First, the essentials; there’s a rumor going around that two major Marvel Studios films, Young Avengers and Midnight Sons, are due to release in 2027, and will start filming next year on top of it all. This rumor has not been confirmed in any way, shape, form, or fashion, and frankly should not be taken with any salt whatsoever.
But let’s pretend for a second that the MCU was in fact gearing up for four major ensemble films from the middle of 2026 to the end of 2027 (Avengers 5 is due out on May 1, 2026, while Avengers: Secret Wars hits theaters on May 7, 2027). That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Michelin-worthy recipe for falling flat on your face. This obsession with setup and scope is precisely what’s been dumpstering the Multiverse Saga as of late, and especially given the state that Blade is in, beginning production on Midnight Sons is categorically unthinkable.
In fact, at this rate, ensemble films are the last thing Marvel should be thinking about right now.
Avengers only worked because everything else did
As we’ve pointed out in the past, Marvel’s worst enemy post-Endgame has been a lack of proper momentum; recent projects have cared more about the next big team-up event than they do about themselves, and we viewers are physiologically unable to care about something that we don’t know anything about. Thus, there’s nothing really there for us audiences to meaningfully buy into (which will hopefully change with Deadpool & Wolverine and The Fantastic Four, but we’ll believe that when we see it).
This was not a problem during the saga that Iron Man kicked off. Earlier MCU films made entire trilogies centered around individual characters, and each entry was entirely in service to itself and the story that it was telling about its protagonist; from 2008 to roughly 2011, an ensemble event film like 2012’s Avengers wasn’t anyone’s priority whatsoever. This mentality continued with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man films, the first two Ant-Mans, and the pre-Endgame Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther films; these were stories first and stepping stones second (and it wasn’t a close second, either), and we could subsequently buy into the Avengers-level stakes because those previous stories resonated with us.
But now, these films and television shows are stepping stones first, because these big event films have inadvertently become the Marvel North Star, and the exciting muchness of such events has resulted in the studio neglecting to inspect the proverbial rocket so as to get on with the trademark takeoff (or, at least, what they believe to be such). And that’s just considering one ensemble film; cohesively roping together three or even four? All in the same pot? Competing against all the noise of the others at the same time? Forget about it.
But the fact remains that ensemble films can still work; the problem right now is that something like Midnight Sons or Young Avengers or even the two upcoming Avengers films that we actually know exist, doesn’t have an “everything else” to work so that they can also work.
In a better world, Blade would have been the new Iron Man
With that, let’s consider a Midnight Sons film for a moment.
Imagine, after Endgame had wrapped and maybe after tying up the Spider-Man trilogy, if Marvel Studios took a break for a year or two while cooking up Blade behind the scenes, ultimately introducing the Daywalker as the new backbone for this new chapter in the MCU. Blade would be followed by a sequel or two, and somewhere in that mix, a Ghost Rider film is launched, as is an Elsa Bloodstone feature, as well as a Moon Knight movie that isn’t terribly dissimilar from the show we already have. Conclude that phase with a Midnight Sons crossover film, and move on to the next phase, where you continue building up your core heroes while bringing new characters into the mix (maybe a returning Doctor Strange with a reimagined Nico Minoru in tow), perhaps culminating in another Midnight Sons crossover film. Repeat this again, and end on your Infinity War-Endgame equivalent with Mephisto in place of Thanos.
And once that’s done, do the same thing with Young Avengers, or X-Men, or whoever you want, but for the love of Stan, Marvel Studios, tell us a story. The aforementioned route may be out of the question by now, but the point is that Marvel shouldn’t be in such a hurry to plug as many characters as possible into their franchise just so they can appear in a three-hour CGI fest later on; they need to make us fall in love with Eric Brooks, Kamala Khan, and Scott Summers in the same way we fell in love with Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and Natasha Romanoff.
And we simply cannot do that if they don’t take the time to love themselves first.
