Marvel unveils plans for Phase 4 and beyond

Spider-Man: Far From Home officially wrapped up the latest phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the one that climaxed with Thanos snapping away half of existence and the Avengers teaming up to set things right. What comes next? Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige filled fans in at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

As it ends up, quite a lot is next. Here’s what the MCU will look like over the next couple of years:

• Black Widow: May 1, 2020
• The Falcon and The Winter Soldier: Fall 2020
• The Eternals: November 6, 2020
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: February 12, 2021
• WandaVision: Spring 2021
• Loki: Spring 2021
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: May 7, 2021
• What If? Summer 2021
• Hawkeye: Fall 2021
• Thor: Love and Thunder: November 5, 2021

That’s a wide assortment of stuff coming down the pipe, some of it expected — a solo Black Widow movie, a Doctor Strange sequel with an awesome name — and some of it not. Take What If?, an animated show that will explore roads not taken in the MCU proper, hosted by Westworld star Jeffrey Wright as the Watcher and premiering on Disney’s streaming service, Disney+. Then there’s Thor: Love and Thunder, another movie with an awesome title. With the Thor we know blasting around the universe with the Guardians of the Galaxy (or at least, that’s where he was going at the end of Endgame), the new movie will feature Natalie Portman’s character Jane Foster returning and stepping into the role of the God of Thunder, just as she does in the comics.

Oh, and there’s a reboot of Blade coming starring Mahershala Ali, but that’ll technically be in Phase 5. One step at a time here. Feige also hinted that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, and movies featuring the Fantastic Four and the X-Men are all in the planning stages being planned. I know Phase 4 hasn’t even happened yet, but Phase 5 is already looking promising indeed.

The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings are movies — business as usual — but The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and WandaVision and Hawkeye are all TV series coming out on Disney’s new streaming service Disney+, which drops later this year. The most interesting of these may by Loki, which stars the titular character zipping through time and getting into all manner of trouble.

Now, you may be wondering how a show could star Loki when Thanos killed him at the top of Avengers: Infinity War. As it ends up, the Loki in the series is the one we saw in Avengers: Endgame, the one who grabbed The Tesseract when the gang was trying to pull off a “time heist” and vanished. So it’s still the tricksy Loki you remember from the original Avengers movie, not the reformed one from Thor: Ragnarok.

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This is all getting very twisty, but if anyone can keep it straight, it’s Marvel.

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