The MCU is about to face its greatest obstacle yet — change

Is it the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it? All the recent changes at Disney/Marvel promises to expand the universe and take it in new directions. Will the impending deviations serve the franchise well or cause fans to jump off the bandwagon?

This year marks a huge turning point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the conclusion of the 23-movie Infinity Saga. Avengers: Endgame closed out multiple storylines, while Spider-Man: Far From Home acted as a denouement for the finale. Those movies did set up a few future MCU narratives, such as Thor joining the Guardians of the Galaxy and Steve Rogers passing the Captain America torch to Sam Wilson in Endgame. Far From Home also left us with major cliffhanging reveals.

Alas, the MCU will not simply be plodding along similar territory. While The Infinity Saga was coming to a close on screen in mind-blowing fashion, ground-shaking, behind the scenes business decisions were being made that will forever reshape the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Spider-Man no more

The most obvious and endlessly discussed news is the collapse of the “Spider-Man deal” – the fruitful collaboration between Disney and Sony to include Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We can hope for another James Gunn type of miracle but, in our collective grief, we may just have to move on to accepting Spidey’s departure.

Kevin Feige will now have to figure out how to make sense of the MCU without Spider-Man. Aforementioned cliffhangers aside, Peter Parker was being set up as the new face of the franchise. Even if none of the next five or six movies take place in Spidey’s city, or time period, or dimension, any future Avenger team-up would certainly have to explain his absence. Luckily, competently juggling characters whereabouts or involvement in current affairs is Feige’s superpower. The worst-case scenario would be to never even mention Spider-Man in future films. Either way, this change clearly impacts the MCU negatively.

Disney plus MCU equals endless possibilities

At San Diego Comic Con, Marvel announced four live-action miniseries featuring established MCU characters/actors. Then at Disney’s D23 Expo, we learned about three more shows with new characters that will begin development. Even before the newbies were publicized, the biggest change is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be telling stories on a new platform with a different format.

These Marvel shows are the first to be produced by Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige, so there is a promise of true reciprocity between the series and the movies, unlike Marvel Television’s Agents of SHIELD. Previously, MCU fans hypothetically didn’t even need to own a TV, a computer, or a phone to enjoy all their offerings via theatrical release. Now, a Disney Plus subscription is required to watch the next (final?) chapter in Clint Barton’s life.

Will the six-episode miniseries ruin the breezy flow of the movies by feeling either too episodic or, conversely, like a six-hour movie? Will it lack the production value of the films? And if they are just as good as some of the best theatrical releases, would relegating them to a streaming service bother die-hard MCUers who would have preferred to view the action on the big screen?

We will have to wait for some of those answers, but one thing we do already know is that Disney Plus is providing an outlet for the MCU to introduce ideas and characters that they may have never had time to develop otherwise. The proof is in the Loki series premise, following the 2012 version of the God of Mischief on his reality-warping adventures, as well as the announcement of shows based on Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight. Those secondary heroes may be a better fit for TV than film but, if they are in the same universe, will their very existence disrupt the MCU’s continuity or character associations in any way?

Vampires, and mutants, and gods, oh my!

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• Marvel rumors hint Pedro Pascal has been cast in key Fantastic Four role

Perhaps the biggest threat to the MCU would be expecting the audience to buy that entire races such as vampires or mutants were always present in the background but never touched upon in dozens of preceding narratives. The god-like beings that will feature in next year’s The Eternals will actually be more familiar to MCU fans because of the Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy films. Since Eternals may take place during MCU antiquity and can feature plenty of references to established iconography, that film shouldn’t really shake the foundation of the MCU compared with, say, vampires existing in the contemporary timeline.

A Blade movie coming to the MCU was one of the most surprising announcements coming out of Comic-Con. Two-time Oscar winner, Mahershala Ali will star as the daywalker, even though Wesley Snipes may have been hoping to reprise the role. Kevin Feige is also working on incorporating the X-Men into the MCU now that Disney owns the rights to Marvel’s mutants. How exactly will vampires and mutants co-exist within the established superhero universe?

Some approaches to rationally present them in a way that isn’t entirely jarring would be to either completely isolate them to unexplored geographical locations, i.e. vampires only lived in Transylvania or to maybe frame their origins as a modern development. Doctor Strange will be exploring the multiverse in his sequel – it could actually be pretty clever if that is where we first glimpse an alternate reality that includes vampires.

A commonly suggested theory for mutants’ existence spawns directly from recent MCU plot elements. Avengers: Endgame details how the combined power of the Infinity Stones caused a massive surge throughout the universe. If that somehow planted the X-gene in various people around the world, that account of mutant creation would certainly prove more palatable than stating that mutants have just been lurking in the shadows all this time.

Merc with a PG-13 mouth

Another mutant now under the purview of Disney and Marvel is Deadpool. Deadpool as a cinematic entity is distinctly its own beast. It has ambiguously been labeled apart of Fox’s X-Men Universe because the heroes and villains are mutants and actual X-Men, most notably Colossus, join in on the fun. Despite those associations, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 do not exactly correlate with the other X-Men movies. Each franchise had its own Colossus and Juggernaut. And Ryan Reynolds uses Wolverine and Professor X as punchlines, as he speaks to the audience.

Deadpool is not supposed to be taken seriously while, on the contrary, some of the X-Men movies have conscientiously tackled the morality of social issues with the Holocaust as a backdrop and Civil Rights as a consistent theme. The MCU’s tone lies in between the two, leaning toward the latter – the series is peppered with a certain lightness but strays away from turning big moments into gags.

When intersecting Deadpool into the MCU, MPAA rating is really not as much of a concern as contrasting tones. Kevin Feige should treat the addition of Deadpool more cautiously than any other new property because, while X-Men and Blade can cause narrative continuity complications, Deadpool may unexpectedly alter the constitution of an Avengers movie in a way that lessens the stakes and undermines the other characters’ heroic journeys. There’s a good reason why James Gunn turned Howard the Duck into a post-credits chuckle rather than inserting him into the Guardians of the Galaxy line-up.

Even though Marvel and Feige are exceptionally successful risk-takers, Deadpool has a capacity for damaging the status quo to a point where fans may not realize it until the foul-mouthed merc depreciates the value of their favorite MCU hero. Cable is one of the coolest, most complex mutants in the comics, but one may not know that if they’ve only encountered him in Deadpool 2. As a singular antihero, Deadpool can be brilliantly hilarious. Nevertheless, surrounding characters and storylines can become submerged in his jokiness.

Unless Feige concocts a miraculous formula for combining Deadpool and the MCU, he may want to consider leaving Deadpool in his own separate franchise. Compared to the Fantastic Four, who Marvel Studios also nabbed the rights to in the acquisition, Deadpool is much less MCU-friendly. With distinguishable powers and an affable sense of humor, the super family should fit right into the franchise’s wheelhouse under Feige’s guidance. On the other hand, acclimating Deadpool, X-Men, and Blade will present many challenges so, hopefully, Marvel Studios’ history of high risk, high reward continues with those superheroes.