It's been a busy few weeks for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The long-awaited release of Deadpool & Wolverine was, after all, immediately followed up by Marvel Studios' panel at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. During the latter event, Kevin Feige and co. not only teased upcoming projects like Fantastic Four: First Steps, Captain America: Brave New World, and Thunderbolts*, but also announced that Avengers 5 had been retitled from Avengers: Kang Dynasty to Avengers: Doomsday and that both it and 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars would be directed by returning MCU directors Anthony and Joe Russo. In case all of that wasn't enough, Marvel announced that none other than Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., had been cast as the MCU's Victor von Doom as well.
That final announcement has been met with healthy amounts of both excitement and criticism from longtime Marvel fans. No matter how you feel about it, though, there's no denying that Marvel has done a lot in a short amount of time this summer to make the future of the MCU seem, at the very least, a lot clearer than it did before. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Marvel plans on paying much attention to Deadpool & Wolverine's strongest criticism of the MCU's Multiverse Saga.
Spoilers ahead for Deadpool & Wolverine!
Deadpool & Wolverine doesn't shy away from poking fun at the MCU and, at certain times, outright criticizing it. Not all of its jabs fully connect, mostly because the movie is a Marvel Studios production, which is a fact that makes it hard to attribute much weight to any of them. However, the film does save one of its most pointed criticisms of the MCU for its third act. Indeed, as Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) finds himself facing off against an entire army of his own variants, he presses pause on the action and asks aloud if Marvel can just put a stop to all of its multiversal antics. He notes, quite rightly, that the entire MCU has suffered as a result of its lackluster multiversal expansion.
This moment is one of the rare times in Deadpool & Wolverine when it feels like the Merc with a Mouth is actually speaking for many of Marvel's fans and critics alike. It doesn't seem like Marvel has any intention of taking Wade Wilson's wise advice, though. The pieces of concept art and test footage for Fantastic Four: First Steps that were shown at Comic-Con, for starters, added further fuel to the rumors that the film is going to be set largely in a different universe than the MCU's prime reality — one in which 1960s America boasted a Jetsons-esque mid-century, futuristic aesthetic and advanced technology.
The announcement of Robert Downey Jr.'s casting as Doctor Doom has also, understandably, led many to presume that he'll be playing a version of Doom who happens to be a variant of Tony Stark. While Marvel has abandoned Avengers: Kang Dynasty as well, it still plans to make the culmination of its post-Infinity Saga films an adaptation of Secret Wars, which is among the biggest multiversal stories that Marvel Comics has ever told. Marvel Studios may have, in other words, found a way to fix its Kang problem, but that character and Jonathan Majors were only ever responsible for part of the MCU's post-Endgame issues.
Marvel still, quite simply, hasn't figured out how to do the multiverse correctly on screen. Its explorations of its franchise's many alternate realities have, in fact, only made the actual events of the MCU's films and TV shows seem increasingly less significant and important. It is, therefore, disappointing to see the studio continue to rest so much of MCU's future on what seem like fairly vague multiversal plans, especially when Marvel had somehow, miraculously reached a point after Loki Season 2 when it had the chance to reset things a bit and send certain ideas to The Void where they belong.
Marvel's unwavering interest in its live-action multiverse is just made all the more frustrating by the fact that the forthcoming introductions of characters like Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), and even the X-Men open the door for the studio to tell more interesting, immediately dangerous cosmic space stories. Instead of doing that, Marvel remains committed to its big bet on multiversal storytelling. Only time will tell whether that's a gamble that can still pay off for Marvel, or one that it should have dropped when it had the chance.
