Hello!
This time it’s predictions about where the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) goes next!
Serious warning!!! There are Endgame spoilers in here too!!! Be warned!!
* Tidied up a little on 2019/4/24
This post has gone a bit out of date, so here is the refreshed version!!
[Again] This post has gone a bit out of date, so here is the refreshed version!!
There are other prediction posts like this one too!
Disney has bought the major divisions of 20th Century Fox.
That hands them the film rights to the characters and the material belonging to X-Men and the Fantastic Four. On top of that, relations with Sony, who hold the Spider-Man film rights, have been good recently. So everything is now in place for every character to line up together inside the MCU, Marvel’s own film universe!!
I think this deal has had a huge impact on the MCU’s plans.
Added 2019/4
Looks like the X-Men joining up is still about two years away. Something to look forward to!
Here is what is currently lined up.
With the Fox deal done, the thought of the X-Men series and the Fantastic Four joining this lineup is exciting.
More on it here ↓
The post written after release is here ↓
The post written after release is here ↓
The post written after release is here!!
The MCU changes enormously either side of Endgame. Five years have gone by, that’s the thing. And not an ordinary five years — half of everyone has aged five years. Or to put it properly, half of them are five years younger. How that plays out is a real question.
Worth noting, Spider-Man: Far From Home is the final film of Phase 3!! Presumably it also shows how the world has changed across those five years?
It’s out now, so there’s a post ~
Adam Warlock properly arrives, by the look of it. Celestials and that sort seem likely to turn up as enemies too.
Does Adam Warlock really not appear in Avengers 4?
Added August 2018
Frozen for the moment after director James Gunn was fired…
Wonder what happens to it now… Worrying.
Added 2019/4
James Gunn is back as director!!! What a relief~~
Added 2019/4, after Endgame
Gamora never did come back to life… But a new Gamora (2014) turns up instead! She goes missing at the end of Endgame, so has she gone off on a journey to find herself? In the third film, do Adam Warlock, Gamora (2014) and Thor end up being the key?? lol
Mordo will be the villain, surely.
Feels like Dormammu comes back as well, and maybe Mephisto and that crowd show up too.
The Black Panther comics aren’t something I know well, so absolutely no idea lol
The first Marvel Comics property with an Asian lead. Kung-fu flavoured, by the look of it. Black Panther was a huge hit, so this seems to be the follow-up to that! No release date turned up when I looked. Doctor Strange has plenty of Asian characters too, so a crossover would be very welcome!
Scott getting married, maybe lol
The second one was great fun!
After Endgame, does the daughter who is five years older become the third Ant-Man?? Looking forward to it~~
A solo Black Widow film!! A spy story in the mould of 007 would be lovely. Looking forward to a world no other film can do.
But!!
She died in Endgame… There’s a rumour this one is set in the past… Would that mean the Budapest story with Hawkeye? That would be sad, though, so really Natasha should just come back to… life!!
The service starting in the US in the second half of 2019 is called Disney+. Alongside Disney’s animated films, it will apparently carry everything they own — live action, drama series, the Star Wars films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the lot.
In Japan it has already started, under the name Disney Deluxe.
Already signed up here. The amount of content is small next to Netflix and the rest, but the quality really is superb.
https://theriver.jp/falcon-winter-soldier-announced/
Once Disney+ launches in the US in late 2019, a whole run of MCU spin-offs is confirmed to be coming!! Here’s the lineup.
There’s a section later in this post about who is retiring, and the people appearing in these shows look safe!! Very excited!!
Kevin Feige has also said outright that these shows carry an important role in the MCU going forward, and that each story ties deeply back into the MCU as it stands.
Only Disney could pull off a plan this big…
Things worth wondering about
Loki and Vision both stayed dead, so how do you make a show out of them??
Loki escapes with the Tesseract back in 2012, presumably. So a Loki (2012) lead? Vision is harder to call… Infinity War confirmed he can survive without the Stone, and maybe a backup of his soul was left behind when they tried to remove the Stone in Wakanda? Or Wanda travels back through the quantum realm? Curious.
https://theriver.jp/chris-evans-contract-2/
It made the news, but Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, looks to be retiring from the MCU.
Thank you for all these years I cried
Robert Downey Jr. starred in Iron Man, the very first MCU film, and carried the whole thing to its enormous success. Nothing has been announced about whether he appears after Avengers 4. He’s been playing the part a long time, and his partner Chris is retiring, so it may not be far off….
Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, looks to be retiring at Avengers 4 as well.
Added 2019/4
A fourth THOR film is happening?!!!
So much for the retirement theory lol
Making the third THOR film was apparently so much fun for Chris Hemsworth that graduating started to feel like a waste.
Added 2019/4
He gets fat lol Right to the very end lol
And the Guardians of the Galaxy, otherwise known as the Asgardians!! lol The fact that Asgardians has “ass” sitting right at the front of it makes it funnier still lol
Looking forward to what comes next.
No word on Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk, either, but he’s probably retiring too….
Added 2019/4
Going by Endgame, now that he’s become the complete Hulk, there’s plenty more of him to come!!!
Apparently Avengers 4 has a lot of scenes shot in costumes from the earlier films.
https://theriver.jp/avengers-4-cap-1940s-rumor/
There are two theories.
Theory 1 feels fairly obvious.
Going with theory 2 here.
In The Infinity Gauntlet, the comic behind all this, Thanos kills a great many heroes and other characters. So how do they win? Nebula catches him off guard, puts on his Infinity Gauntlet, uses the power of the Time Gem to wind time back, and returns everything to before all those deaths.
So the odds of the MCU rewinding time as well are very high.
Time travel is, to my mind, the thing that lets Marvel give these heroes their send-off.
When heroes like Captain America or Iron Man retire, there are three big problems.
When an actor leaves, killing the character off is the easy way to retire them. Honestly, though, that kind of story has gone stale…
So Marvel may well kill off some of the retiring heroes, but I reckon some of them get to retire alive.
Which raises the question of why, being alive, they don’t come running when the other heroes are in trouble later. Some films don’t care about that. The MCU builds a very carefully made world, though, so it will definitely account for it.
So the guess for how Captain America retires: the power of the Time Stone catches up with him and he ends up at his real age, over ninety.
The comics have an ageing storyline exactly like the image above, so the odds on this prediction look pretty good lol
And there might… just be an actor swap by time travel as well lol
Meaning: changing the past changed how the person looks in the present, and that’s your excuse for switching actors neatly lol Ben Affleck, who plays Batman in the DCEU, feels like someone who could be swapped out this way.
The way the fifth X-Men film brought characters back was very clever too lol
Also, Tony Stark has a partner in Pepper Potts. Those two have been together since the first film. Honestly, they should end up happily married and retire from the hero business on good terms. But as said above, personally I think you need a reason for him not turning up later. So the guess is that Tony and Pepper get sent off to some other dimension together. That gives them their happy ending and gives you the reason lol
Either way, time travel has every chance of changing a lot of characters’ backstories, and maybe the wider setup along with them.
Time travel means Kang the Conqueror.
https://deathbattlefanon.wikia.com/wiki/Kang_the_Conqueror
Kang the Conqueror is a man from the future in the comics, a famous villain who clashes with the Avengers over and over, much like Thanos.
His strength, as the video above shows, is calling in versions of himself from all sorts of time periods and fighting alongside them lol
For more detail, see the Wikipedia page below lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_the_Conqueror
In the comics he has history with Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four villain, and with Apocalypse from the X-Men.
Yes.
Both of those characters were held by Fox, the studio that has just been bought.
Maybe Disney bought Fox precisely so they could make Kang the Conqueror the MCU’s next main villain.
Important!! The post about the actual film, written after release, is here
There are other prediction posts like this one too!
On July 24, 202…