The Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom is a very particular type of hornet’s nest; there are perhaps more ways to poke it than any other fandom out there, and that in turn means that only so many of those individual pokes will have its intended effect.
Theoretically speaking, someone being confused about the apprehension behind the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars film solely because of Michael Waldron‘s involvement shouldn’t be one such effective poke; after all, with the exhaustive effort this fandom puts into nitpicking every pixel of every frame, one would think there would be a widespread acknowledgment of the very-available fact that Waldron had a couple of weeks to write the script for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In other words, the scribe probably wasn’t as culpable for the film’s wishy-washy reception as everyone seems to think.
But, as one thread on r/marvelstudios has proven, the world-class analyzation that the Marvel fandom regularly employs does not extend to real-world nuances.
In fairness, there were a few commenters who held aloft a beacon of truth in the mess of finger-pointing, some with a bit more tact than others.
Nevertheless, the crusade against Waldron largely found its feet yet again.
And one responder, ever omniscient, took on the responsibility of being the walking exposition for the whole debacle.
Indeed, when it comes to Marvel movies (and most Hollywood movies for that matter), the writers don’t tend to have much power, especially if writing the script is their only involvement with the film. We got an extra-icky glimpse of this following the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, whose ending was changed last minute from what could have been a genuinely impactful development for both Scott and especially Cassie into a laughably nonsensical, Hollywood-friendly ending.
So not only did Marvel spit on us by releasing Quantumania like that, but it also spit on scribe Jeff Loveness by throwing him under the bus for an ending that he almost certainly didn’t even write, much like how it spit on Waldron for giving him such a suffocating timeframe to write a film as big as Multiverse of Madness.
In any case, Waldron will be executive producing the second season of Loki, which is due later this year, so while his chops as a writer may not be redeemed by this next project, being at the top of the creative food chain for a change can and should be helpful for his image as one of Marvel’s highest-profile creatives.
