BSO staff have been into comics since we were we lads. Rob is probably the biggest Spider-Man freak there is and I have a passion for some of Marvel’s more mentally unstable characters like Frank Castle, Cletus Kasady, Victor Von Doom, and Thanos. Now that the Infinity Saga has been wound down for a while and we’ve had a healthy dose of Phase 4 delivered, we thought it would be a good time to sit down and analyze what’s been given and what’s likely to come based on what we now know after Doctor Strange: The Multiverse of Madness. If you want to read our review of that, you can click right here. Otherwise go right ahead and check out what we think is to come. Probably fair to say we discuss spoiler-y things so maybe don’t read this until after you’ve seen MoM.
We’re now pretty well into Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it’s safe to say that the theme of this phase is the Multiverse, more specifically how one set of interactions within the Multiverse affect another or the others as a result. It’s pretty easy to see if you’re reading between the lines of what’s been released so far, which we’ll get into here in just a second, but it’s also something that’s been stressed through the last two major cinematic releases. If they weren’t going to do something with it, I can promise you they wouldn’t be taking the time to explain the hell out of Multiverse at every possible turn (see: Infinity Stones). So, let’s take a look at what Marvel is setting up through their releases, since we now have a substantial amount of releases within Phase 4 that looking backward is probably more useful than guessing forward.
If it wasn’t clear, the MCU tried to tell you it was by making it the very first thing they explored when they relaunched post-Infinity Saga. But even if you account for the films that wrapped up the Infinity Saga, the largest one was entirely based on the (false) promise of a Multiverse with Spider-Man: Far From Home, but even when they had finally put out everything COVID had delayed from the previous phases, their first project was a TV dedicated to the idea of Wanda creating a pocket world in which Vision had returned and everyone was living in TV-era sitcoms.
This provided the very foundation for Wanda to set out in search of a world where she is happy and peaceful with her husband and children. To make sure the viewer knew the Multiverse was important, they even used more false promises in the form of Pietro AKA Ralph Bohner. But they used these false promises to set up a very large delivery of the real thing and just to make things right with fans, Marvel gave Sony’s Spider-Man the Spider-Verse and they finally delivered the full Multiverse through several of their own films in the MCU Main put out by Disney and Marvel Studios.
But the point was to drive home that this concept or idea or reality or whatever you want to call it, it’s going to be real and it’s going to play a huge role in things going forward. We also have yet to see the introduction of the overarching big bad and I actually think that’s fine since they’re using storytelling to largely indicate who/what is ultimately going to be at stake — it’s the universe. It’s always the universe — and allowing their characters time to breathe before they allow the villain announcement to steal the spotlight.
They continue to hammer home the Multiverse in Phase 4 with Eternals, LOKI, Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness, and the upcoming Thor: Love & Thunder. In some way, shape or form, the Multiverse is at or near the center of each of these projects and it should be clear by now that Marvel never does anything by accident. These things are seeded years in advance and if Marvel is pushing the concept of other worlds, incursion, variants, and beings capable of traveling the Multiverse — here again, it’s not a coincidence that Marvel opted to include America Chavez right out of the gate — then it’s probably safe to assume that whatever comes in terms of a major event, it’s Multiversal.
As previously mentioned, Marvel has withheld the villain announcement for a reason but we still have enough information about upcoming films to put things together. But we should always count on a few major surprises from Marvel. You know what this means, Dr. Doom Hive, now is our moment to assemble and form like Voltron. Jokes aside, we’re also assuming there’s going to just be one bad instead of a storm of crap going wrong all at once. There’s every possibility we see Dr. Doom team up with Namor in some story about territorial rights followed by them temporarily teaming up with heroes to stop someone like Kang, who happens to have accidentally summoned Galactus — the Fantastic Four has been announced for a reason — and it becomes an “all hands on deck” type of situation of the Multiverse’s most powerful beings.
I asked owner/editor Rob Littal what he was hoping for and his answer both surprised me and is quintessential Rob at the same time. Instead of talking about this team or that team, he wants to see something on a micro scale. He wants to see Spider-Man done doing Multiversal stuff for a while and focus on the Neighborhood.
“I hope the next phases see Spider-Man back into his ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ role but also have him be a major player and at the forefront of events in Secret Wars, just as he was in the comics, but I’d also like to see Wanda and Dr. Doom get together.”
They could set up a scenario where Dr. Doom (played by Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders) promises Wanda that he can help deliver her desire to have magical children or her magical children. He shows her a taste of what he can do and that he’s a caring and good ruler to his Eastern Bloc nation people. Wanda decides to get back to her roots and moves to Latveria where she partners with Dr. Doom and decides to change her name to Valeria, citing Wanda is dead and that she’s moving on. Wouldn’t that be something?
As stated, there are enough ‘rumors’ out there from extremely reliable sources like Charles Murphy and Daniel Richtman, or outlets like Big Screen Leaks and Giant Freakin’ Robot that paint a reliable picture of where Marvel is headed with the larger project. We will explore some of those in other columns, but for now it’s safe to say that Marvel is going to take some huge swings and we should see plenty of things drifting from the “real” to the “comic-y” aspects of the Marvel Universe. They know fans are invested enough that they can get weird. Marvel used Guardians of the Galaxy as the litmus test for this, adding another notch in the “no coincidences” category of their filmmaking process.
However weird they went with Eternals, they’re gonna go weirder with things like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels, and Fantastic Four. I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life. Whether or not we get another planned major project after this remains to be seen, but whatever major event they’re planning for this particular finale is shaping up to involve plenty of heroes and villains from all walks of the Multiverse, Spider-Verse, and Universe. It’s as if my inner child is running Hollywood and I can’t wait for more.