I vividly remember how it felt leaving the theater after watching Avengers: Endgame in eighth grade. I just watched three of my favorite characters die or retire, and tried my best to hide the tears running down my face. I was in disbelief for about two years, until WandaVision, Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier came out. With these shows, I had to accept that Marvel was entering a new era, with what I hoped would be plenty of exciting characters and elaborate plotlines.
Unfortunately, my hopes for the future of the MCU faded away, as series after series came out only to be just as quickly forgotten by fans and Marvel executives alike. Series like Secret Invasion left viewers, including myself, wondering why these stories needed 8-episode-long arcs. Others like Echo, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Ironheart had many female fans like myself excited about the unique stories being told, but fell flat in their writing, CGI, or direction. It didn’t help that many of the shows that focused on non-white and female characters seemed to be severely under-promoted compared to shows like Daredevil or Punisher.
Marvel’s series were not the only victims of what felt like a never-ending pursuit of quantity over quality. The star-studded Eternals film was set to focus on Marvel’s next big group of heroes, with an A-list cast featuring Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, and Gemma Chan. It also included a highly anticipated end-credit scene featuring global pop sensation Harry Styles as Eros, Thanos’ brother. Even with all the celebrity buzz, it was only a matter of time before the film faded into the background like many other Marvel projects of the time.
In 2024, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, revealed that there were “no immediate plans for Eternals 2.” Since then, the studio has only briefly acknowledged the events of Eternals in Captain America: Brave New World, a film which is often disregarded by franchise fans.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe attempts to assemble new teams through films like Fantastic Four: First Steps and Eternals, their main weakness with these groups is the build-up. I didn’t fall in love with the MCU because I was thrown into movies like Avengers: Infinity War and expected to understand the characters’ dynamics right away. I fell in love with the MCU because over the course of 11 years, I got to slowly watch the relationships between characters evolve.
The first Avengers movie only centered around Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye. Apart from Hawkeye, each of the Avengers had starring roles in prior Marvel projects. This gave fans a sense of who these heroes were and what their goals were while also allowing them a chance to see how these six beloved characters would interact when put under pressure. The amount of time, care, and intentionality in building the Infinity Saga is what gave the MCU its massive fanbase, not throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
The only recent hero Marvel group that has even come close to matching the magic, build-up, and feisty dynamics that the original Avengers had is the Thunderbolts*. Comprised of the Winter Soldier, White Widow, Red Guardian, U.S. Agent, Ghost, and Sentry/Bob, Thunderbolts* has been one of the only recent Marvel projects that revitalized my long-standing love for the MCU. The unlikely crew is even set to play a major part in the highly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday.
In the last few years, Marvel has switched the focus of the current saga from Kang the Conqueror to Doctor Doom due to domestic violence charges against Jonathan Majors, who portrayed Kang in both the Loki series and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The studio has since dropped Majors from all projects and scrapped a previously announced project titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty that many recent shows and movies seemed to be leading up to. Many fans point to this abrupt change in direction as a reason for Marvel’s chaotic storylines and lack of follow-through.
In the 11 years between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame, 22 MCU films were released. Since 2019, after Endgame, Marvel has released 16 films and 14 TV shows. The amount of content since 2019 alone is enough to make even die-hard Marvel fans roll their eyes at the announcement of a new MCU TV show or movie. In the last seven years, it seems Marvel has prioritized making content for every type of consumer rather than making stories compelling enough to reach both new and old fans.
Many blame the recent “flops” on Disney’s ownership of Marvel, more specifically, the company’s push to create more content for Disney+. Since its launch, Marvel and Disney executives have spoken about increasing their output of shows and movies as Disney+ first took off as one of the major streaming platforms. Since then, former Disney CEO Bob Iger announced a decrease in the number of projects that Marvel will be releasing after admittedly oversaturating the platform.
As a long-time fan of both the MCU and Marvel comics, I have faith that the studio will stick to its mission of the quality of the projects being produced over the quantity. Hopefully, fans can look forward to focused storylines and clear direction in future franchise phases. With the release date of Avengers: Doomsday fast approaching, it will be interesting to see how serious Marvel is about elevating the quality of their films. In the coming years, as new stories like X-Men and Fantastic Four are explored, I want to feel the same excitement I got watching everything from Iron Man to Endgame, rather than sitting through another mediocre Marvel movie with corny scripts and bad CGI.