The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently suffering a fate most serialized television shows bump up against at some point: The stakes have been raised so high that there’s nowhere else to go, and Marvel’s commitment to raising them even higher has cheapened the franchise and curbed enthusiasm for what’s to come. Secret Invasion is a perfect example of this, but it’s far from the only offender.
The MCU is currently halfway through its Multiverse Saga. Phase Five is only just kicking into gear, and what lies on the horizon are several long-awaited new heroes, a couple of Avenger movies, and a slew of Disney Plus shows. Of the nine films that have been released to this point, six of them have been sequels, with three more on deck. The arrival of new projects and heroes such as Fantastic Four, Blade, Thunderbolts, and even the final two Avenger films should be exciting, but it’s not. If you were to poll the MCU fandom to gauge the level of excitement for the rest of the Multiverse Saga, you would discover a sense of obligation instead of an eagerness to see how things play out.
The hole that is sinking the MCU are many, but the one that’s become the most apparent in the wake of Secret Invasion’s disappointing finale is Marvel’s commitment to crying wolf so many times we no longer believe there’s actually any wolf. In this scenario, Kevin Feige is the boy.
There are only so many times you can promise the end of the world before we stop believing you
Let’s start with the most recent offender. The main plot in Secret Invasion involved the leader of the radical Skrull resistance, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) becoming hellbent on annihilating the human race and taking over the Earth as the new home planet for the Skrull race. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but not because Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and G’iah (Emilia Clarke) saved the day. It didn’t happen because we already knew the human race would survive due to the slew of MCU movies yet to be made, and we already knew that the character, Rhodey, whose fate was put in peril, would live to tell the tale because he has his own Disney Plus show, Armor Wars, coming up.
Marvel’s commitment to high-stakes Disney Plus shows whose characters go on to star in future MCU films (or even further Disney Plus shows) chops excitement off at the knee. The problem here is twofold: we know they will make it out alive, and we know the world is not going to end.
On Reddit, fans agreed, saying “Marvel needs to stop putting end-of-the-world-stakes in every single one of their stories.” We saw it happen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when Wanda’s pursuit of America Chavez’s power threatened to lead to the decimation of the multiverse. That didn’t happen.
We saw it happen in Thor: Love and Thunder when Gorr the God Butcher promised to kill all Gods. That didn’t happen, nor did we expect it to. We saw it happen in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania when Kang’s release from the Quantum Realm meant he would concur and destroy entire timelines. That didn’t happen. We saw it happen in Eternals when the destruction of Earth was put in peril by the imminent arrival of the Celestial Tiamut. That didn’t happen.
Up and down the Multiverse Saga, these isolated storylines of mass destruction and chaos recur. Again, that’s not entirely the problem, since plots about villains threatening to take over or annihilate Earth, the galaxy, or the universe (or the multiverse) are built into the DNA of sci-fi/fantasy stories. The issue here is the lack of emotional stakes mixed with the knowledge that our endangered protagonists will live to appear in future movies and TV shows.
Captain America: Civil War is a great example of a film that centered around the destruction not of the world, but of a friendship, and the repercussions that destruction might mean for the future of the Avengers team. Hawkeye is a fantastic example of a Disney Plus show that involved the main protagonist trying to fight off enemies in order to get home in time for Christmas, all the while promising to deliver on subplots that could cause a major threat down the road (but even still, not a worldwide one). WandaVision is another great example of a story that was about the destruction of a town, not the world.
Avengers: Infinity War is also proof that not wrapping up a story with a neat bow has its benefits; had that film not succeeded in upping the emotional stakes, the masses wouldn’t have flocked to movie theaters to make Avengers: Endgame the second-highest-grossing movie of all time.
There’s power in letting your hero lose every now and then. The entire concept of the Multiverse Saga makes lowering the Armageddon-level stakes a narrative challenge; if you can’t do that, at least up the emotional ones. And if you can’t do that, at least don’t spoil the reveal that our favorite superheroes will make it out alive in the end. That’s all we’re asking, really.