Phase 4 Needed an Avengers Movie
Marvel used to smash into theaters, dominate the movie conversation, and rake in billions every few months. After *Endgame*, they held all the cards: beloved characters, rich source material, fans hungry for more…
So what happened?
Did the sheer volume of movies and shows drive us away? Did we stop caring when Tony Stark died? Did superhero fatigue infect the world? Did the last-minute switch from Kang to Doctor Doom derail the saga?
Most of us agree that the MCU declined in quality after *Endgame*. Weaker scripts, rushed productions, and worldwide viruses combined to topple the box office juggernaut. But we often forget why the MCU succeeded in the first place—Avengers movies. Sure, we all loved the first *Iron Man*, and relatively unheard of characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy performed well in theaters. But those were exceptional movies that could stand on their own.
*The Multiverse Saga*’s central problem wasn’t disappointing flops, lack of creativity, or superhero fatigue. Marvel just made a baffling structural mistake: Phase 4 didn’t end with an Avengers movie. I always hear people talking about how the MUC lost narrative direction, but they don't narrow down to a concrete example.
Without an Avengers movie tying the phase together, the narrative unraveled. More than simple crossovers, the Avengers movies transform a clutter of films into a cinematic universe, shining narrative light backward *and* forward. A fifth ensemble film didn’t need to top *Endgame*’s spectacle. It only needed to conclude the phase and hint at the saga’s villain, just as *The Avengers* teased Thanos.
That, however, wasn’t Marvel’s only misstep.
*The Infinity Saga* kicked off with its linchpin character, whereas *The Multiverse Saga* opened with a dead character flashback, a hero who hasn’t shown up again, and a bloated roster of entirely new characters. (Seriously, does anyone actually remember how many characters were in *Eternals*?) It didn’t need to happen all in the first movie, but Phase 4 should have at least established a central hero, villain, and conflict.
The MCU also suffered from *required* content overload. The shows would have been fine if they were optional, but they directly impacted the movies. You can’t fully understand *Multiverse of Madness* without first watching *WandaVision* (roughly six hours of content). In Phase 1, Marvel released six projects in five years. In Phase 4, they released fourteen canonical projects in just two years.
https://preview.redd.it/jo7022tc8ybg1.png?width=1198&format=png&auto=webp&s=24d480faac03c24e4687f800fc2afdd5859ef74d
Granted, some of the shows never fed into the movies. The less popular characters like She-Hulk and Moon Knight disappeared into the background. That circles back to the main issue: it wasn’t just the shows that didn’t feed into a culminating project. None of the movies went anywhere either, and they didn't stand well enough on their own.
When I watch movies and shows, I can’t help but think about how I would have done things differently. I’m not claiming to grasp the complexity of professional screenwriting, but I can’t help imagining…
How might Phase 4 have unfolded if Marvel had kept its structural compass?
Keep an eye out: In my next post, I’ll outline my alternate version—what I would do to “fix” Phase 4.
So what happened?
Did the sheer volume of movies and shows drive us away? Did we stop caring when Tony Stark died? Did superhero fatigue infect the world? Did the last-minute switch from Kang to Doctor Doom derail the saga?
Most of us agree that the MCU declined in quality after *Endgame*. Weaker scripts, rushed productions, and worldwide viruses combined to topple the box office juggernaut. But we often forget why the MCU succeeded in the first place—Avengers movies. Sure, we all loved the first *Iron Man*, and relatively unheard of characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy performed well in theaters. But those were exceptional movies that could stand on their own.
*The Multiverse Saga*’s central problem wasn’t disappointing flops, lack of creativity, or superhero fatigue. Marvel just made a baffling structural mistake: Phase 4 didn’t end with an Avengers movie. I always hear people talking about how the MUC lost narrative direction, but they don't narrow down to a concrete example.
Without an Avengers movie tying the phase together, the narrative unraveled. More than simple crossovers, the Avengers movies transform a clutter of films into a cinematic universe, shining narrative light backward *and* forward. A fifth ensemble film didn’t need to top *Endgame*’s spectacle. It only needed to conclude the phase and hint at the saga’s villain, just as *The Avengers* teased Thanos.
That, however, wasn’t Marvel’s only misstep.
*The Infinity Saga* kicked off with its linchpin character, whereas *The Multiverse Saga* opened with a dead character flashback, a hero who hasn’t shown up again, and a bloated roster of entirely new characters. (Seriously, does anyone actually remember how many characters were in *Eternals*?) It didn’t need to happen all in the first movie, but Phase 4 should have at least established a central hero, villain, and conflict.
The MCU also suffered from *required* content overload. The shows would have been fine if they were optional, but they directly impacted the movies. You can’t fully understand *Multiverse of Madness* without first watching *WandaVision* (roughly six hours of content). In Phase 1, Marvel released six projects in five years. In Phase 4, they released fourteen canonical projects in just two years.
https://preview.redd.it/jo7022tc8ybg1.png?width=1198&format=png&auto=webp&s=24d480faac03c24e4687f800fc2afdd5859ef74d
Granted, some of the shows never fed into the movies. The less popular characters like She-Hulk and Moon Knight disappeared into the background. That circles back to the main issue: it wasn’t just the shows that didn’t feed into a culminating project. None of the movies went anywhere either, and they didn't stand well enough on their own.
When I watch movies and shows, I can’t help but think about how I would have done things differently. I’m not claiming to grasp the complexity of professional screenwriting, but I can’t help imagining…
How might Phase 4 have unfolded if Marvel had kept its structural compass?
Keep an eye out: In my next post, I’ll outline my alternate version—what I would do to “fix” Phase 4.
Commentaires
any coherent paragraph is AI to them lol
I must have rewatched everything in the Infinity Saga half a dozen times. The only things I've rewatched from phases 4-6 are No Way Home and Guardians 3.
Now as of late they have realized that opting for quantity over quality was not the way to go and they are going to cut back every division (like we already seeing it with Lucasfilm in where animated shows aside, we are currently getting only 1 Star Wars show last year and this year)
You can still kind of see this with how those early Phase 4 movies placed importance on Khamar-Taj magic appearing in Spider-Man, Shang-Chi etc.
Boseman's death, the fandom's divisions over Larson, and Covid made them reconsider a bunch of things, and then the final nail in the coffin was the studio deciding they didn't really like the original script for MoM (you can find it online if you look) where Wanda is good for most of the movie and only breaks bad at the end after killing Wong. Scott Derickson got mad and left the project, so Sam Raimi took over, and most of what was supposed to happen in Avengers 5 just happened in that movie.
All these characters were even introduced back in Phase 4!
Trying to go several years without an event-movie was a huge mistake on Marvel’s part. They have to press the RDJ panic button since they clearly don’t have any faith a traditional Doom would attract audiences. I get the Majors debacle threw a wrench in their plans but the studio was making questionable decisions before and after anyway
Too much content, too many shows. Overload. Greed.
There can only be so many A-listers else there are no A-listers. The A-list was exhausted during the Infinity saga.
No one is going to engage as much with the B and lower list heroes.
Story reason, they wanted the lack of an Avengers team to be an actual narrative so that by the time the multiverse is on the collapse all of heroes are scattered that the end of the reality as we know it is what leads to the Avengers reassembling again
Real life reason: I think Feige or someone at Marvel felt that the Avengers films would feel more special and even bigger events if instead of having an Avengers movie every 2-3 years, we have the Avengers film reserved to conclude the overall 3 phase saga. Avengers are no longer the season finale, they are now the "series finale" to the overall narrative they are building towards
I have felt if that's what Marvel was aiming, then what they could have done is okay no Avengers till we reach the conclusion of this arc, why not then instead use the opportunity to have each Phase end with a different team of heroes (like with Phase 5 with Thunderbolts, which i will always argue should had been the end of Phase 4, considering Phase 4 build towards that film while Phase 5 did not)
* There wasn't originally going to *be* a "phase 4/5/6"; there was just going to be a "Multiverse Saga".
* The practical difficulty of scheduling large casts of name actors, combined with a fear of backlash from fans of certain characters if they weren't included in a smaller-cast Avengers crossover.
Even a TV show like Falcon and the Winter Solider or Wandavison would have worked as a Avengers 4.5
Phase 5 - Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2026)
Phase 6 - Avengers: Doomsday (2029), Avengers: Secret Wars (2030)
It’s not necessarily the absence of the Avegers franchise that’s the problem. It’s that you introduce these characters, now show them teaming up with each other Ragnarok/Civil War style.