2024 was a relatively chill year for Marvel, but 2025 will see the studio kick back into high gear. There are a lot of plates spinning across Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and with the introduction of the Fantastic Four right around the corner, there are more still to come. But Marvel boss Kevin Feige seems to be taking it all in stride, especially where Avengers: Secret Wars — the film designed to cap off years of build-up — is concerned.
In a recent (virtual) appearance at the Disney APAC Content Showcase in Singapore, Feige stoked expectations for Marvel’s most anticipated projects. Fantastic Four: First Steps is set to introduce Marvel’s First Family in 2025, and that film — along with other 2025 offerings like Thunderbolts — will inform the two Avengers films on the horizon.
“Finally, [we’re] bringing Marvel’s First Family into the MCU,” Feige said. “I’m very excited for the future of the Fantastic Four.”
After First Steps, Feige confirmed that “all those characters go right into the next Avengers movies.” The same might be said for another highly-anticipated super-team, the X-Men, who’ve been waiting in the wings since 2019.
Marvel has slowly and steadily been setting the stage for the X-Men in the MCU, but mutants are still no closer to making a proper appearance in the Sacred Timeline. Per Feige, that will finally change in Marvel Phase Six, as “some X-Men players that you might recognize” are set to appear in Marvel’s “next few movies.” Feige didn’t reveal which films would feature X-Men, but he did tease a major role for mutants in the next phase of the MCU.
“The whole story of Secret Wars really leads us into a new age of mutants and of the X-Men,” Feige explained. His comments seem to confirm a long-standing theory about the crossover, one that takes a page from Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars comic books.
Every iteration of the Secret Wars story is basically an excuse to bring disparate Marvel characters together. Hickman’s Secret Wars focused on “convergences,” a phenomenon that occurs when parallel universes collide. When the multiverse is destroyed, Doctor Doom uses the fragments of multiple universes to create one composite world, but after our heroes defeat him, the Fantastic Four find a way to recreate the multiverse. Their restructuring allows characters from the Ultimate Marvel Universe, like Miles Morales, to join the “main” Marvel timeline, Earth-616, and the same could feasibly happen in the MCU’s Secret Wars adaptation.
While multiple Marvel projects have confirmed that mutants do, in fact, exist, the X-Men haven’t yet been formed on Earth-616. Notably, The Marvels introduced an alternate version of the mutant team in a parallel reality, and we could potentially see more of this team in those “next few movies” Feige mentioned. As for how the X-Men could find their way into the Sacred Timeline, there’s a chance they could jump from one universe to the next after Secret Wars.
With the help of the multiverse, the MCU could get a readymade version of the X-Men without having to worry about continuity. That choice would certainly save time, especially after five entire years of table setting. While it’s important to note this hasn’t been confirmed, it would be the easiest way to introduce the mutant team this late in the game.
