You might have dreamed about Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) pairing up with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in a crazy Avengers–Star Wars crossover. It’s certainly in the realm of possibility.
Marvel’s hilarious ‘Star Wars’ paradox
We’ve talked about Marvel’s hilarious Star Wars paradox before. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is a huge Star Wars buff. He’s also very much into adding pop-culture references into his discussions with adult superheroes when they’re saving the world.
It just so happens that the MCU features a character who looks a lot like a Star Wars Jedi. That’s Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who looks just like Mace Windu. Needless to say, Windu was played by Jackson in Star Wars. But when Peter meets Nick Fury in Far From Home, he makes no comments about Star Wars.
There are plenty of fixes for this hilarious Star Wars paradox in Marvel movies. A different actor might play Mace Windu in the MCU, someone who looks nothing like Fury. Or maybe the Lucasfilm in the MCU never made the second trilogy. Or, Fury looks just like the Star Wars actor, and nobody really cares about that.
The Force isn’t in the multiverse
Paradoxes aside, Marvel made it very clear that the Star Wars timeline isn’t in the MCU multiverse. That galaxy far, far away won’t merge with the Avengers anytime soon. The studio didn’t publicly say it, but Marvel refused to allow the What If…? writers to bring any Star Wars characters into the upcoming Disney+ animation.
Head writer AC Bradley told GamesRadar that Marvel made two things off-limits to the What If…? creators. The first concerns the main MCU timeline. “We couldn’t do anything that the movies or TV shows were already doing,” Bradley said. “So that let us go to weirder and stranger places.”
The second concerns Star Wars integration. “Despite my damndest, I was not allowed to use Star Wars characters,” she said. “I tried many times; they kept reminding me that Luke Skywalker is not an Avenger.”
Why ‘What If…?’ is so exciting
It’s excellent news indeed that Luke isn’t an Avenger. Combining the Marvel and Star Wars universes would be extremely complicated. It’s best for the two of them to remain separate.
Bringing any Star Wars characters to What If…? would have turned them into MCU canon. Everything in What If…? happens in the multiverse that we’ve started exploring in Loki. They’re not just theoretical stories about alternate Avengers. They’re alternate stories from different timelines, where variants of our beloved superheroes and villains have done things differently. That’s why What If…? is so exciting.
The new MCU TV show debuts on
