We’re already into Phase 5 and Marvel’s The Multiverse Saga, which began with “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quanumania” and goes all the way to 2027 with “Avengers: Secret Wars.” This means that eventually, we’ll likely end up seeing “Avengers: Kang Dynasty” (2026) and ‘Secret Wars’ become massive ‘Endgame‘-level events that allow dozens and dozens of heroes to face off against the main antagonist Jonathan Majors’ Kang The Conqueror. However, how these future conflicts will impact the MCU’s Sacred Timeline is still a little up in the air.
But, with that in mind, an excerpt from the upcoming book “Marvel Studios: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline” from Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige seems to give us a tease. In the forward of the book, Feige reiterates that currently, the MCU doesn’t include the previous Marvel Television projects (including “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “The Defenders”). However, he hints toward a giant collision between the timelines and the multiverse. Perhaps this event could be connected to a way to streamline the other Marvel universes from Sony and Fox into one cohesive thing without the headache of these universes not directly impacting each other.
“On the Multiverse note, we recognize that there are stories, movies, and series that are canonical to Marvel but were created by different storytellers during different periods of Marvel’s history,” he writes. “The timeline presented in this book is specific to the MCU’s Sacred Timeline through Phase 4. But, as we move forward and dive deeper into the Multiverse Saga, you never know when timelines may just crash or converge (hint, hint/spoiler alert).”
What precisely this collision event could be is up to interpretation. Still, it’s not difficult to speculate what he means in the immediate future anyhow, is the events of “Deadpool 3,” a film that includes 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and imports them into the proper MCU. Patrick Stewart has already suggested that he could reprise his Professor X role from “The X-Men” movies in “Deadpool 3” and all signs and rumors point to a third “Deadpool” as a kind of goodbye and victory lap to the Fox-era of Marvel characters they now control (so yes, picture cameos from the old X-Men cast and things like that).
“Deadpool 3” and “Loki” already look like they will be the primary vehicles ushering in this Multiverse era. These two projects, the film and the series, could easily be planting the seeds for this significant event that could lead to the plots of both “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” and “Avengers: Secret Wars.” “Deadpool 3” arguably could be one of the last opportunities to play with the old Marvel Fox-verse as upcoming MCU reboots for “Fantastic Four” and the new version of the “X-Men” are on the way.
Looking at how Lucasfilm treats its Legends stories (formerly known as the Expanded Universe) within the “Star Wars” franchise, aka reusing whatever of those elements they like best, like Grand Admiral Thrawn, might be the best way to imagine what Marvel might be doing with the old Fox canon that Disney now controls. This allows Feige and Marvel to pluck whatever they like from those existing universes for the MCU, take “Daredevil: Born Again” which imports some, but not all elements from the Netflix series, or insert various Sonyverse characters in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to do like soft-reboots or reimaginings with the same character. We shouldn’t expect everything to join the “Sacred Timeline,” but Feige and his team could cherry-pick what they want to use/keep moving forward. Cameos aren’t a substitute for solid character moments and well-written plots. However, as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” demonstrated, they can earn you billions of dollars by tapping into fandom nostalgia and keep you going for a few years.
