Marvel Studios is entering a rebuilding phase with the Feb. 17 launch of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. After Phase 4 laid the foundation for the multiverse post-Avengers: Endgame and expanded prolifically across film and television, Phase 5 is shaping up to be more narratively focused, and a little more patient with its rollout, as all roads lead to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (May 2, 2025) and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 1, 2026).
If Phase 5 can continue to take some of the creative risks of Phase 4, while keeping sight of its arc in terms of both themes and escalating threats, it could prove to be Marvel Studios’ most successful film line-up yet, or at least the one that stops the handwringing over The Multiverse Saga being able to live up to The Infinity Saga.
There’s been some expressed (some of it overblown) concern that audiences are losing interest in the MCU post-Endgame. It’s the ever-present myth of superhero fatigue and the exhausting mentality that these movies need to be billion-dollar hits to be labeled a success. Much has been made about the fact that no Marvel movie in 2022 reached $1 billion dollars, with the biggest box office numbers of the year going to Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water.
I’d argue it’s healthy for the box office and good for audiences, and superhero movies when comic book characters aren’t constantly the dominant force in the industry. Even then, it’s not like Marvel Studios was caught flop-sweating. Any concern over superhero fatigue seems silly when a Doctor Strange sequel can make $955.8 million, without a release in China. The effects of COVID aside, Marvel is still proving to be a major draw for audiences, which looks unlikely to change with Phase 5. But looking past the box office, Phase 4 did suffer some pitfalls that Phase 5 is undoubtedly looking to correct.
While Phase 4 was arguably the most connected in a thematic sense as the MCU has ever been, with the stages of grief, mental health, and legacy being central to each entry, many audiences felt there was a lack of narrative direction. The multiverse, while present in a few entries, was not the primary storytelling device, and until Kevin Feige revealed the Phase 5 and 6 slate at San Diego Comic-Con last summer, there was confusion about what all of these entries were building toward. The introduction of new characters and their individual adversaries were reminiscent of Phase 1, but unlike that initial introduction to the MCU, there was no building to an Avengers film in Phase 4, something we knew was coming from the very beginning of Phase 1.
While there was something refreshing to this new approach, it did perhaps leave a few too many loose ends for Phase 4 to feel complete for those a expecting bow-tied package. A significant part of that came down to the sheer number of projects in Phase 4 as the MCU expanded to Disney+. There were simply too many new characters and concepts for them to all neatly come together, so audiences were left looking at a pile of puzzle pieces, that while intriguing, didn’t give them a whole picture. There is, of course, no obligation to on the part of Marvel, and fandom could surely learn a lesson in patience, but behind that there are genuine critiques worth considering.
The number of MCU projects became overwhelming for some viewers, even for some the biggest stalwarts. It’s not just the fact that viewers needed to watch certain series to be able to fully appreciate the movies (WandaVision was essential to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) which is just an expected factor at this point, but that there simply wasn’t enough breathing room between projects to allow for anticipation to build. After a yearlong break in 2020 due to COVID, Phase 4 crammed its storytelling slate into two years: WandaVision (2021), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), Black Widow (2021), Loki (2021), What If? (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Eternals (2021), Hawkeye (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Moon Knight (2022), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Ms. Marvel (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022), Werewolf by Night (2022), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022). That’s 17 entries, compared to the 6 of Phase 1, and Phase 2, and the 11 of Phase 3. If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s perhaps that less is more and absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Looking ahead, it seems Marvel Studios is willing to adjust. While Wall Street was originally all in on streaming, with ousted Disney CEO Bob Chapek, being quite bullish on Disney+, things seem to have cooled on that front. With the streaming industry facing losses, Chapek’s exit, and the return of CEO Bob Iger, it seems Marvel Studios is taking a slight pause to re-evaluate their output, with some shows being delayed and rumors pointing to others being re-worked as movies or Marvel Special Presentations like Werewolf by Night and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. This should aid in not stretching Feige so thin, which seemed to have a greater effect of the entries released in 2022 than 2021, and hopefully allow for more time and better treatment to beleaguered VFX artists.
This year, it looks like we’ll get a more manageable three films, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Marvels, and at least two TV shows, Secret Invasion and Loki. That leaves What If…? season two, Ironheart, Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts, Blade, Echo, Agatha: Coven of Chaos, and Daredevil: Born Again on the docket for Phase 5. Presumably, there will be changes in the release schedule and these entries will be stretched out between 2024 and 2025.
There will certainly be a few Marvel Special Presentations to fill out Phase 5. But as it stands now, 13 entries, with more breathing room between each entry should certainly help with the sense of overcrowding, and enable Marvel Studios to react to what works and what doesn’t with adequate time. Also, working in Phase 5’s favor is a more apparent sense of narrative continuity in terms of how the projects are grouped, with cosmic, magic, espionage, and street-level being the central sub-categories of Phase 5, with Kang (Jonathan Majors) and his variants weaving between all of them.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will introduce Kang as the big bad of the Multiverse Saga, and it seems the character will be far more hands on throughout Phase 5 and 6 than Thanos was to Phases 2 and 3, giving audiences a central threat to root against (or cheer for). The previews for Quantumania, and the rest of the titles in Phase 5 all seem to suggest that the MCU will be heading in a darker direction. Given Feige’s affinity for Star Wars, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to look at Phase 5 as though it were applying the tone and scope of Empire Strikes Back over its entirety. But rather than looking at how these characters handle loss after a win as Luke Skywalker and co. did in Empire, the MCU’s Phase 5 seems to beg the question of how much more can these characters lose and still emerge as heroes?
As its heroes face increasingly impossible odds, Marvel Studios will reshape the odds of success for their Multiverse Saga in their favor. That sounds like a Marvel method that will pay off with both fans and creatives.
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