Over the weekend, Marvel unveiled its MCU Phase 4 lineup for the following two years, with five new films and five TV series set to premiere from May 1st, 2020 through November 5th, 2021. Marvel also confirmed that four more films are in the making, including Blade, Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, or Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and teased that Fantastic Four and X-Men adventures are in the pipeline for the more distant future. However, Marvel did not mention any plans for Avengers 5 or any other Avengers movies for that matter. And it turns out that Phase 4 actually won’t include any new Avengers, Guardians, or Spider-Man films.
After Marvel ended its San Diego Comic-Con event on Saturday, it was clear that three of its already announced release dates for MCU films would remain unaccounted for: February 8th, 2022, May 6th, 2022, and July 29th, 2022. At the time, we assumed that any of the movies that Marvel didn’t have time to address on stage would be part of the 2022 lineup and that everything would be included in Phase 4. But we were wrong.
Phase 4 will end with Thor: Love and Thunder, which premiers on November 5th, 2021. Marvel president Kevin Feige confirmed to Collider that he announced the entire lineup coming in Phase 4:
It is the complete Phase 4. The way I announced the complete Phase 3 five years ago — things can move, things can change as they did if you go back and look at what we talked about five years ago for Phase 3 — but we’ve been working on this for quite a while, and it’s pretty set, but there are always changes possible.
He revealed that Blade would be part of Phase 5, and implied that all the other beloved Marvel franchises that he addressed on stage briefly would also be part of the next phase. That means we won’t have any massive Avengers films come out at any point in the coming two years.
To be fair, the decision makes perfect sense considering that the next films and TV series will introduce a bunch of new heroes that might be included in any future Avengers sagas. Also, several of the existing heroes still have to pass the baton to younger newcomers, and the list includes Black Widow and Hawkeye. One of them is dead, and the other will train Kate Bishop to take his place. WandaVision, meanwhile, will also bring Monica Rambeau to the fold.
Feige confirmed as much in comments made to ComicBook, as he addressed the lack of any massive cinematic event in the MCU like the Infinity War and Endgame films:
Well, we got a Falcon and Winter Soldier show, we got a WandaVision show. We’re introducing Monica Rambeau in that WandaVision show… Wanda Maximoff, who is probably near the upper echelons of power — I contend she would have taken down Thanos if he hadn’t called the [army], it was done — so her being the Scarlet Witch now, as Lizzie said on stage in a full sort of unabashed power-based [way], coming into the Doctor Strange movie, that is two heroes coming together in a fun way.
Feige wasn’t done talking about the next Avengers team and told MTV News that there will be a new team going forward, but it’ll be a different version of what we’ve all grown to love over the past 10 years:
It will be a very different team than we’ve seen before, that’s what [Avengers: Endgame] was all about. It will be a very different incarnation of the team with some people you’ve already met and some people you haven’t met yet.
An insider teased that Marvel is working on Young Avengers as well as Dark Avengers going forward.
#AvengersEndgame was the end of an era, and #Marvel Studios president #KevinFeige confirmed to us at #ComicCon that the next class of @Avengers will be a “very different team than we’ve seen before." We also asked if Phase 4 of the #MCU might be planting some big clues 👀 #SDCC pic.twitter.com/4mxOTmmJ0u
— MTV NEWS (@MTVNEWS) July 21, 2019
It’s also very clear from Feige’s comments that two other popular Marvel properties won’t be explored in Phase 4, and that includes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and the untitled Spider-Man 3 film — hopefully, the latter has the word “home” in the title.
While Guardians 3 will have to wait for James Gunn to finish shooting his Suicide Squad revival for DC Comics, Spider-Man is a Sony franchise for the time being, one that it has to share with Marvel. So Disney’s Marvel can’t announce any Spider-Man projects on its own just yet.
Even so, the next two years will bring us 10 different MCU adventures, which should make up for the absence of any Endgame-like stories.
