Avengers: Endgame
was an immensely satisfying end for the Infinity Saga, delivering the final chapters of the MCU’s most important character arcs. But as much as it was an end for some heroes and villains — Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America, and Thanos — the film is also a new beginning for Marvel, which got the reset it may have needed to be able to tell exciting new stories that might also culminate in epic fashion like Endgame someday. The upcoming MCU Phase 4 that starts with Black Widow in May will introduce several new characters who will shape up the MCU in the coming years. But Marvel just gave us an unexpected spoiler, confirming that a 2021 film will bring us brand new MCU characters we have no idea are coming.
Kevin Feige and Co. announced the Phase 4 titles in three stages. First, the studio took the stage at Comic-Con in July to reveal all the Phase 4 titles — that’s what we thought at the time. A few months later, Marvel confirmed three more Disney+ TV series that would be incorporated into Phase 4. And then it closed its Phase 4 announcements with the best surprise possible, considering the tumultuous Disney-Sony relationship over Spider-Man: The third film in the trilogy will be a Marvel movie that’ll be included in Phase 4.
All these films will introduce a bunch of brand new superheroes, many of which will be included in the upcoming Avengers teams. In rough chronological order, we have the Eternals (a bunch of superpowered beings), Black Knight, Shang-Chi, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight. These are only the confirmed additions to the MCU, as the Phase 4 movies and TV series will inevitably introduce several other superheroes who Marvel will need in future MCU stories.
Just in the past few days, we heard that the X-Men may hit the MCU as soon as 2021, in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Wolverine and Deadpool are both rumored to appear in the film, and both of them would be surprising cameos — especially the latter, considering that a Deadpool 3 is already in the making.
This brings us to Marvel’s latest remarks regarding the MCU, which were delivered by the studio’s president Kevin Feige when he attended a Q&A session at the New York Film Academy (via MCU Cosmic). A student asked Feige about the process that goes into choosing the Marvel characters used by Marvel Studios, and how that might affect the future storylines.
“Sometimes you’re choosing the title hero,” Feige said. “You’re choosing which main character or main team you want to bring to the screen, and oftentimes, as you’re making and developing the movie, who will come into it, and who will fit into it.”
Surprisingly, the exec then used Doctor Strange 2 as an example.
“The next Doctor Strange film, for instance, features some new MCU characters that will be making their debut in that movie that you won’t expect or won’t guess who it is, but we found a cool way to make it work,” he said. “Because we needed a particular… we wanted to make a particular type of movie there, and there was a character we always wanted to do something with who we think will fit really well there.”
Obviously, Feige knows better than to give us any details about those exciting cameos, but we already have two candidates from previous rumors, including Wolverine and Deadpool. Later, during the same Q&A session, Feige also explained that Doctor Strange 2 isn’t a horror film, but it’ll have scary sequences in it. You can watch the whole one-hour clip below, with the Strange 2 teasers coming near the 35-minute mark.
