After the interdimensional doldrums of 2023, a year that delivered two of the least successful MCU movies ever in Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels, Marvel really needed a 12-month stretch as strong as the Hulk to bounce back in 2024. On paper, it did just that, with two critically acclaimed TV shows beloved by fans and a barnstorming $1 billion plus hit in the form of Deadpool & Wolverine.
And yet that doesn’t fully capture the strange and sprawling picture that was Marvel’s past year. Especially once you expand the canvas to encompass whatever the hell Sony was doing in the superhero sandbox over the same period. There was much for audiences to love about what the MCU had to offer in 2024, but some of its weirder moments prove that just because Marvel is the House of Ideas that doesn’t mean every idea is a good one.
10) An MCU series drops all at once and everyone promptly forgets it exists
Be honest, you totally forgot Echo was a thing until right now, didn’t you? It’s OK, so did the rest of us. Despite how meaningful it is to have a Marvel superhero who’s a deaf Indigenous amputee get her own vehicle, Echo came and went like a, well, like its namesake when Marvel unceremoniously dropped all five episodes on Disney Plus in one go back in January 2024. Remember when WandaVision was the most talked-about show on social media for weeks? Fast forward three years and Echo faded from the conversation quicker than it took to watch it.
9) Agatha All Along‘s two biggest twists are spoiled after a single episode
Thankfully, the MCU’s second live-action TV offering of last year managed to make a much bigger impact, as Agatha All Along turned out to be wonderfully witchy Fall viewing (and a perfect prelude to the Wicked-Mania that directly followed it). Tragically, however, although Marvel did its darndest to keep the show’s spoilers under (Joe) lock and key, some errant toy listings went and gave away its two biggest character reveals… after only one episode had aired. OK, so we all knew Teen was Wiccan, but Aubrey Plaza being Death really should’ve been an epic rug-pull moment.
8) Channing Tatum’s Gambit is Deadpool 3‘s best cameo
If we had been told the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine before it came out, we’d never have predicted which of its many multiversal cameos would actually hit the hardest. Wesley Snipes returning as Blade after 20 years? Henry Cavill becoming the only actor not called Hugh Jackman to play Logan? What about Chris Evans cursing up a storm as Human Torch? Nope, it was actually Channing Tatum as Gambit, finally getting to embody the marble-mouthed mutant after years of failed attempts. Congrats, Channing, you did indeed make a name for yourself here.
7) Kraven the Hunter CGIs Ariana DeBose’s mouth
Speaking of Henry Cavill, we once thought Superman’s erased mustache was the worst crime that could be committed to an actor’s mouth in a superhero movie. Somehow, we were wrong. Out of the endless fountain of failure that was Kraven the Hunter, its most mind-boggling moment must surely be when, in one exposition-heavy scene, Ariana DeBose’s Calypso suddenly develops a condition which causes her mouth to turn into a cartoon. Dialogue getting dubbed in post-production is nothing new, but the brain-breakingly bad way they covered this one up is.
6) The audacity of Venom: The Last Dance‘s post-credits scene
As the filling in the unholy sandwich of Sony’s three Spider-Man spinoff movies released in 2024, Venom: The Last Dance was certainly the best (or, perhaps more accurately, least worst) but that really isn’t saying much. Just take its shockingly shameless post-credits scene, which saw Andy Serkis’ uber-bad Knull promise that he will return, then — in a Deadpool-like fourth-wall break —declare, “And you will watch.” That sums up Sony’s misguided approach to comic book filmmaking in a nutshell — “feed the masses superhero slop and they’ll eat it up if we tell them!” As it turns out, though, we didn’t.
5) A Young Avenger became older than an actual Avenger
This didn’t actually happen on screen in the MCU, but one notable real-life birthday nonetheless speaks to the aimlessness of the current Multiverse Saga so perfectly that it blows your mind. In December, Hawkeye star Hailee Steinfeld turned 28 years old. This means that the actress, who has been due to join the Young Avengers since 2021, is now officially older than Scarlett Johansson was when she starred in the actual Avengers movie in 2012. Why is it so hard to make the Young Avengers happen, Marvel?!
4) Howard the Duck has a human baby
In 1986, Marvel looked to have nixed its chances at cinematic success with its very first movie in the form of the abysmal Howard the Duck, which disturbed ’80s audiences everywhere by depicting a love story between a talking duck and a human woman. In 2024, Marvel decided it was now too big to fail and elected to take this concept one step further. In the wildest episode of What If…? season 3, Howard the Duck and Kat Denning’s Darcy get hitched and have a kid — who, just to add to the weirdness, grows up to be Natasha Lyonne. Howard the Duck 2 when?
3) X-Men ’97 turns out to be the best Marvel show ever
A follow-up to X-Men: The Animated Series 30 years after it premiered might’ve been a dream come true to ’90s kids, but it definitely felt like the nichest project Marvel Studios had ever commissioned when it was first announced. And then we saw it. X-Men ’97 season 1 turned out to be such a note-perfect rendition of the best superhero team in the Marvel universe (sorry, Avengers, but I am one of those aforementioned ’90s kids) that we hardly need the upcoming movie reboot. It’s a crying shame the show has since become mired in controversy due to behind-the-scenes upset.
3) Taylor Swift didn’t show up in Deadpool & Wolverine
The other thing about Deadpool & Wolverine that we couldn’t have predicted, besides Channing Tatum stealing the show? That Taylor Swift wouldn’t have the chance to! Even though insiders told us the era-defining songstress wouldn’t be popping up in the threequel beforehand, the intense speculation had reached such “Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home” levels that we were convinced Swift would show as either Lady Deadpool or Dazzler. Clearly, there’s an insatiable hunger to see Taylor in the MCU, and if Marvel isn’t already in talks with her I’d be very much surprised.
2) Just, like, all of Madame Web
Kraven was bad, to an insulting degree, but somehow it pales in comparison to its sister film from Sony’s Spider-Man Without Spider-Man Universe. What else can be said about Madame Web that hasn’t already been said before, from its logic-defying denouement to its unexpected allusions to A Goofy Movie. Suffice it to say, Madame Web is the first truly multiversal Marvel movie in that it feels like it has traveled from a universe where filmmakers deliberately make their art as bad as possible, from its screenplay, to Dakota Johnson not knowing what to do with a Pepsi can.
1) Robert Downey Jr. is Doctor Doom
The absolute strangest moment in Marvel’s past year, however, surely has to be its most exciting for many a fan — although equally its most controversial. Marvel undoubtedly stole the show at July’s Comic-Con by unveiling its rebooted plans for Avengers 5, with Doctor Doom now at the center of the web… as played by none other than Iron Man himself. Whether this turns out to be a stroke of genius or confirmation that the MCU is now just a giant snake eating its own tail, we’ll have to wait until 2026 to discover. In the meantime, here’s to a saner year for Marvel in 2025!
Published: Jan 3, 2025 03:11 pm