The future is now. Although the final chapter in the MCU‘s Infinity Saga jumping five years into the future to the Space Year 2023 felt impossibly far away, we have now — quite literally — reached the endgame. Oct. 17, 2023 is canonically the day in which Avengers: Endgame‘s Battle of Earth took place, the day in which the Snap was reversed and those dusted in the Blip returned to life, as well as the day Iron Man sacrificed his own life to destroy Thanos.
This isn’t just a day of remembrance for the father of the MCU, however, because just as the sadness of Tony Stark’s loss promised a brighter future for Earth-199999, so too does the fact we have now reached the day of his death in real-time indicate that Marvel Studios could be about to recover from an IRL Blip of its own.
Call me superstitious, but it sure seems like the MCU has been suffering under some kind of curse ever since Endgame, but now that the franchise’s past (but also future) has caught up to the present perhaps that curse might be lifted.
The Multiverse Saga had the wind knocked out of its sails before it could even start its voyage once the COVID-19 pandemic forced Marvel to shuffle its slate back until 2021 (barring 2020’s Black Widow), and then even once it did get started the subsequent slew of movies and TV shows has been generally regarded as inferior to the consistent quality of the Infinity Saga. 2023 has been another tough year for the cinematic universe, in particular, what with the Hollywood strikes forcing yet another schedule reshuffle that mirrors 2020’s and diminishing critical and box office returns.
There’s little logic to it, but it’s hard not to wonder if the fact that we’ve caught up to Endgame‘s timeline, meaning the shadow of the second-biggest movie in the world and the MCU’s grandest success story is behind us, means the jinx has been removed. With any luck, the franchise can now move forward without keeping one eye on its glorious past and instead focus on innovation and engineering a fresh and formidable future. That would be a real present for Marvel fans everywhere, especially as they weep for Tony Stark all over again.