Marvel renews its universe

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, over the past year and a half, has made a comeback after its ending Phase 3, “Avengers Endgame.” Marvel came out with “Spider-Man Far From Home,” which ended in a cliffhanger, leaving the audience wondering what Peter Parker will come up with to keep his identity intact. Black Widow’s long awaited feature film, “Black Widow,” aired this summer in theatres, giving the possibility for her title to be passed on to her younger sister.

In addition to their movies, Marvel has released shows on Disney+ such as “Wandavision,” “Falcon and the Wintersoldier,” and “Loki.”

The first of these shows was “Wandavision,” which expanded on the love story between the Scarlet Witch (Wanda) and the Vision. Wandavision features a sitcom style of different timelines from the ‘50s all the way to modern day. The first few episodes bring a whole new vision to how Marvel will start approaching their superhero movies, merging them with other genres besides action and comedy. In this case, “Wandavision” touches on a bit of a criminal thriller style, allowing fans to play detective. “Wandavision” then concludes with the Scarlet Witch being a much more vital character in the MCU than ever before.

Marvel follows up almost immediately after “Wandavision” with “Falcon and the Wintersoldier.” The show begins with the aftermath of losing Steve Rogers, Captain America. A newcomer becomes the replacement of Captain America and takes advantage of Steve Roger’s respect and honor behind his title, despite the title being handed down to Sam, Falcon. This newcomer deals with conflict within himself as well as conflict between Falcon, the Wintersoldier and superhuman extremists. The show allows us to have a deeper understanding and connection between Sam and Bucky, the Wintersoldier, all the while giving the fans a chance to adjust from the death of an old Captain America and switch to a new one.

The last of the recent shows that has come out from Marvel is “Loki,” which leans toward a much more lighthearted, comedic theme compared to the other shows. It starts off with Loki, who steals the Tesseract and escapes, which causes a whole other reality and timeline to sprout, creating a big problem. Loki is forced to either be forever erased from existence or to help solve a much bigger multiversal kind of problem. The show “Loki” ends by leaving us guessing how this new and more intense conflict could connect the rest of the storylines in the future of the MCU because of its new focus towards a multiverse.

With all of these shows providing stepping stones for the upcoming movies after them, we must look at what it is that they are planning to lead up to. To no surprise, Marvel has recently released a movie and a couple trailers this month that have fans raving about what is to come of the MCU. 

Marvel begins their movie list with “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which many fellow Asians, such as myself, have considered to represent us, as “Black Panther” did for Black people. Besides this new positive outlook for the Asian community, the movie introduces a new superhero, Shang-Chi, who is a master in kung fu and chi, giving him more enhanced reflexes, rapid movements and concentrated strength that is enough to withstand superhuman opponents. In addition to his abilities, he can wield the ten rings. Shang-Chi seems to contribute a new kind of weapon or power that will be explored further, and it could possibly lead into being the weapon of utmost importance, like Thor’s hammer.

Another fascinating new set of heroes and characters are going to be added to the MCU through the movie “Eternals.” So far, according to the teaser trailer that was released in the month of May, the Eternals are beings that had come to our planet to help humans prosper, and they have been here since we began urbanizing as a species. Apparently in this film, the Eternals’ plan to interfere with human conflicts indicating there must be something so terrible and more impactful compared to the Blip since they did nothing to step in then. “Eternals” is a pretty interesting context for our human history, so we’ll see what they will do with these new characters.

One final upcoming movie so many Marvels are anticipating, including myself, is “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Just this month they released the new trailer for the new Spider-Man movie, and so far the premise starts out with the cliff-hanger left in “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Peter Parker is now living a life with his identity revealed to everyone that could possibly know his alias, and this problem gets out of hand because of accusations pointing to him being a villain after all. This drives Peter out of his mind, so he resorts to asking Doctor Strange to change his reality by making everyone separate Peter Parker from Spider-Man. With this in mind, the film will most likely bring up the concept of the Spiderverse or just a multiverse. Could we possibly see a Miles Morales or a Spider-Man Noir?

Unfortunately, there are no other trailers or movies we can take a look at, however we do know what they will be about. We know there will be “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “The Marvels,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” and “Fantastic Four”.

From all of the sneak peeks I looked at, I can say that “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” will absolutely have the Scarlet Witch in it to learn more about magic from Doctor Strange.

I also can confirm that “Thor: Love and Thunder” will still have Thor star in it as well as a surprise comeback from Jane Foster, Thor’s previous love interest.

To wrap this up, it is safe to say there is so much to see and be optimistic about in this new phase of the MCU. At first, I had my doubts about what else this Marvel Cinematic Universe will have to offer because how can you go even further after giving an end to the main characters of the first three phases. However, after some thorough research into what it is they plan to do with the rest of the main plot, it looks as though there was always more to this universe than just the Avengers, and that is pretty eye-opening yet comforting at the same time.