Sudden Marvel rebrand paints confusing picture of MCU direction

On January 15, 2021, the first two episodes of WandaVision premiered on Disney Plus and a new era was born. The MCU decided they would get rid of the separate Marvel shows spread out across multiple platforms to streamline a story with consistency throughout all forms of content.

When the Scarlet Witch-led show finished, it was met with resounding acceptance and adulation. Most people loved the show, propelling it to win numerous awards and nominations. Since then, there have been 17 seasons of content released on the platform if you count both the Legends and I Am Groot series. It feels like we should be past the point of turning back to placate casual observers but that is not the case.

This is not a victory for content. It's a victory for casuals

The MCU is owned by Disney. Their job is to make money and they have been doing that hand over foot for a very long time. It's understandable to look at the numbers and be concerned about whether you are putting out your best content. The answer to that question is not to disconnect the material. The solution should be to improve the content.

It wasn't that long ago that an announcement was made stating Marvel Studios intended to lessen the number of television shows and movies it created. The notion was that they were oversaturating the market and people could not keep up with the quantity of projects released. They said they would focus on quality instead of quantity.

That was a compromise I was willing to accept. I understand that people lead busy lives and have a lot of other things to keep up with. As someone who enjoys variety, it's easy to see how quickly one can fall behind if you don't dedicate all your time to it. But this is the time that we're in. There are so many streaming platforms with their own studios that are pumping out exclusives so it is difficult to keep up with any of them. The people who are that intrigued by your product will continue to be there though and there are a lot of us.

We have been down this path before

The ridiculous part of this shift in strategy is the realization that we have already been here. Before the decision to move everything under Disney Plus, Marvel had a myriad of shows that operated in the exact fashion they are now returning to. Fans were never obligated to watch Agents of Shield, The Gifted, Runaways, etc. to understand what was going on in the movies but those titles still operated in the same universe. (At least before you tried to pull the rug from under them.)

It just looks silly at this point. When those shows were released, the claim was that they were canon. They then decided they were not canon, only to say that they could be again based on the multiverse theory. Now we are just completely going back to a model that allows shows to exist like the ones you were making before and it all feels like scrambling nonsense.

Kevin Feige needs to get a handle on this because the next 'big announcement' may make me tear out the little bit of hair I possess.