Marvel a few days ago told us via its president Kevin Feige that its upcoming series of films will introduce heroes we never saw coming. The exec told students during a talk at the New York Film Academy that it’s actually Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, set to launch in May 2021, that will bring us a few characters that “we won’t expect or won’t guess,” without elaborating on the matter. During the same Q&A session, Feige also made other comments that revealed the MCU will get another massive change in the near future, although some details were not interpreted correctly in initial reports so the change isn’t coming quite as soon as we thought.
Feige was asked if the studio has any plans on “bringing more LGBT+ characters into the MCU, specifically the T, trans characters.” At the time, Feige said that “yes, absolutely yes,” adding that it will happen very soon, “in a movie that we’re shooting right now.” Interestingly, however, sources familiar with the matter have told Variety that Feige did not intend to confirm that a transgender character will appear in an upcoming MCU film.
The sources said that Feige’s response was only supposed to address the first part about the LGBT+ character question, and he did not mean to imply that a trans character will appear in the MCU “very soon.”
Currently, the only MCU film in production is Eternals, which will launch in November. The film will easily be the most epic non-Avengers film since Captain America: Civil War, as it’ll feature a slew of new characters, including several superheroes who might soon embark on Avengers adventures — the cast includes Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Gemma Chan, Kit Harington, Barry Keoghan, and Brian Tyree Henry. Eternals premieres on November 6th, with the first trailer likely dropping sometime around the Black Widow release, which is scheduled for May 1st.
We already know that the film will feature the MCU’s first major gay character, something Feige confirmed all the way back in August, without specifying who it’ll be. “He’s married, he’s got a family, and that is just part of who he is,” Feige told Good Morning America at D23 Expo.
Bringing a major transgender character to the MCU makes sense considering how big Marvel’s cinematic universe is, no matter how controversial the move might seem. The more diverse the MCU, the better the stories will be going forward. Let’s remember that it took nearly a decade of MCU films for Marvel to bring women to the forefront in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Captain Marvel (2019).
