Against all odds, ‘The Marvels’ is confirmed to be the key to unlocking the future of the MCU

It’s unfortunately a statement of fact, not opinion, that every single other MCU movie has flown higher, further, faster than The Marvels. The Captain Marvel sequel even struggled to earn back $200 million at the global box office, which is a mere fifth of what the first film made in 2019. Speaking as someone who actually enjoyed the film more than most, it’s unclear how the studio could view this one as anything other than an embarrassing failure.

For those who did like the team-up outing for Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan, and Monica Rambeau as much as myself, however, I have some good news. And for those that really did not get along with the movie, I have some mystifying news. Along with The Marvels streaming release, The Making of The Marvels behind-the-scenes documentary is now available on Disney Plus. Towards the end of the hour-long special, screenwriter Elissa Karasik makes a bold claim which seems to confirm that The Marvels will prove intrinsically important to the future of the Multiverse Saga as it heads ever closer to Avengers 5 and 6.

“This movie is a tone-setter, I think, for the MCU going forward in terms of how it does bring disparate characters together across space and time,” Karasik teased. “How that can really escalate or upgrade the storytelling. There’s more of a cosmic community, whether or not characters know that.”

The Marvels is (or, at least, was) intended to be the template for Avengers 5

Going by Karasik’s comments, it certainly sounds like she’s suggesting the story of The Marvels has much to tell us about how the Avengers will re-assemble in the MCU’s next big team-up event. Just like the three heroines are pulled together in the midst of a big threat to the cosmos, even though they haven’t necessarily met before, so too might the Avengers when the next big threat to the universe comes a-knocking. This isn’t too surprising, of course, as this could also be a description of Infinity War. Still, it’s notable that The Marvels and its wider importance is being hyped up in such terms.

Of course, the big caveat here is that Karasik was interviewed on the set of the film, so long before Avengers 5 was completely retooled. Since The Marvels closed production, Jonathan Majors has been removed as Kang and screenwriter Jeff Loveness has been replaced with Michael Waldron. As such, it’s not even called The Kang Dynasty anymore. It’s entirely possible that, among all these other changes, any thematic or narrative links the movie might have to The Marvels have been excised as well.

Nevertheless, repeating the sequel’s trick of getting the heroes together and putting them in the thick of the action would still be a smart move for an event film that has an abundance of incident to squeeze into its runtime. It’s just possible that, in the long-run, The Marvels could be exonerated and remembered as a key installment in the Multiverse Saga rather than one the studio would prefer got swallowed up by a Flerken.