April’s Avengers: Endgame is set to bring to a close the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, raising the stakes higher than ever before for a grand conclusion to the first ten years of the franchise that’ll be hard to top. Given that, fans have often wondered what Kevin Feige and co. have planned for after the completion of Phase Three.
Well, if this new rumor’s to be believed, the way that Marvel’s devised of getting around this is to do away with the framework of the Phases and simply split upcoming MCU movies into two distinct categories. According to a batch of Marvel “leaks” on 4Chan, the plan’s to have a group of cosmic movies and a group of more Earth-bound ones.
This should make the universe a whole lot more manageable, but it doesn’t sound like Marvel’s ditching the idea of connecting the whole MCU altogether. The rumor also states that, once the Disney-Fox deal’s finalized, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom will be the links between both halves of the franchise.
Though the post on 4Chan didn’t go into any further detail, presumably Doom will be the new Thanos, as it were, a grand villain who threatens the whole cosmos and so comes to the attention of heroes both on and off-world. The FF would make sense as the ones to tie both sides together, too, as they have cosmic origins but are mostly based on Earth. As such, they could be in contact with everyone from the Avengers to Captain Marvel.
The 4Chan rumor chain also claims that Norman Osborn will be the big bad of the “street-level” movies, with his presence apparently set up in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Annihilus will then recur throughout the cosmic films, with comparisons drawn between him and Loki.
All in all, these are some major claims about the future of the franchise and if true, they’d make the MCU pretty busy, all things considered. As ever, though, take this info with a pinch of salt for the moment as obviously, none of it’s been confirmed just yet and probably won’t be for quite a while.
In the meantime though, tell us, would you be excited if this is indeed what Marvel’s planning post-Phase Three? Join the conversation in the comments section down below.