It now seems fitting that WandaVision will finally herald the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Phase Four when in an alternate reality of our own, Black Widow already kicked things off six months ago, with The Falcon and the Winter Solider marking the franchise’s official small screen bow in August, and Eternals would’ve no doubt been dominating the box office after being released last weekend.
Of course, with the Coronavirus pandemic ravaging the film and television industry, Marvel’s calendar has undergone multiple reshuffles, which must have caused some headaches behind the scenes given that the MCU is an intricately designed puzzle that has to fit together in a specific order to ensure all of the moving parts are ultimately pulling in the same direction.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is widely expected to pick up some dangling plot threads left hanging at the end of Black Widow, and we’ve always known that WandaVision would connect directly to the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but now we’ve got to wait until March 2022 to find out how. That being said, we should get some indication when the Sorcerer Supreme shows up in next December’s Spider-Man 3.
In the meantime, Entertainment Weekly recently ran a cover story on WandaVision and confirmed that a few changes have been made to the continuity of Phase Four as a result of the reshuffle, although the studio were obviously not drawn into offering up any details or specifics.
With the pandemic shuffling release dates, Marvel is also taking extra care to ensure the new schedule won’t spoil story continuity.
In terms of the output, Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be more standalone stories in order to introduce their respective new faces, but the rest of the movies all focus on returning characters and will inevitably incorporate some interweaving plot threads that could give us a hint of where the MCU is heading in a post-Avengers: Endgame world.