‘WandaVision’ Trailer: Marvel’s Post-‘Endgame’ Future Focuses On Dead MCU Heroes

The first three Disney+ Marvel shows, and the next MCU movie, are all centered on (or implicitly about) recently deceased heroes and anti-heroes.

Walt Disne
DIS
y dropped the first trailer/preview for Marvel’s WandaVision last night during the Primetime Emmy Awards. The show looks pretty much what I presumed we’d get from a fantastical sitcom scenario starring the super-powered “Scarlett Witch” (Elizabeth Olsen) and her “died in Avengers: Infinity War” boyfriend Vision (Paul Bettany). The 110-second tease looks like a hybrid of (among other things) the Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life” and the animated Justice League two-parter “Legends” (the best episodes in an otherwise rocky first season). Yes, it looks very good and its borderline creepy hook makes a fine way to differentiate itself from the MCU movies in form and content.

That the show will air before The Falcon and the Winter Soldier sometime in late 2020 is interesting, since the old plan was presumably for this far-flung offering to lead into Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (now opening not May 6, 2021 but March 25, 2022). That creates a skewed coronavirus-related problem for the MCU as a whole, since it was presumed that Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange sequel would serve as a Winter Soldier-style “mythology episode” which would set the table for whatever the post-Endgame status quo might have been.

In a brighter timeline, Cate Shortland’s Black Widow, a prequel, opened in May while Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, presumably a stand-alone fantasy introducing a handful of cult characters, would open in November which would lead to Destin Daniel Cretton’s (also somewhat stand-alone) Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in February of next year and then Doctor Strange 2 next summer. But now WandaVision will debut BEFORE the presumably more grounded The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange 2 will open AFTER Spider-Man 3 (December 17, 2021) and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder (February 11, 2022).

The death of Chadwick Boseman may well affect the planned May 6, 2022 opening of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther 2, but that’s a separate conversation. The sequel to the $1.346 billion-grossing MCU origin story likely wouldn’t require much outsider knowledge of the broader MCU narrative beyond whatever happened in the last two Avengers movies, since its success was clearly predicated on both Marvel fans and folks who had seen few-to-no MCU movies prior to February of 2018. For what that’s worth, the likely delay for that one gives Marvel another available slot if the release dates keep getting pushed back.

But back to WandaVision. It is the latest in an interesting pattern in the realm of post-Endgame MCU content. Simply put, the next movie (Black Widow) and the first three Disney Plus TV shows (WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki) are all centered on (or dealing with the legacy of) recently deceased MCU characters. It was to my great relief that the WandaVision trailer didn’t hide the whole “Vision died in Infinity War” variable, and we can all speculate on the consequences of Wanda Maximoff messing with space and time to keep her boyfriend undead, both for this show and for the Doctor Strange sequel.

Yes, it’s possible that this whole multi-verse thing will be a backdoor way to introduce the X-Men and/or the Fantastic Four. I’d wager that Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man 3 (which just cast Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror) may be one of the more consequential MCU movies in terms of the broader narrative, both because the Quantum Realm is likely to play a role and it’s an easy way to goose the grosses of a franchise whose previous two films “only” earned $519 million and $619 million worldwide. It remains interesting that three of the six major characters who died in the two-part “Infinity Saga” finale (sorry Tony, Gamora and Heimdall) will be getting center-stage showcases in the next batch of movies and TV shows.

Heck, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s action show will presumably be all about Steve Rogers’ legacy just after Chris Evans’ superhero essentially died of old age between Endgame and Spider-Man: Far from Home. That’s not a criticism, especially if the shows and movies are good as popcorn entertainments. And heck, relying on dead characters in the TV shows is a good way, for now, to distinguish them from the Marvel movies before the “new to MCU” likes of She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel get their spotlight shows.  But it certainly makes the big deaths in Infinity War and Endgame feel a little less permanent.

The unmitigated good news is that WandaVision going first, potentially before even Black Widow (depending on when the show debuts and if the Scarlett Johansson prequel sticks with its November 6 release date), is a clear show of confidence and a sign that the post-Endgame MCU will be unapologetically embracing the weird and fantastical beyond even the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Thor: Ragnarok. Just the titles of Doctor Strange 2 and Thor 4 suggest a willingness to indulge and less concern about being taken seriously.  

Phase One was about crafting stand-alone franchises.” Phase Two was about subtly building the long-form narrative arc (just like the likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost and The X-Files). And then Phase Three was about A) introducing more new characters and B) sticking the landing with what would be Avengers: Endgame. Phase Four seems to be about A) expanding the roster of “not a white guy” heroes and B) Kevin Feige and friends just doing whatever the hell they want safe in the knowledge that most folks will go along for the ride.