It’s crazy to think that Marvel has been doing this interconnected movie universe since way back in 2008. With San Diego Comicon over the weekend, the famous superhero studio (and massive comic book company) released some new details about their upcoming slate of films all the way until 2025! We’re going to talk briefly on when Phase 4 wraps up, but we’re mainly going to be focusing on their Phase 5. Let’s see what we know about Marvel Phase 5.
They released an emotionally charged trailer for the new film this weekend. With the sad passing of the series star Chadwick Boseman, many wondered what Marvel would do. Do they recast? Go in a completely different direction? The trailer shares a lot of what we can expect from the film. The country of Wakanda is mourning their fallen King. We are going to get a whole lot of Namor as it looks like Atlantis is going to war with Wakanda. They introduce Riri Williams who will be getting her own Disney+ series, and we may see her building her first suit. More on her later.
This is going to be a tough one for Marvel fans as the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman hit the fandom really hard. His character is going to be really hard to replace but it looks like they are going to do their best to celebrate T’Challa, and through that Boseman as well. We get a glimpse of someone in a panther suit at the end, but we are left not knowing who the new Black Panther will be. I will note that it looks trimmed in gold which was how Killmonger’s suit was in the first film. Has he been resurrected? We’ll have to see. Marvel has said that this film will officially close out Phase 4 and move us into Phase 5 with . . .
The third Ant-Man film will see Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly return as Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne. Kathryn Newton will be taking over the role of Cassie Lang and even get her own suit! They showed a trailer for the new film and some takeaways from it are that Scott has gotten pretty full of himself after saving the universe. He has written a book and even does book reading tours. Cassie accidentally gets dragged into the Quantum Realm and the whole family has to go in to find her. Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas return as Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym so the film really is a family affair.
There was a shot of Bill Murray who plays the King of a city in the Quantum Realm. Kang was confirmed as the main villain in the teaser and word is he is even more menacing than the evil version of Loki before he found his way. Perhaps the thing that most Marvel fans didn’t expect was that M.O.D.O.K. will be making a live-action appearance. There was a quick shot of him in the trailer and then Kevin Feige confirmed on stage that it in fact was the famous, head-shaped, bad guy. it looks like this will be a great set-up to push Kang as the big villain for this new phase. He was introduced in Loki, but we haven’t seen much of him since. Should be an interesting start to Marvel Phase 5.
Since Captain Marvel introduced the shape-shifting Skrulls, fans have been wondering what they have been up to. They haven’t made much of an appearance in any other films or series since then except for a couple of post-credits scenes in Spider-Man: Far From Home and WandaVision. We learned in Spider-Man that Nick Fury has actually been off-world for a while and the Skrull Talos has been assuming his place.
Marvel dropped a trailer to entice everyone for the new season at Comicon. Our own Chris Bumbray was in attendance at the big reveal. He described a disheveled Nick Fury being flown back to Earth by Maria Hill. He gets back into his Nick Fury appearance and begins looking into problems that some Skrulls have been causing on Earth. Don Cheadle’s Rhodey will be a part of the story. It looks like this could unveil a widespread conspiracy throughout the MCU. No one is who they seem to be.
Another bittersweet entry in this list as James Gunn has said this is his last Guardians film and most of the cast has said the same. Gunn was on stage with most of the core cast of the film, and they showed a teaser trailer. Some of the trailer focused on Gamora, who has now become the leader of the Ravagers. This Gamora is of course not the one we knew from the first two Guardians films as she died in Avengers: Infinity War. This version is from a different timeline that is now stuck here because of time travel shenanigans in Avengers: Endgame. She doesn’t have a relationship with the Guardians and Quill is trying to find a way of letting her see how much she meant to him.
The main villain of the film is Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. We will see a young Rocket and his backstory suggesting that the High Evolutionary will be the one who created him. Cosmo the Space Dog will also return after a brief cameo in the first film being voiced by Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova. The character of Adam Warlock was also revealed to the audience to much applause. It should be interesting to see if his character remains in the MCU after Guardians ends. Would be interesting to see if he fights Kang later on since he wasn’t around for that series of films. In the comics, he was instrumental in defeating Thanos after he captured the Infinity Gauntlet.
There wasn’t much on The Marvels front from Comicon but the film is acting as the sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel. It will bring together Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau from WandaVision, and Kamala Khan from the recently finished Ms. Marvel. The film just wrapped filming and Brie Larson’s cameo in the post-credits scene of the last episode of Ms. Marvel was filmed by the film’s director Nia DaCosta on the set of the film. It should be a fun time and explore a little bit more of the cosmic side of the MCU.
This spin-off of the Hawkeye series will focus on Maya Lopez as she is trying to recover from what she learned about The Kingpin and his ties to her father’s death. Both Vincent D’Onofrio and Charlie Cox are listed as being in the series reprising their characters from the Daredevil Netflix show. They seem to be making more series that focus on the street-level heroes from the MCU just as the Netflix series did which culminated in The Defenders. Should be interesting to see if they are leading to something similar again.
Not much coverage on this one at Comicon but with the now coined ‘Multiverse Saga’ in full swing because of the events on the first season of Loki, you can bet it will jump back into some time travel wackiness. Last we saw Loki returned to the TVA only to find that Sylvie killing the variant of Kang they met, has unleashed all sorts of issues. The timelines have all been jumbled up giving us such things as the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. So really Marvel Phase 5 is still somehow Loki’s fault.
Riri Williams will get her own series after the events of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Marvel is being tight-lipped about the series for now as they wait until after Wakanda Forever before they reveal what the plans for the show will be. Riri Williams is a tech genius and I’m sure we’ll see her build her first suit of armor in the Black Panther film. This series should see her continue upgrading her tech and fighting bad guys. The only question is will she have an AI Tony Stark along for the ride as she did in the comics. Probably not, but we can always dream RDJ will return to the MCU somehow.
The daywalker will once again return to movie screens, but this time played by Mahershala Ali. He made a voice cameo at the end of The Eternals but in November 2023 he’ll don the classic sunglasses to fight some vamps. Should be interesting to see how the character fits into the MCU as the previous films didn’t spare the blood. The original Blade film actually ended up saving the entire comic book film industry. Batman & Robin killed off any studio interest in doing superhero films but Blade showed everyone that if you take the material seriously then fans will come out and embrace your films. Twenty-Four years later we’re in the middle of the MCU dominating the box office.
One of the breakout characters of WandaVision was Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha (All Along). Here she gets her own spin-off series. It seems she will regain her memory after being cursed by Scarlet Witch to become the character she had been pretending to be all during WandaVision. What sort of witchery will she get up to in Marvel Phase 5?
The breakout hit on Netflix when Marvel was really expanding its footprint was the Daredevil series. After Disney and Netflix parted ways it was thought that we would have seen the last of that version of Daredevil. But when fans hit the theater to see Spider-Man: No Way Home there were surprised to see Charlie Cox once again return to play Matt Murdock in a quick cameo. Then Marvel released a new She-Hulk trailer, fans got to see a quick shot of what appears to be Daredevil. It looks like he’s trying to compete with Wong to make as many cameos as he can during this Phase. Charlie Cox will be back in the red glasses but Marvel still hasn’t confirmed if we are to look at this Matt as the continuation of Netflix’s Daredevil or if the one we’re now seeing is just a variant.
Sam Wilson will see his first theatrical outing as Captain America in the summer of 2024. Nothing solid but it looks like he’ll be facing a Winter Soldier level threat based on the title of this one. Producer Nate Moore has said that this film will explore what it means to be Captain America and the toll it can take on someone who always feels like the underdog.
This one has been boiling for quite some time. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was introduced as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine back during Falcon And The Winter Soldier, and we’ve seen her begin to pick up disgraced heroes or those she could exploit to do her dirty work. Fans speculated that Marvel could be leading to a Dark Avengers or Thunderbolts film. Looks like it’s the latter. In the comics, a group of villains change their identities to become new superheroes. They are led by Baron Zemo and seek to get access to government info by posing as superheroes and use it to their advantage. For this film, it looks like they are going with a different version of the team, and they will be doing missions for a shady government group. So far we have seen Valentina recruit John Walker from Falcon And The Winter Soldier and Yelena from Black Widow. Expect to see Baron Zemo return as well and rumors are The Abomination will join the group as their Hulk surrogate. This will bring Marvel Phase 5 to a close and set the stage for the big battles to come.
Marvel also announced their plans for their big crossover movies that will be the culmination of Phases 4-6. They finally announced that on November 8, 2024, they bring the first family of Marvel home with a new Fantastic Four film dropping. No word on if John Krasinski will return as Reed Richards after playing the character in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Then on May 2, 2025, we’ll see Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. It looks like Kang will be attempting his take over of all realities and only the Avengers can stop him. Finally, on November 7, 2025, Phase 6 will conclude with Avengers: Secret Wars.
The interesting thing about the Secret Wars story is that the multiverse collides together only for all realities to be destroyed. But Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four is able to gain supreme power and piece reality back together using different pieces of different realities. This could be used as a major reboot of the MCU and see the return of characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers but played by a different actor. If anything, Marvel has laid out an interesting road map of all the fun we can expect from them leading all the way to the end of 2025.
What Comicon announcement about Marvel Phase 5 was your favorite?