What the release dates for The Falcon & the Winter Solider and WandaVision could mean for Phase 4

The 2020 holiday season will be loaded with the MCU, with The Eternals being released just a few weeks before Thanksgiving and WandaVision dropping in December.

Looking at the second half of Marvel 2020 releases, we’re going to see the debut of The Eternals on November 6, 2020 and WandaVision in December 2020. The Eternals is a big question mark, as it’s said to take place over their 7000-year lifespan from early on in their lives to post-Avengers: Endgame. Once again, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious connection between this film and either The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision.

The Eternals has a large cast, so it’s doubtful we’ll see them all together anywhere but the movie. And some of the bigger stars, like Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek, are likely to not drop in on any of the Disney+ shows. However, as Phase Four begins to set up the next big threat, Crazy Rich Asians‘ Gemma Chan, The Big Sick‘s Kumail Nanjiani, or Train to Busan‘s Dong-Seok Ma may show up in the season finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to plant seeds for what’s to come.

The MCU show that will likely have the biggest impact on the rest of the universe is WandaVision.  Kevin Feige has mentioned that this series will lead into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. With that Doctor Strange title and the clips of WandaVision we’ve seen in the Super Bowl commercial for Disney Plus, it’s no secret what we know of the MCU is going to fundamentally change in a post-Thanos world.

We learned a number of things from these moments in the commercial, but if we zone in on the clips of WandaVision, we can start to theorize what could happen. We see Wanda and Vision in different eras of television sitcom scenarios, which has long been rumored to be the style of the series. However, there’s a brief moment where Wanda seems to be her normal self, the one we’ve seen in her past appearances in the MCU. Will WandaVision explore Wanda dealing with the loss of Vision by having some sort of mental break? Will the two events—the Avengers: Endgame time heist and whatever happens in WandaVision that brings Vision back to life—lead to breaking the multiverse in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?

Something I’ve been thinking about since Disney acquired Fox was that we could see an MCU version of House of M. From Marvel.com:

"When the Scarlet Witch alters reality, the Avengers and X-Men face a world like none they’ve ever known! Writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Olivier Coipel re-imagine the Marvel Universe with Magneto bringing mutantkind to prominence in an eight-issue event. As the only person who remembers how things used to be, can Wolverine set things right? Should he?"

We’ve seen the MCU take an event like this and make it their own with Civil War, so could the same happen here? Could each sitcom scenario we see Wanda and Vision in be Wanda’s attempt to alter reality and bring Vision back? What if WandaVision not only sets up the events of the next Doctor Strange movie but the future of mutants in the MCU?

Are you excited about Phase Four of the MCU? What are you looking forward to the most? Let us know in the comments. Black Widow kicks off the next phase of Marvel films on May 1, 2020, while the MCU enters the world of TV through Disney Plus when The Falcon & The Winter Soldier debuts in August of 2020.