has hit store shelves, all eyes are on whatever Traveller's Tales will make next. Some people have asked for a return to Middle-earth, others have wanted another romp in the Wizarding World, but perhaps the most requested title is a full-fledged LEGO game based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Traveller's Tales has shown it can develop great movie-based content as well as superhero titles, and a LEGO MCU title seems like it would be a success.
However, the MCU is an increasingly large franchise with 28 different films and six shows, plus a whole slate of projects on the horizon. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga struggled to adapt the nine mainline Star Wars films, and the MCU has more than triple the amount of projects. In a perfect world, the MCU is ripe for a LEGO game adaptation, but in practice it would be almost impossible to adapt in one title.
The MCU is Too Large
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LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the largest game that Traveller's Tales has crafted to-date. It allows Star Wars fans to fight droids on Naboo, traverse the trenches of the Death Star, and battle the infamous Kylo Ren. It's the title that Star Wars fans have been asking for, but it still leaves out a big part of the Star Wars story.
Traveller's Tales also took a trip to the Wizarding World back in 2010 with LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4. The Harry Potter film series has just as many films as the Skywalker Saga, but Traveller's Tales had to split up the series into two separate games. While technology was not as powerful back then, the LEGO games have never strayed much further than nine films.
Traveller's Tales Has Adapted Some of the MCU
In 2016, Traveller's Tales dipped its toes into the MCU with LEGO Marvel's Avengers. The title served as a spin-off of the greater LEGO Marvel Superheroes franchise with levels based on The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, as well as smaller levels following story beats from Captain America: The First Avenger,Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: Civil War. Post-launch DLC also added levels based on Ant-Man and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as comic book versions of Black Panther, the Masters of Evil, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange.
The hub of LEGO Marvel's Avengers took the open-world New York from LEGO Marvel's Super Heroes and gave it an MCU skin. Most of the game was the same as its predecessor, and received mixed reviews due to its reliance on MCU references in that similar package. On top of that, it was marred with some technical problems and did not do much to innovate the formula. Since its release, the franchise has doubled in size and is constantly churning out new content.
A LEGO MCU Title Would Need to Be Multiple Games
Fans want a dream game where they can play through the MCU in LEGO form and control all of their favorite characters across the Infinity Saga. The Infinity Saga has 23 films alone, with the greater MCU having 28 films, six shows, and more on the way. That amount of story could not be contained in one LEGO title, as the largest experience that Traveller's Tales has made only adapts nine films.
The MCU is already laid out in such a way that Traveller's Tales could create three different titles. Marvel Studios split the franchise into Phases, and Traveller's Tales could craft games based on each phase. Phase one contains six films, phase two contains six films, and phase three contains 11. With that amount of content, the only way that a LEGO MCU game could work would be with a trilogy.
While little is known about where Traveller's Tales will take the franchise next, many are hoping for an exploration of the MCU. With its scale, the only way that it could make a LEGO game based on the MCU really work would be with a series of games, it would surely never fit into a singular title.