It was kind of clear all along, but now that Marvel‘s Phase Four is now officially complete, it’s become abundantly obvious that Phase Four is the least-loved era of the MCU yet. While individual movies and TV shows from the past couple of years might have their ardent fans, the phase as a whole is often seen as a misstep for the nascent Multiverse Saga. In fact, according to this merciless meme, Phase Four didn’t so much open up the multiverse of madness as a multiverse of embarrassment.
In this pitch-perfect edit of a scene from Captain America: Civil War, which works bizarrely and hilarious well, the Avengers are forced to watch some of the most cringe moments from Phase Four — everything from Stephen Strange’s awful third eye to, yes, you guessed it, She-Hulk twerking with Megan The Stallion — much to their blank-faced horror. Which probably mirrors the expressions of certain fans watching these moments for the first time at home and in theaters.
This video saves the best for last, though, with Tommy and Billy’s infamous “ice cream” song from Doctor Strange 2 playing before it cuts back to Scarlet Witch looking away from the screen in pain, causing Steve Rogers to declare “Ok, that’s enough,” once again proving that Captain America is the voice of the people.
All in all, this edit makes clear that Marvel may have reached saturation point with its signature quippy and irreverent sense of humor and might want to rein that in a little heading into Phase Five and Six. Although, considering we have two highly comedic franchises in Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy dropping new installments over the next few months, that seems extremely unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, at least the Marvel fandom’s meme game has never been better.
