Marvel revolutionized the modern film franchise with the sheer quantity of its output. There are so many MCU films that they’ve been divided into phases, and different sagas beyond that. First, Phases One through Three constituted the Infinity Saga, which followed the Avengers as they coalesced and fought off a vast existential threat in Thanos. Then, in Phases Four to Six, the action expanded further with the Multiverse Saga, where the Avengers realized there’s more to defend than just one galaxy, but countless parallel universes full of their own heroes and villains.
But with the book about to close on Phase Six, what’s going to happen next? We may not know anything about the next Saga yet, but we do know how the current one will come to an overdue end.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Marvel Studios’ head of TV, streaming, and animation, Brad Winderbaum, revealed that the next flagship Avengers movie, Avengers: Secret Wars, will be the last movie of the Multiverse Saga. “I think that’s [what] Secret Wars is going to be, an amazing culmination to the saga,” he said. “I think it’s going to make the journey feel like it was worthwhile.”
While the Multiverse Saga has often felt directionless, it does make sense for it to end with this story. In the comics, the Secret Wars storyline followed basically all the Marvel heroes and villains as they were transported to a place called Battleworld and forced to duke it out by an evil force known as the Beyonder. Considering the multiversal implications of joining all these characters together, it makes sense for this to be the Multiverse’s last hurrah.
There’s still much to do with the multiverse. Before Avengers: Secret Wars comes Avengers: Doomsday, where Robert Downey, Jr. will return to the MCU to play Dr. Doom. While Marvel could just pretend that two characters who happen to look exactly the same have no relation to each other, the multiverse would be a perfect way to explain this wild coincidence.
The Multiverse Saga brought the MCU some of its biggest flops and missteps, but it still offers infinite possibilities. Its days may be numbered, but let’s hope the concept hangs around in the background so that Marvel can tell some big, ambitious stories and tie off as many loose threads as needed. And with Secret Wars still two years away, maybe this unwieldy era can redeem itself a little before all those multiversal portals start to close.
