Post Secret Wars changes to the universe theories
So, obviously, Secret Wars will bring change to the MCU, and here are the main changes that I think we'll see pretty early on:
* The Fantastic Four have existed on Earth-616 for a while, and they are established heroes with existing relationships beyond what we'll see in Doomsday and Secret Wars, and the Baxter Building will be in NYC skyline. Also, they'll have two children.
* Doctor Doom will have a history with the other heroes and Reed Richards, but is not particularly villainous, just antagonistic towards them.
* The X-Men and Mutants have been established for a while, and they have existing relationships with the rest of the superhero community.
* Steve Rogers and Tony Stark now lead the Avengers from Mount Avengers, which is the hollowed out version of Tiamat's corpse.
* Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson share the mantle of Captain America.
* Norman Osborn is an established acquaintance of Spider-Man, who does not know his true allegiance, but is suspicious due to his history with the Norman Osborn of another universe.
* The Fantastic Four have existed on Earth-616 for a while, and they are established heroes with existing relationships beyond what we'll see in Doomsday and Secret Wars, and the Baxter Building will be in NYC skyline. Also, they'll have two children.
* Doctor Doom will have a history with the other heroes and Reed Richards, but is not particularly villainous, just antagonistic towards them.
* The X-Men and Mutants have been established for a while, and they have existing relationships with the rest of the superhero community.
* Steve Rogers and Tony Stark now lead the Avengers from Mount Avengers, which is the hollowed out version of Tiamat's corpse.
* Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson share the mantle of Captain America.
* Norman Osborn is an established acquaintance of Spider-Man, who does not know his true allegiance, but is suspicious due to his history with the Norman Osborn of another universe.
Commentaires
And how will they recast iron man and cap in a world where people still remember the old iron man and cap? Unless they don’t plan on recasting iron man and cap until the next reboot in another 20 years
Let's assume for a second that Ant-Man does die as it was in comics and Cassie's story arc is about handling her grief. How does that play out at all if she doesn't remember him or his death? One day Scott Lang just ceased to exist? She doesn't ever think about it? I feel like with the way the Russo's have said it's less a finale and more a new beginning, that we won't see everyone forget everything.
James Gunn is doing a soft reboot with the DC Universe, which includes some canon from the previous era and push a new Super-man and other characters.
I think Marvel has too many characters introduced and messed up (eg Capt Marvel, Shang Chi), without follow-through. Good luck to them.
Just reboot when the whole universe is completely rebooting, not in the little sw reset they’re doing.
Even Chadwick didn’t see himself as the “owner” of depicting the character. And we have had tons of recasts, which if following the logic, as to why the don’t recast BP, would not be respectful to those characters. Even had someone die, to be recast less than a week later, so can’t see what’s holding it back, from BP, on future instalments and universes.
The X-Men and F4 should be the focus of the next fifteen years, with other smaller heroes/teams thrown in the mix. They've used the OGs as a crutch for so long now and they're too scared to let them go
I completely expect it to finish in a way that lets them either completely reboot or have an altered universe with saving some of the characters.
In either case it will lead to X-men in-universe.
Spider-man is just about to start a new trilogy, Shang-Chi needs a 2nd movie, Black Panther 3 and Doctor Strange 3 are both in development. I have to assume Fantastic Four 2 is coming...
Like what we just abandon everything from the previous movies and start totally fresh? Only character that would really benefit is Black Panther, everyone else just gets shafted. I think more likely it's just going to be changes to continuity so X-Men and F4 are both in 616, Avengers are maybe re-established with a new Iron-Man and Cap etc.
If rebooting is the way to regain an audience that checked out after Endgame I don’t see why they wouldn’t consider doing it.
Spider-man is essentially already rebooting, and only gains more with multiversal additions.
Shang Chi has a single movie, the next movie can be literally about anything.
Dr Strange can have stories outside normal reality.
I imagine that Doom will use Franklin to get what he wants, and we will see that in Doomsday. Secret wars will end with Franklin (presumably being older) realising the harm he has caused after we see a bunch of characters die on screen between DD and SW.
He will then use the full extent of his powers to rewrite the MCU as we know it creating a perfect world in which all of these entities (x-men, avengers, FF, mutants and whatever else) are all in one world/existence. Thus ending the multiverse saga.
After the fact I think that in the process he will no longer be around in the MCU until he is born again (perhaps doing what he did was effectively killing himself, which I know Franklin in the comics could handle, but we know the MCU like to underplay things from time to time). Plus nobody would have any recollection of the events that happened between DD and SW (except maybe Loki?), but they would go on as if nothing has changed.
We would get a nice little montage setting the tone for the future of the MCU in which we see characters that haven’t been around before interacting with other characters we are used to, or even seeing characters that weren’t even part of the events of DD and SW just doing their thing.
Ofc this is just my theory/guess as to what is happening, but atm it seems relatively plausible. Again though I strongly believe Franklin will be the cause of our soft reset/reboot of the MCU. Time will tell though.
If they're popular (Peacemaker) you keep them. You just retcon things that don't make sense from previous projects.
If they're unpopular (The Flash), you ignore them. You can reboot them later and hope they're popular this time.
The DCU Gunn way is the best way. Tom Holland playing a rebooted Spider-Man that is 99% similar to the pre-reboot Spider-Man makes sense.
The only retcon would be that his mentor Tony is alive. Feige knows that there is a brand apathy towards the new Phase 4-5 characters.
The Marvel Zombies cast is made up of mostly Phase 4 characters and has failed to gain any traction in the last 24 hours: these are not popular characters. Time to bring back T'Challa, Tony and Steve.
I loved Creature Commandos, Superman and Peacemaker, but one thing that is bugging me about the DCU is that I'm just so sick of the constant retcon or continuity clearing up we need to keep doing for the DCEU. Gunn's explanation of if things are mentioned but maybe not in the way we thought is just messy and makes me not want to invest too much time into the universe cause it already feels like they're playing fast and loose with continuity. Things like Clayface appearing in CC, but now also getting a movie and is apparently a completely different Clayface? It's a fucking mess that I can't be bothered investing much mental energy into, and the projects right now are great, but if it keeps going as it is the continuity issues are going to compound and get worse. I don't want that for the MCU.
It's perfectly fine. The thing about the box office is that franchises need new generations to show up. The MCU is now a really old franchise with almost four times the number of films as Star Wars.
>personally I don't want to have to do homework for every project.
Gen Alpha doesn't want to do the homework to watch 40 films + 20 shows to understand the current 616. By the time Secret Wars arrives, the number of projects will be higher. It's just not a beginner friendly franchise at this point.
This is why a clean slate with an asterisk makes the most sense. Old fans are experienced enough with the multiverse/timeline changes to ignore any continuity "errors".
You honestly don't sound confused about the DCU.
The MCU audience is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Star Wars is in an even worse spot, believe it or not.
Boomers have never cared about the MCU and Gen Z and Alpha don't give a shit about it either.
Gen X and Millennials are literally their only audience at this point.
It's hilarious how the general audience isn't as confused as the "diehard fans".
Many predicted the general audience would be hella confused by Deadpool & Wolverine yet it broke Phase 5 records at the box office.
The Clayface movie is shaping up to be something great but it's super clear Gunn greenlit it out of nowhere based on a good pitch, and if it was planned out properly, and if he actually stuck to his pitched production plan we wouldn't be only 3 projects in and already having 2 different versions of basically the same character appearing.
It's the same with the Batman situation. Am I confused by the fact that there's going to be 2 concurrent Batmen? Not at all, doesn't mean I think it's a good idea. The very real possibility exists that if BaTB doesn't live up to Reeve's movies people won't turn out to see them, and vise-versa, it's a bad idea that only serve to pitch audiences against whichever version they don't like and decide they only really have the mental bandwidth to follow one of the continuities. I seriously think people aren't understanding that very real and likely possibly that people will be overexposed to and sick of Batman if we have 2 different versions of him and his supporting cast appearing in movies and TV shows literally every year, and they're both disconnected from each other.
I also don't really get the confusion with Deadpool and Wolverine? They're from a different universe sure but it's not like the MCU also had its own Deadpool and Wolverine that had to be explained to be different than the ones we've previously seen that potentially either are or aren't part of the continuity depending on the character.
The author probably won't be popular in this subreddit so
I won't bring it up but a comparison he uses in another context is "tearing off the face of the old thing and wearing it around as a mask like Hannibal Lecter"
If they reboot these characters with the same exact terrible writing choices and random assortment of indie directors with no prior experience they will just be hollow callbacks to better movies. Many people see the "live action" Disney films this way and Disney already has this problem with Star Wars in a huge way.
Iron Man in 2007? He's mid. Robert Downey Junior in a movie targeted at kids? Okay I guess. Who are tf are the Gaurdians of the Galaxy in 2013 this movie is going to fail.
The problem is not the characters. It's terrible writing making the characters uninteresting.
It got consistently good to great reviews and was a day-one watch for a lot of people, including me, who's not bothered with half the MCU movies and shows coming out since the pandemic.
Barely anyone is talking about it.
Also remember a huge number of people just recently cancelled their D+ subs because of the ongoing political shit. I wouldn't put too much stock in word of mouth surrounding D+ exclusive content for a while.
And if Monday none of that happens, will you change your mind about how Marvel Zombies was a disappointment in ratings?
My guy. What awful 2023 sequel made more money? Aquaman 2 or The Marvels?
What 2025 superhero film made the most money? CA4, Thunderbolts, FF or Superman? It's important to understand that the MCU is not what it once was.
Right now it's in a 1:1 position to the old DCEU. The highs are high. The lows are really low.
Because all but a few of them have only appeared once and then never again since. That's not the fault of the characters, it's the fault of the people who planned out the saga. They just kept adding more and more new characters instead of choosing a few to focus on and form a narrative through line around.
For instance, by the time we got the second Avengers movie in the Infinity Saga, we already had three Iron Man movies, two Captain America movies, and two Thor movies, and that was basically the midpoint of the saga. By the time we get the second Avengers movie of the Multiverse Saga (which will also be the END of the saga, but that's a whole other can of worms), Spider-Man will have been the only title character to have more than one movie in the whole saga.
Personally? My hope is that, seeing the success of James Gunn's new slate of DC movies as time goes on, it encourages Feige and the heads at Marvel Studios to shake up their established formula for the "new MCU." Focus less on inter-connectivity between all the projects and trying to set other things up, and more time on the stories themselves. In Superman, you've got Superman 3 years into his career, Clark and Lois at the Daily Planet and in a relationship, his rivalry with Lex Luthor, the Justice Gang and its members (Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific), the Fortress of Solitude and its robot workers, and by this point Clark's even met his cousin Kara and she's (sorta) active as Supergirl. And you know what? No one was lost going in. Moviegoers were able to pick it all up pretty quickly.
So yeah, I don't think they should make these stories without having to worry about setting every single detail up. Some things are allowed to happen off-screen, especially if they're a hero whose origins we're already familiar with. Fantastic Four was a good first step, having them already be active for several years. But more stuff like that regarding trusting your audiences.
This is how comics have operated for decades.
2. With Doctor Doom being villain in Doomsday and Secret Wars. I do think after that they will make Doom less of a villain and more of that weird antagonistic uncle that he was in many recent comics. Would love to see him be uncle for Valeria Richards like in the comics
3. Ms Marvel and Wakanda Forever have already teased Mutants existing in the MCU. I do think that Mutants will be more widespread and the X-Men will be more of a recent thing
4. No. I doubt they will bring back Steve and Tony. T'Challa is the only one I think has a slight chance at recast
5. No. Sam is going to be given a chance
6. Maybe? But I feel like MCU Spider-Man wants to explore villains that have not been done in live action before than ones already done
We could have gotten him as a F4 villain who’s lower on the power scale initially.
We could have gotten an adaptation of *Doomwar* where he’s a Black Panther villain and trying to steal Wakanda’s vibranium. This storyline is awesome and Black Panther has the biggest sacrifice in his character’s history, rendering all vibranium useless (including Wakanda’s) to stop Doom after he succeeds in stealing it.
We could have gotten him in a Strange movie where they team up to free Doom’s mother’s soul from Mephisto, adapting *Triumph and Torment*, a storyline where he also attempts to steal the Sorcerer Supreme title from Strange.
They could have adapted the *Infamous Iron Man* storyline where he attempts to reform by taking up Iron Man’s mantle, but the Avengers are sus of him the whole time.
TLDR; sorry for the long comment. My point is that by waiting to introduce him *until* the Avengers film is robbing us of a lot of his best storylines.
Also, don't know how popular it is, but I really want T'Challa and Ororo as an MCU power couple
There will obviously be a new Steve Rogers and Tony Stark played by new younger actors. They'll probably start with smaller stories like phase 1. Doubt that they would do origin stories again for characters like Iron Man and Cap. I wouldn't be surprised if they start building the Xmen and some other more obscure heroes then they meet an already active (new) Avengers team as some cameo. Like they drop by to help and then blast off.
I feel like Tom Holland will continue to be Spider-Man post Secret Wars.
But MCU might lay down/take a break after secret wars. Binged Zombies yesterday and damn it was the final nail in the coffin for me.
They have created a legacy, I don't want them to go Rated-R or stay PG-13. I just want them to hold for a while. At least a decade and focus on solo movies/reboots. Maybe we have got enough of them and that's why not appreciating them anymore. Or maybe we are invested in other stories "The umbrella academy","the boys", Gunn's DCU and "invincible".
Same happened with DCEU, X-Men fox and Sony universe when we were committed towards the MCU. They shall rest, enjoy the legacy and think of what new they can bring next which has filmmaking breakthrough like body morphing in CA-TFA, World bending in Doctor strange, Thanos's CGI like they did with Avatar. They shall wait, my love will be with them.
If Secret Wars/Doomsday does okay - They'll reboot in a decently big way, but keep more stuff canon and moreso just use it to retcon mutants, Fantastic 4, etc. into the universe.
If Secret Wars/Doomsday flops - Full on reboot. Keep only the things that did insanely well like Spider-Man.
I have no interest in Tony coming back.
I have no interest in Steve coming back.
Iron man came out **17 years ago** move on.
There are a million stories to tell, and for some reason people want them all focused through the same couple lenses.
Same reason why DC keeps rebooting their trinity. Money.
Im talking about why *the audience* seems to.
They fucked up with all the licensing being spread out -- I wanted to see how Cap interacts with Punisher, Stark interacts with Reed, yadda yadda.
Like if the x-men’s universe is destroyed in doomsday via incursions or incursion prevention, then they are folded into 616 at the end of secret wars, they can explain the differences as being a result of them being introduced into different environmental variables affecting the new timelines.
Not just mutants though. like a new iron man being born at a slightly different time because of those environmental changes, maybe he’s not the “same” genetically but lives out the same basic life events to a point.
These kinds of Nature vs. nurture ideas make sense as the basis for the mutant saga, but can still be explored through non-mutants. Would Tony still be the same person if he had his brother? Would Sam still become Captain America if Steve hadn’t been frozen? Would galactus recognize the change if the fantastic four are folded in too? Can we re-do secret invasion because it never happened because mutants were Fury’s spies instead of skrulls??
I think it’s important that we move away from the Multiverse confusion, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still explore that idea of how changing your environment changes *you* and mutants are *perfect* for that.
2. All new cast of X-Men maybe Deadpool and X-23 will stay.
3. I think Sam and co are staying as the Avengers. Bucky and co New Avengers, F4, X-Men, X-Force, Champions and Guardians will exist also.
4. I think there’ll be a new Tchalla and Black Panther 3 will be focusing on him. It’ll probably be Nakias son all grown up. This way the Black Panther trilogy stars 3 different Black Panthers I think it could be neat.
5. The history will pretty much be the same with the general public not remembering Doomsday or Secret Wars but with Fantastic 4s history with Galactus and the other villains has also happened.
6. I think Steve and Tony are back for certain in Secret Wars but I don’t think they are sticking around. We might get more lower stakes style movies called New Avengers with Sam, Carol and Hulk as the leads but I dount we are seeing Avengers again until something like Avengers Vs X-Men.
The modern story will consist of all the characters living in modern day New York, California, Wakanda, etc.
The 60s universe will have the recasted, dead characters (like Iron Man, Black Widow, etc). Living through classic Marvel experiences.
* The Incredibles will be established as the focus of Phase 7
* Doctor Doom will take on a new persona as The Underminer, and will be played by Vin Diesel
* The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been established for a while, and they do not like the Incredibles
* Steve-O is new captain america
* Ice Spice is an established acquaintance of Spider-Man, but she eventually becomes Tombstone.
Post-Secret Wars we'll see a unified Universe-1999999 with a mix of Multiverse saga characters, Infinity Saga characters with new actors, and X-men characters. They'll work on that status quo for awhile before bringing in new characters that aren't X-men related.
They would also obviously replace Steve Rogers and Tony Stark with new, younger actors.
I'd like to see them introduce Miles Morales as a new, younger Spider-Man too.
Or will they simply use the reset as a way to introduce the X gene (perhaps plot-wise it's due to the Fox X-men crossing over into the MCU, it activates/catalyzes the X-gene through Beyonder shenanigans) as a new phenomenon that everyone's learning about at the same time in the new universe.
You can’t just write off Tony Stark and Steve Rogers forever because RDJ and Evans did such a good job, and it’s a waste of the years of character history to reboot them completely.
We have no idea what will happen in Doomsday, even less in Secret Wars, anything we can post answering your questions will be based on our imagination and not grounded on anything.
That's hard to do without a HUGE amount of change. They had re-tooled their world's tech to be radically different from 616.
> Norman Osborn is an established acquaintance of Spider-Man, who does not know his true allegiance, but is suspicious due to his history with the Norman Osborn of another universe.
I don't think there's much in the wind to suggest this.
IMHO, I'd expect:
1. The Fox & Friends universes to be folded into 616.
2. Some things that didn't do well to be retconned away (Secret Invasion, Ant Man: QM, maybe some deaths could be retconned and/or recast).
3. Some of the villains they killed as one-off stories get recycled.
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