For almost as long as the MCU has been in existence, one of the most frequent criticisms of the franchise has been the ballooning investment costs incurred by its increasingly convoluted mythos. As widely beloved as Infinity War and Endgame are, they're also absolute gobbledegook to anyone who wasn't invested in all of, or at least specific corners of, the universe – and that was 18 movies and 17 television shows ago. It’s deeply ironic to think that a problem which emerged in Marvel Comics over the course of three or four decades has now reached critical mass for Marvel Studios in half the time, and a big part of their intimidating canon troubles is undoubtedly the current Multiverse Saga’s tendency to resurrect even older Marvel properties predating the MCU.
But fret not – as per the words of Kevin Feige, the status quo that will emerge in the aftermath of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars will be a “streamlined, simplified, single universe that’s easier for audiences to follow.” It’s a strategy lifted wholesale from the same 2015 Secret Wars storyline the two-part conclusion is based on, an event which saw Victor Von Doom steal the reality-warping powers of a 4th-dimensional race named the Beyonders and rewrite existence in his image to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse. Just like the last climax of a saga in the franchise, this one is the culmination of a lot of disparate elements, but a curated playlist on Disney+ seems to suggest that the required homework is a lot shorter than initially assumed.
