Avengers: Endgame put a perfect bow on a decade of cinema, concluding the stories of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers and setting up a fascinating new status quo for the MCU. But the announced slate of upcoming projects indicates that Marvel Studios is eager to move forward and focus on new heroes. These will include The Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi, She-Hulk, Moon Knight and many more. It’s a smart move from both a creative and business perspective, as new blood will keep audiences from feeling as if they’ve seen all this before, and it’s much easier to lock new actors into multi-film contracts for the next few phases.
But fans have been wondering whether the existing characters we all know and love will be a secondary concern. Well, today, Disney Chairman Bob Iger spoke with investors at an earnings call and discussed what he’s calling the “Post-Avengers” world. That doesn’t sound great for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but he soon clarified that this isn’t a clean break with the past, saying:
“In Marvel’s case, I’m calling it the post-Avengers world, it doesn’t mean there aren’t films being made with characters from the Avengers. In fact, we have Black Widow coming out, in fiscal ’20, and a Thor 4 movie in the works, and I can go on and on. We also are mining other characters like Eternals.”
That’s true, but it right now it seems that the existing MCU characters will find homes on Disney Plus rather than on the big screen. We’ll see the direct fallout of Steve Rogers’ decision to hand the shield to Falcon in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch getting over the loss of Vision in WandaVision and Hawkeye training the next generation of bow-wielding superheroes in uh, Hawkeye.
Still, once we’re a couple of films deep into the next phase, I really hope they bring back some old favorites for one more adventure with the Avengers we know and love.
