Everything that WandaVision, Hawkeye and Disney+’s other Marvel TV series have been building to, in tandem with their big-screen counterparts, will become more clear in the coming months, promises Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige.
Phase 3 of the MCU famously culminated in the feature film two-parter Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, during which Thanos succeeded in his years-long mission to gather the Infinity Stones and use them to “dust” half of all life, after which the Avengers pulled off a time heist and then assembled to undo his cosmic genocide.
In the years since, Phase 4 of the MCU thus far has included the feature films Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, complemented by the Disney+ series WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Moon Knight and now Ms. Marvel.
Still to come, however, are the movies Thor: Love and Thunder (premiering Stateside on July 8) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (in theaters Nov. 11), plus the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (premiering Aug. 17) — all of which will be followed in 2023 by a few more TV and movie offerings.
In addition to introducing the multiverse concept and a variant of the supervillain Kang the Conqueror (who will loom large in February’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), Phase 4 upgraded Wanda Maximoff to Scarlet Witch… formally appointed a new Captain America (in Sam Wilson)… and teased would-be Black Widow (Yelena) and Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) successors. (Read here for every way the TV series have changed the MCU.) And Ms. Marvel‘s budding hero, Kamala Khan, is already set to appear in the Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels (which isn’t out until late July 2023).
But what are all of the above building to? What is Phase 4’s own endgame, pun intended?
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige says in the new issue of Total Film (on newsstands June 23), that, “As we’re nearing the end of Phase 4, I think people will start to see where this next saga is going.
“I think there have been many clues already, that are at least apparent to me, of where this whole saga is going,” he added. “But we’ll be a little more direct about that in the coming months, to set a plan, so audiences who want to see the bigger picture can see a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more of the roadmap.”
Where exactly do you think the MCU is heading with Phase 4? And which small-screen heroes do you think will play meaningful roles on the big screen, as the final conflict draws closer?