The MCU’s Secret Wars Momentum Is A Mistake

Marvel is officially heading for Avengers: Secret Wars, but the approach is a mistake. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had always promised the studio would only go to San Diego Comic-Con if it could “over-deliver,” and that certainly proved to be the case in 2022. To the delight of the audience, Feige used Marvel’s SDCC panel to announce the full Phase 5 slate – and then to confirm the overarching direction of Phases 4-6. These have now been officially dubbed “The Multiverse Saga,” culminating in not one but two Avengers movies in 2025.

Attentive viewers had long anticipated a Secret Wars event, based on a comic book story in which the multiverse collapsed. Loki dropped references to a multiversal war featuring variants of Kang the Conqueror, one that could potentially result in the destruction of the multiverse; Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness followed it up by introducing events called “incursions,” which had the potential to fulfil that threat. The real surprise is that Avengers: Secret Wars is happening as soon as 2025, with Marvel reducing the length of its Phases due to the sheer amount of content now being produced.

Understandably, audiences are thrilled at the possibilities. Phase 4 had been criticized for lack of direction, presumably explaining why Marvel decided to announce their plans in the first place. But, as exciting as the news may be, the MCU’s Secret Wars momentum is a mistake. Not only does it pose serious narrative problems for the franchise, but there are also numerous practical issues that could arise. As a result, the promise of Secret Wars may actually be the MCU’s downfall.

Secret Wars Continues The MCU’s Power & Escalation Problem

When Marvel launched the MCU in 2022, the studio attempted to ground its adventures in the real world as much as possible. It’s no coincidence Iron Man‘s final battle happened on the streets, while The Incredible Hulk saw the Hulk trade blows with the Abomination in Harlem. Marvel was careful to set their films in “the world outside your window,” albeit a version of the world with superheroes. Unfortunately, that grounding is gradually being forgotten.

The problem is one that gamers describe as “power creep.” Every superhero has to be the most powerful to date, with multiversal heroes like America Chavez operating on power scales that are literally inconceivable. Street-level superheroics aren’t good enough; even Ms. Marvel has to escalate to a world-level threat. The stakes are becoming increasingly fantastical, with the MCU moving from half the universe being erased to giant space gods tearing their way out of the Earth’s core. Even Spider-Man’s latest adventure threatened the multiverse.

The best writers are attempting to ground their stories in spite of the chaos, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness focusing in on Stephen Strange’s road trip through the multiverse, but it feels at odds with the core idea. Many viewers actually complained Doctor Strange 2 was a disappointment, precisely because it centered on the characters so much, and didn’t dive into the “multiverse of madness” enough to justify the title. The problem, of course, is that any wider scale would risk losing the characters altogether. But the hardcore fans aren’t looking for character-work, anymore, they’re wanting comic book-inspired spectacle.

Avengers: Secret Wars Will Be Impossible For VFX Teams To Pull Off

The scale raises practical challenges as well. The last few months have seen a flurry of reports that Marvel is breaking the VFX industry, with vendors forced to underbid and struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing workload. While the problems go beyond Marvel, this studio is the industry leader, and its films demand a lot of CGI and VFX. Marvel’s VFX problems point to cultural issues that are already affecting the final quality of Phase 4 films, and risk continuing to do so going forward. Bluntly, Marvel is being too ambitious.

A single shot of Avengers: Endgame‘s final battle took hundreds of hours’ work from VFX companies. Audiences are expecting Avengers: Secret Wars to be on an even greater scale, meaning the demands will be commensurately greater as well; Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s Spider-Men team-up is basically a warm-up for the kind of alliances Avengers: Secret Wars is likely to see, with OG Avengers returning courtesy of the multiverse, a new range of MCU heroes, and all the characters from other dimensions. All this is being made at the same time as the MCU’s upcoming films for Phases 5 and 6. Marvel has always been ambitious, but this feels impractical.

What Is Secret Wars? The Story Is Misunderstood

Problems are compounded by the fact fans seem to misunderstand just what the original Secret Wars event really was. The first Secret Wars event, published in 1985, was launched to tie-in with a toy range; it was really just an opportunity for every major superhero and supervillain in the Marvel Universe at the time to butt heads on an artificially-created planet called Battleworld. Writer Jim Shooter did a good job giving it a purpose, ensuring it had repercussions for every Marvel comic at the time, and it set the pattern for future comic book events.

But the title of Avengers: Secret Wars is surely a reference to the second event to bear that title, published in 2015 and written by Jonathan Hickman. This was a multiversal event on an unprecedented scale – but it was also actually quite an intimate story, a love-letter from Hickman to the Fantastic Four franchise he loved. It became a final, fateful confrontation between Doctor Doom and Mr. Fantastic, with Doom acquiring almost infinite power and literally stealing Reed’s family. Reed’s restoration of the multiverse served as the ultimate demonstration he was truly the greater man. The scale was almost unimaginable, but the story was remarkably personal. Secret Wars is rather like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with a smart character focus and the spectacle in the background.

The MCU Has An Issue Making Viewers Care Enough About Multiverses

Multiverses are all the rage in popular culture right now. So far, the MCU has rightly understood that their potential lies in examining characters; it played the nostalgia card in Spider-Man: No Way Home, bringing together three popular versions of the Marvel heroes, but has otherwise rejoiced in the simple question “What If?” Marvel’s What If…? animated series has explored different universes where only minor changes rippled out, taking characters in very different directions. Meanwhile, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness served as something of a character study, introducing variants of Doctor Strange to force the hero to confront his own nature. He ultimately transcended that nature, refusing to kill America Chavez according to the “grand calculus of the universe,” and instead trusting her to defeat Scarlet Witch. The multiverse was a plot device for Strange’s growth.

The problem, however, is that positioning Avengers: Secret Wars as the literal endgame of Phases 4-6 means the studio will be expected to move away from what really makes the multiverse interesting on a character level. There’s a real danger that nostalgia will become a substitute for character, with Marvel simply tossing in nods to all their non-MCU film and TV franchises instead of focusing in on individuals and making a satisfying story. Worse still, fan expectation will drive them to do so, because so many fans will simply expect the nostalgia buzz. Avengers: Secret Wars will struggle to strike a balance – and that may well mean it becomes a very flawed film indeed.