New plot details for ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ suggests big things in store for the film’s villains

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is among the most important films Marvel Studios will ever put out in its lifetime. This is a film that will introduce some of the most important superheroes in the entire Marvel library, squaring up against James Gunn’s Superman for cultural supremacy, and setting the tone for the final act of the Multiverse Saga, which needs to be a victory in absolutely every sense of the word.

And, subtitle aside, we’ve been given every reason to remain hopeful for the First Family’s foray into Kevin Feige’s canon, and recently-emerged plot details have only piled on to the optimism. As revealed in the official First Steps project profile, the film will follow the Four as they reconcile operating as a superhero team with their dysfunctional family dynamic, but their biggest challenge will come in the form of double-threat Galactus and his herald Shalla-Bal, the Silver Surfer. To make matters even more complicated, the pair’s imminent attack on Earth turns out to be much more personal for the Four.

Now, we’ve known Galactus and the Silver Surfer were going to be involved for some time now, as Ralph Ineson and Julia Garner were respectively cast in the roles back in the spring. But given the pair’s specified alignment coupled with the promise that this will be a personal battle, there are a number of possibilities First Steps could take with these two.

The most obvious possibility is that the film could borrow from the Earth X limited series published by Marvel Comics, in which the Galactus mantle is taken on by Franklin Richards, the son of Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman. Importantly, this version of Galactus also made Shalla-Bal into the Silver Surfer so that she could reunite with Norrin Radd, the original Silver Surfer and Shalla-Bal’s former lover.

With this, you would have a few emotional playgrounds to work with. Reed and Sue would have to face the fact that the monster who’s endeavoring to swallow Earth is their child (who they may or may not have had yet, but this scenario is possible either way by the assumed presence of time travel; don’t forget that this is a Fantastic Four story in a canon involving the TVA).

Moreover, Shalla-Bal would ostensibly be driven not by a desire to see the Earth destroyed, but for the sake of being reunited with Norrin, which is a complex, character-specific emotional core that could run parallel with the fact that Reed and Sue are lovers as well. The fact that First Steps takes place in a separate reality like Earth X could very well be a nod to all of these possibilities as well.

Whatever the case, the First Steps hype train is perhaps the most state-of-the-art asset in Marvel’s hands right now, and there’s so much more we have yet to learn. We still, for instance, haven’t learned the identities of whoever Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne, and Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso) will portray, nor have we gotten a trailer just yet. Here’s hoping it will all come to a triumphant front when The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters on July 25, 2025.