Fixing a Broken Universe

Originally my plan for the release of Captain America: Brave New World was just to write two articles if needed, one a standard review and one a spoilery review if there was enough material to justify it. But in the lead up to the release it became clear that a lot was riding on the fate of this film, with Marvel’s future, at least with fans of the franchise, hanging in the balance. This was the first film in the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. after Marvel took a “break year”, and this was the movie that was supposed to benefit from the studio recalibrating and focusing on the series. If this film succeeded it would show Marvel could continue with their big plans. If it failed, though… well…

Suffice it to say, at least narratively and creatively, the film was a failure. It might be doing decently in theaters (certainly better than The Eternals or The Marvels fared) but its story just isn’t striking a chord with fans, and it’s probable that the film will retain a low audience and critics’ score and become one of the worst performers for Phase V of the franchise, doing well only by comparison to many of the other lows the franchise has recently seen. To fix this issue the studio can’t just recalibrate now. They needed to fix the issue way back, in Phase IV, with a plan that actually would have suited the series and created a strong foundation for the film franchise going forward.

So, like I did in my posthumous review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, I want to take a look back at Phases IV and V and come up with a way to actually make this series work, start to finish. We have to streamline and reorganize everything, moving plotlines, shifting characters around, and creating a cohesive whole that shows there was a plan in place because, as it’s clear now, there never was one for “The Multiverse Saga” at all.

To be clear, I don’t want to get rid of all the projects we received. If we assume each and every show and movie we did get from the MCU eventually came out in some form in this rewritten series, then we can rework everything to function in a cohesive whole. Marvel has always had side stories and adventures that sit just enough outside the main thrust of the films that they didn’t have to tie in if Marvel didn’t want them to. Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example, a fantastic film that sat so far outside the main storyline of the MCU, literally at a different point in the galaxy, that the heroes basically existed in their own universe… right up until they finally crossed over. We can have those kinds of stories here as they lend themselves.

More important is to make sure that everything key in the universe works together. This is what a studio head, like Feige, should have been doing for “The Multiverse Saga”. He should have sat down in a writers’ room, spending two weeks or so plotting out the broad strokes of each adventure so that they knew the key points that would happen: what characters would star, what their arcs would be, and what the resolution of the film would lead to. You could bullet point this (and, in fact, that’s what I did when I wrote my webcomic, CVRPG, for 8,000 comics and nearly 20 years of material), but you have to know, going in on a long project (and an MCU Saga is, by its nature, a long project) what the plan will be. Even when curveballs come along (and COVID-19, for example, was a pretty major curveball) you have the plan to keep everything locked down and moving.

So, with all of that established, what would this streamlined, rewritten MCU look like:

Phase IV

To begin with, we have to open with a film that actually establishes the scope of the next Phase going forward. The first Phase of “The Multiverse Saga” was curiously not that interested in the Multiverse, but we can accept that if we acknowledge that Marvel had to ease us into it. As such, instead of worrying about getting the Multiverse on its feet (we’ll get there soon, don’t worry) the first film should focus on grounded stakes for the first chapter of this Saga. We have a new status quo, with most of the Avengers dead or disbanded, new heroes stepping up, and a lot of gaps in the superhero lineup to fill. So we should start off with a film that addresses this: Black Widow.

Now, I know, this film was awful, and that’s in large part because it was telling a story that, by nature of being an interquel for a character that’s already dead, felt disconnected and aimless from the overarching Saga. As such, let’s recalibrate it. We need this film to introduce Yelena, who will go on to become Black Widow II in future films. It can even remain an interquel since we want the passing of the torch from Natasha to Yelena. So what we need is a plotline that can involve both of them while setting the stakes for the next few projects.

Instead of an insular, inward looking film focused on the Red Room and Black Widows it produced (which, for the most part, hasn’t paid off in any interesting ways after this film), we want a storyline and villains that suit the skills of Black Widows. Natasha and Yelena are highly trained, expert covert agents. They use deception and cunning to infiltrate, blend in, and attack. They should go up against a villain, or group, that uses similar skills from a different perspective. Natasha and Yelena should have fought Skrulls.

Think about it this way: if we aren’t removing any projects from the MCU then that means we have to, at some point, address Secret Invasion. I’d really rather not, but end of the day, we’re keeping everything at least in name, so we’re keeping the Skrulls. If they’re working to infiltrate and take over various governments so that it can come to a head in Secret Invasion, then we need to start setting them up early to make their threat feel real. Natasha and Yelena taking on a small cell of Skrull infiltrators in the U.S. government allows the two agents a way to work their skills. Natasha is on the run from the government, infiltrates an agency to try and set up an identity for herself, a safe space to hide, and encounters Yelena. Her sister is there on her own mission, and they end up having to team up because both realize something more is going on. This allows them to battle the Skrulls, stopping this one cell, but it also puts out the threat that the Skrulls could be back, eventually.

And I’m not saying we have to get rid of the Red Room material from the first film entirely. I think we just save all that for a second film, a Black Widow: The Red Room, movie for Yelena alone, which could come at a later point. Had one Black Widow film been successful, more adventures would follow, and having Yelena explore the operations of the Red Room would have worked fine on its own later. Certainly it’s had no bearing on the MCU so it didn’t have to come at the start of Phase IV at all.

One other thing I’d do in this movie is bring back Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, reintroducing him here (instead of saving him for Captain America: Brave New World) so that he can say, “the Skrulls are a threat and they must be stopped.” Then as a subtle background thread through many of the movies and shows after this we can see Ross on TV talking about the threats America faces. We can see a report of him launching his presidential run. We can see posters and advertisements for his run: Let Thunderbolt Save America! That way when, way down the road, he does become president it feels organic, like it was earned.

From here we next should establish the Multiverse a bit, and also the villain that is supposed to carry “The Multiverse Saga”. In this writing of the universe we are going to keep Kang, and even with Johnathan Majors’s issues, we’re still going to maintain Kang as the villain, we’d just recast him. That means that, as early as we can, we have to involve Kang and make him an active player. Loki comes next and, honestly, I have no notes. That show is pretty great and while I could see trimming it down and maybe making it a movie instead of a limited series, I don’t think we need to mess around with the general story here. Season 1 of Loki happens as we expect, and we move on.

Next should be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and we will have some more important changes here. To start, this absolutely needed to be a movie, not a show, and we should explicitly make it a film that ties into the The Captain America legacy. We call this work The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: America’s Legacy to underline that point, but we keep the broad strokes more or less the same. Falcon doesn’t immediately accept the shield, the U.S. passes it on to John Walker, who becomes Captain America II, but the man isn’t ready for the power or responsibility. He ends up killing people in an effort to stop a terrorist plot, and Falcon has to suit up and take him on in a climactic fight that sees Sam Wilson using his powers, not just fighting but his ability to connect and care, to bring the off-the-reservation super soldier down. Then, in a ceremony, Sam is made Captain America (technically the third one) and everyone is happy.

Oh, and in the process of all this we see that the terrorists John was fighting were, at least in part, Skrull agents. We need to make sure we hammer that point and keep the Skrulls as a threat. Otherwise, again, Secret Invasion down the road just doesn’t work.

Now, with our major threads properly established, we can get a little weird. Here is where we put in some of the fun and trippy jaunts for the MCU: WandaVision, What If…? Season 1, and Hawkeye. The latter isn’t a trippy jaunt, sure, but it is a fun, street-level adventure for a legacy character. I think it, too, could have been a movie instead of a series, but I don’t otherwise think we need to mess with it. Having it here helps as a palette cleanser before we dive into the next section of actual plot for the Phase.

Trying to tie in major themes, the next film should be Spider-man: No Way Home. We have the film play out as it did before, but with one major twist: after the multiversal adventure ends we have a tag ending showing a Kang observing the events. He remarks how this very nearly could have destroyed the Sacred Timeline. And then, with a smile, he says, “we need more events like this,” and the camera turns to show a few other Kangs, all agreeing. This is similar to the tag ending in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, except it comes earlier in the Saga and doesn’t leave Kang feeling like an afterthought. Just having Kang appear here or there, like Thanos did in “The Infinity Saga”, is important to the overall plotting of this Phase.

We then should push forward the Skrull storyline at some level, and I think we do that in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This isn’t to have the Skrulls become major agents in that film, but just that a small side plot or tag ending can reveal there were Skrull agents working in Wakanda, securing a batch of Vibranium for their needs. We don’t know what that might be, not yet, but this does ensure we continue to consider the Skrulls a threat.

And then we can have a couple of more of the side adventures. Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel both function here and while, once again, I feel like these should have been movies, not shows, we can at least slot them in here well and they’ll work as side stories to cleanse our palettes. Shang-Chi can slot in here so we have a character that should be on the Avengers team introduced, and we can also put in Eternals, even if no one wants this film to exist. We need the Celestial Island for later plotting, so this is important.

They would then lead to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and while this would feel like another side adventure, one key plotline should be added in: She-Hulk should take on the case of a shape-changer who stole the identity of a celebrity and has been pretending to be them for long enough that, just maybe, the court should rule they are now functionally that person. Naturally that shape-changer would be a Skrull, and now we have the precedent set that the Skrulls have been working for years and are taking over all kinds of people. That feels very important for our story going forward.

We shift to side adventures Thor: Love and Thunder can occur more or less as it worked in the current universe, although again we can drop hints to other threats going on. Some Skrull refugees can be staying at New Asgard, illustrating to us that not all Skrulls are bad, but they are starting to appear everywhere. We can also have a Kang to three show up in the court of Zeus, simply observing and acting like gods. None of these cameos are essential, per se, but they do continue to remind us these characters exist, and that’s very important. And then we can drop in Werewolf by Night, just for fun, even though it doesn’t have to tie in to anything here.

Now for the big change: Avengers: Secret Invasion. Instead of a bad mini-series that somehow spent over $200 Mil to give us a story about the Skrulls taking over all major facets of the world but, somehow, didn’t have any superheroes in it other than Warmachine, we’ll do it as a movie that really makes us realize how big the threat could be. They’ve moved their way into all functions of government, they’ve been taking over many of the superheroes we’ve met – Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi, Moon Knight, Ironheart – and now they’re working to put back together the Avengers, just with their body-swapped heroes in control. Yelena returns here, contacting Bucky and Sam about what’s going on, and the three launch into an investigation. They try to contact some heroes they know, like Warmarchine, but only find themselves double-crossed when those heroes turn out to be Skrulls. On the run, they have to find allies to help them and, in the process, they end up forming a new team of Avengers specifically to fight threats like this.

Certainly that’s more interesting than what we actually got for Secret Invasion. It ties in characters we know, it brings many plot threads to a head, and it makes the series feel like it was plotted well.

Now, in the process of this film we could also get one other storyline going: Scarlet Witch could get her kids back. This was a major plotline for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with her trying to increase her power enough that she can break through the Multiverse and find a universe where her fake, imaginary kids were real. It doesn’t really work in that film because it comes out of nowhere and sort of invalidates her character growth at the end of WandaVision, but if we put in a thread here when Wanda gets her kids, but they end up being Skrulls, this could establish too things: one, her kids are real, somewhere somehow, and, two, it would give her the motivation to try and break through the Multiverse. Now she has reason for the twist in her character, and it actually serves a real purpose.

After this we can also do The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, just for fun, and then we can end the Phase on an important film: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Now, make no mistake, we need to put this film through the wringer, giving it a better script, a punchier story, and vastly better special effects. While I don’t think I’d change the main thrust of the film at all, I would encourage a major rewrite and any other improvements we could make to turn this into a watchable film. But keeping this movie here is important because it lets us have Kang in again, and it ends the Phase on Kang and not anyone else. Phase V would be his big Phase, and we’re establishing he is a major threat not to be trifled with.

Phase V

Now we come into this Phase with momentum. Kang is our villain, the Skrulls are out of the way, and we can get down to business. So step one is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a movie that doesn’t have anything to do with any major plotlines. Why have it, then? Because this is the launch of the Phase and we want to start with energy. This third Guardians of the Galaxy film was one of the best performing MCU films of the Saga, so it’s a great way to start the Phase and keep audiences interested in what comes next. I wouldn’t change anything about this movie as it stands, I just want it as our “season opener”, if you will.

From there we then need to make sure everyone remembers Kang is a thing, so we should have Loki: Season 2 debut. As the show stands, Loki essentially writes off Kang, removing him as a villain via, well, handwave something something Multiverse! We’ll never see Kang again in the main universe, but I think here, instead of letting the character drop as a villain, we have a tag ending on the last episode where that meeting of the Kangs occurs again and one of them remarks that they’ve lost another of their kind. They need to gather the Kangs, to get them ready for war! That’s a solid way to escalate the threat and make sure audiences stick around for what’s next.

Next we move over to The Marvels, and here we can see some of the remnants of the Skrulls trying to find a new planet to live on, especially after some of them have turned Earth against their kind. Captain Marvel can have her arc about how she failed the Skrulls and is trying to make right by them, and that helps to tie this film better into the arc we had for Phase IV. It also puts a nice postscript on the Skrull arc. This film needed better connections to the MCU without feeling like a weird offshoot that retconned away details (like how the original film completely ignored Secret Invasion) and this is the way to handle that.

Then we produce Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a film I purposefully kept aside from Phase IV for now. I want it here because now, with Wanda on the hunt for her kids, we can also bring in Kang. He could offer her the power to split the Multiverse, amplifying her magic even more. Wanda can then have the adventure she had, battling Doctor Strange, who worries about the level of power she’s gathering. They could team up to fight a Kang, if needed, and then Wanda could even make a noble sacrifice, giving up her life to undo the damage she caused. It ends the film in a similar place we had it before, just tying it better into the main thrust of the Phase.

Also, instead of a council of fan-service heroes from other films (Captain Carter, Professor Xavier, et al), we could have a council of Kangs appear in the film. They could be working against the Kang that’s helping Wanda, showing there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes among the Kangs than we realize. We need this kind of development because, otherwise, a big mass of multiversal villains hardly feels interesting. Did Kang ever really feel like a threat in the MCU? No? This helps solve that.

Naturally we can then have some other side adventures again. What If…? Season 2 and Echo could take place here. I don’t necessarily feel like Echo is essential to anything in the MCU at this point, but we’re not getting rid of anything so we have to put it somewhere. Maybe if its ties to the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again were more explicit then the show would feel more interesting… although I don’t know if that will ever be the case.

From here we then place Captain America: Brave New World, but only the parts of Cap having to deal with President Thaddeus Ross and a terrorist threat that could put the peace accord over Celestial Island into doubt. We don’t do anything with the Red Hulk, aside from maybe a couple of hints that maybe Thaddeus has an anger problem, but we wave all the Hulk stuff for later. As I said in my spoiler discussion for this film, it really needed to be two movies, not one. This is how we do that.

You could also reintroduce some of the eventual Thunderbolts* members in this film. Maybe John Walker, now serving as U.S. Agent, is on the President’s detail. Ross seems like the kind of guy that would want his own version of Captain America serving him without all the moral qualms Sam Wilson has. This is a good way to ensure we remember Walker, who hasn’t shown up since The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, is still a viable character in the minds of the audience. Or perhaps Taskmaster or Ghost are working with the terrorists as guns for hire. There are ways to bring these characters in and make them work instead of just dumping them like forgotten action figures into Thunderbolts* years after they were last seen.

We have a bunch of other side adventures that can slot in anywhere. I think putting in Agatha All Along and Deadpool & Wolverine here are good fits. And, yes, I consider Deadpool & Wolverine a side adventure because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t really tie into anything in the main MCU, with the movie explicitly taking place on a different world. That’s perfect. If we want any tie-ins at all, we could. Have Mr. Pool comment to Logan that, “oh yeah, Adamantium was found in the Prime universe,” and leave it at that. Subtle hint, works well, X-Men are established for the future.

Then we bring in my proposed Black Widow: United States of Rage film. This is the other half of that The Captain America film we split out, all of it dealing with the Hulk. Yelena is President Ross’s security advisor, put there by CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, and while working on the detail Yelena uncovers a curious development. Gamma radiation at the White House. The President and his team brush it off, but Yelena can’t ignore it so she goes digging. Eventually she brings in Bruce, they two work together, uncover the machinations of The Leader, and then the last act plays out with the Red Hulk being revealed and Bruce Banner having to fight the President, Hulk v Hulk, all while Yelena takes on The Leader and his forces. That all works much better than the version of the story we got, especially because it feels more organic and, you know, actually has the Hulk in his own stupid movie.

And, again, if we wanted, Taskmaster or Ghost could also appear here as mercenaries working for The Leader. If they didn’t show up in the The Captain America film, they’ll work just fine here and once more remind us these characters exist. Seriously, Marvel needs to be better about this.

What If…? Season 3, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, and Daredevil: Born Again can follow, giving us more palette cleansers just to ease us into the finale, which would be Thunderbolts*. Now, we don’t know what the exact plot of that team-up film might be, so we can only speculate. But the important thing here is that Yelena and Bucky have served larger parts of the story in this revised release schedule than what we got in the actual MCU. Them pulling together a team of misfits and weirdos to act as a not-Avengers team makes more sense now, at the very least because they’ve gotten that needed development. And since those other characters have been regularly showing up as well, they all feel developed and interesting, ready for this team up and whatever comes next.

Looking Ahead to Phase VI

So what comes next in this revised timeline? We already know there are certain announced projects that will happen in the real Phase VI – Spider-man 4, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Eyes of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies. It’s hard to speculate on what these films will be and how they will tie in, but there are some things we can say in this revised version of the MCU that would certainly happen.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes first, and it introduces Marvel’s First Family in a form that has been needed for some time. They fight Galactus, maybe get hits about a greater threat from Kang (not Dr. Doom, like in the real MCU, but Kang) via his alternate version Rama-Tut (yes, I had to look that up). Perhaps, after the Kang battle, we have them get sucked into the main universe where they have to learn, not unlike Captain America at the end of this first film, how to work in a world they barely understand. This sets them up as power players for the Phase going forward.

Next we should have sequels for heroes that were introduced in Phase IV that have remained ignored. Shang-Chi 2, Hawkeye 2, maybe another Black Panther proper (although it could be that Eyes of Wakanda fills that void). Then we have another The Captain America, which is needed, and another Black Widow, since now we’ve well established Yelena as a heroine that can carry her own franchise. We hit the big beats, and we hit them regularly.

Oh, and let’s introduce the X-Men at this point. It’s time. We have Deadpool and Wolverine, we have Adamantium. We have enough reason to bring them in, and we’re even seeing alternate versions of the characters in What If…? and X-Men ‘97. Just bite the bullet and put them in Phase VI to make all the weeby fans happy (myself included).

What’s most important, though, is that we make sure Kang begins to put his plans into motion. Each Multiversal incursion could release a bit of energy, and between Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, What If…?, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Deadpool & Wolverine, and two seasons of Loki, there’s been a lot of multiversal incursions. The Kangs have been tapping into that energy, using it to build… something, and now they’re ready to unleash it on the Multiverse.

Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t really know Kang as a character. He’s not someone I’ve read much about in comics and, really, he probably wasn’t the best character to choose to use as their big bad for a three Phase arc. But since we’re stuck with him we should find a story worthy of his time. Looking over his arcs (with a quick scan across his history) we can have Kang recruit alternate versions of heroes, ones that died or have left the superhero fold. An evil Tony Stark (but not a version of Dr. Doom) for example would be a great hook. Kang is building himself an army to battle the heroes, and it culminates first in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (as the fifth Avengers film was supposed to be titled).

Kang could try, he and his followers could be defeated, but he could start the next phase of his plan: if he can’t win, then no one can. So he finds a way to reawaken the Celestial in the Indian Ocean, it reemerges from the Earth, splitting the planet apart (as hinted could happen in What If…? Season 3), and suddenly the whole planet is just… gone. Kang destroyed everything, so what do we do now?

Well, that could tie into Avengers: Secret Wars. The remnants of Earth are pulled together, by Kang, into Battleworld, a cross-dimensional crossover world that reveals many more alternate version characters. Good guys, bad guys, people from across all the various Marvel movies over the years (not just in the MCU but abroad as well) could be featured. In Marvel Comics, 2015’s Secret Wars destroyed the multiverse and fused all the remnant Earths into Battleworld, where all the heroes fought and battled and tried to find a way to rebuild their universe. We do the same here, with the same concept, and once the movie is over, and Kang is truly defeated once and for all, Earth is remade and rebooted, and we can continue onwards.

Conclusion

Does this work better than “The Multiverse Saga” that we got (and will end up getting in the last Phase)? I think so. Certainly it ties things together better and ensures characters we like continue popping up over and over. It avoids many pitfalls Marvel made (although, without just deleting movies and shows that were actually released from our timeline I’m not sure that we can avoid all the mistakes of the past) and works to improve many of the projects we did get. It shows the power of going in with a plan and really thinking about how the universe should tie together.

And just these broad strokes would have to be all that happened. Once the writers settled in with notes like these to make their films they could have developed more cross-connections and ideas that could push the universe forward. Having a plan means that you can think up new ideas as they come along and work them in, but you aren’t scrambling to try and make various random movies and shows work on the fly. You gotta plan for a long-form story, and this is a plan that could have worked. It’s just not the way Marvel operates now.