Marvel May Be Shelving A Lot Of MCU Characters In Phase Four

Following Avengers: Endgame, the MCU will look very different going forward. Obviously, Iron Man and Captain America are out for the count but there’s also the general sense that the movie closed the book on the original generation of heroes to make way for the more recent additions to the franchise, as well as characters we’ve yet to meet. Now, new intel has confirmed this assumption, as well as suggesting we won’t see many of our favorites again for a while.

Reddit user TheMarvelScoopMaster shared his informed estimate of Marvel‘s line-up for Phase Four last week, following up his reasoning with other Redditors in the comments section. When one person enquired whether the absence of Ant-Man 3 from the slate meant that the series was over, the insider wrote that “Likelihood is high. Marvel Studios will need to shelve some characters and Ant-Man/Wasp while great characters may be casualties of this.”

When asked by another to clarify what “shelving” means in this context, the user explained that Ant-Man, Wasp and many others “will be relegated to supporting characters in other films or at the very least being used in Avengers.”

“They’ll still be in the MCU, just in a diminished capacity,” said TheMarvelScoopMaster. “Similar to Tony after Iron Man 3. He was still in the MCU but was not appearing in films with any set regularity or schedule.”

TheMarvelScoopMaster added that the reasoning behind this decision is because of the influx of new characters the studio is getting from Fox. There’s only so many movies they can make, after all, and apparently, this could result in a major clear-out, with perhaps only four established heroes continuing to lead their own franchises from now on.

“For better or worse, with Marvel getting a bunch of new characters soon this is going to be the case for a lot of characters,” the tipster writes. “I don’t know who exactly will be shelved but expect a lot of characters to be set aside. The only exceptions I’d say are Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange.”

Assuming this info is correct, it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, these characters are the ones we’ve heard that Marvel are giving sequels to in the next few years. The only thing is that we’ve heard a Thor 4 is coming too, which this intel doesn’t mention. Still, it certainly adds up with most of what we’ve been told and it’ll certainly be interesting to see what shape Phase 4 takes once it starts to materialize.