9 Signs That The MCU Has Lost Its Way

This is one you’ll hear the most. Many people felt Avengers: Endgame was a perfect conclusion to the saga that had been told, yet they remained interested in the MCU. Marvel Comics has a history of this pattern. When they hit big with the audience and have a strong group of creators producing stories that resonate, Marvel tended to try squeezing more out of the moment than they should. They flood the shelves with more titles and miniseries, and suddenly every character has their own comic.

When I bought the Civil War event, I decided to purchase every single tie-in title. By the end, it added up to 100 issues—and realistically, only the Captain America issues mattered to the main story. Even recently, with the Blood Hunt event, there were a ton of extra miniseries that felt completely unnecessary once you read the main comic. These moments made me want to read Marvel less because it felt like the company didn’t care as much and was just exploiting my love for the Marvel Universe.

After Avengers: Endgame briefly became the highest-grossing film of all time, not even a global pandemic could stop Marvel Studios from flooring the gas pedal. In 2021, they significantly ramped up output: four Disney+ shows and four theatrical films in a single year. Every quarter, there were two concurrent Marvel projects demanding attention. Villains and lesser-known Avengers got shows and films, while brand-new characters were introduced to replicate the Guardians of the Galaxy surprise. But aside from Spider-Man—who’s a cheat code, honestly—and Doctor Strange, most of those new additions didn’t stick. They ended up confusing and exhausting audiences. Feige and his Parliament seemed to ignore Marvel’s publishing history in their “research.” They repeated a mistake the company knows all too well: burnout.

Their slowdown in 2024, with fewer projects, feels like a step in the right direction. Still, they could’ve done a better job connecting more grounded films like Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts to shows like Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart. Only time will tell if a leaner Marvel output leads to the higher-quality releases fans deserve.

Why did it take so long for Black Widow to get her movie? With a star like Scarlett Johansson, who’s been with the MCU since Iron Man 2, you’d think she’d earn her movie before the big Thanos throwdown. For some reason, it came out after the character was dead. Then they didn’t even put it in theaters. I know Hawkeye might not be a marquee name, but he was an Avenger, and his story got demoted to just a TV show. For some reason, Sam Wilson becoming Captain America—with the Winter Soldier as his partner—was also a show. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier should have definitely been a movie instead of a television series. Fans know these characters just as well as they did Black Widow and could’ve brought in an audience at an important time for starting a new story.

Now, here’s the thing: I like Shang-Chi—he’s the master of Kung Fu. The Eternals are deep-cut characters and would’ve been a good counter to that planned DC New Gods film, battling big Jack Kirby ideas against each other. Why couldn’t they crack an Armor Wars movie with Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes, especially with an Academy Award and Emmy nominations on his résumé? What’s the deal with Hulk, and how come he’s yet to have another movie—instead of Anthony Mackie’s Cap getting shoehorned into a Hulk story?

Marvel should use the names people know to draw them to theaters. Charlie Cox’s Daredevil showing up in No Way Home and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law made the interconnected universe feel fun. Ghost Rider needs to get a second chance, perhaps with the Robbie Reyes version from the comics to attract some of Fast and Furious fans A muscle car with wheels on fire is an attractive visual. While they’ve also let that Nova Corps setup from a decade ago atrophy, they should still build new heroes while also building upon what the larger fanbase already knows. That can help generate excitement.

The multiverse angle hasn’t worked as well as Marvel had hoped. While it was an interesting setup for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, building the entire second MCU saga around alternate versions of familiar characters—or ones from previous adaptations—hasn’t connected with audiences as expected. Seeing Tom Holland’s Spidey meet past Spider-Men and fight their villains, almost forming an MCU version of the Sinister Six, was thrilling. Doctor Strange traveling through realities worked, too. But Marvel’s push toward the 2015 Secret Wars comics concept, with multiple versions of the same characters clashing, feels clunky. A better move would’ve been adapting the original ’80s Secret Wars, with a godlike being like Doom forcing heroes and villains to fight on Battleworld—a much simpler, more engaging concept. WWE has done this every year with Survivor Series. It’s not hard to grasp.

When they announced a Secret Invasion show, I thought that story would’ve made a stronger backbone for a new three-phase saga right after Endgame. In the comics, massive universe-changing events are often followed by more grounded, Earth-based threats—or cosmic stories that only affect a few heroes. After Civil War, we got World War Hulk, which pitted Hulk against the Illuminati during a fractured time for superheroes. Then came Original Sin, a murder mystery that helped bridge to Infinity, AXIS, and finally Secret Wars 2015. Even if those stories weren’t all perfect, they gave readers breathing room and kept the stakes personal and digestible.

Marvel could have taken a similar approach with the Skrulls—seeding them in shows and movies for years before building to a full-scale takeover. That would’ve been Invasion of the Body Snatchers on a superhero scale—not the misfire of a show we got.

Other events like Acts of Vengeance, The Kree/Skrull War, Shadowland, or even newer stories like Blood Hunt could’ve worked like the original Avengers films did. Each phase would carry a thematic thread across films and series, with big Avengers team-ups as satisfying payoffs. It’s baffling that Marvel drifted from the very formula that made it so successful.

Why was Red Skull only used in one movie? He’s a Nazi—basically a bad guy cheat code perfect for recurring use. No Masters of Evil. No Fin Fang Foom, despite the popularity of Godzilla-style movies. They turned MODOK into a badly rendered joke in Quantumania. Where was Thor’s classic villainess, The Enchantress? She could’ve spanned movies and shows and made a better long-term threat than Valentina Allegra de Fontaine trying to be a darker, quippier Nick Fury.

Why not adapt The Korvac Saga? It could’ve followed a fractured Avengers team dealing with the fallout of the Blip and the loss of Tony, Cap, and Natasha. Watching the team disassemble after failing against Korvac would’ve explained their six-year absence better than just ignoring them.

One of the MCU’s biggest issues is how it softens or discards its villains. Zemo, for example, was right about super soldiers and the Avengers’ collateral damage. He’s not a villain anymore, just an anti-hero. Gone are the villains who want to rule the world or rob a bank. Instead, they make these characters so sympathetic that audiences often side with them more than the heroes. Marvel seems more invested in their villains than their leads.

I get making villains complex, but Marvel often goes too far, or just turns its heroes into the villains. Wanda’s destruction in Multiverse of Madness doesn’t feel earned if we’re still meant to root for her. Gorr in Love and Thunder was a terrible adaptation; it’s hard to argue with him given how useless the MCU’s gods are. Dar-Benn in The Marvels responds to Captain Marvel bombing her home world. The Leader in Brave New World is portrayed more like a suppressed genius than a threat. And Thunderbolts* is about helping a hero through depression.

When Marvel does give us a true villain, like The High Evolutionary in Guardians Vol. 3, it works. He’s evil, cruel, and compelling. That’s the direction they need. Daredevil: Born Again’s Kingpin brings that old menace back. Same with Loki at his best. Let’s see more villains like that—the kind that made Marvel worth watching in the first place.

Kang is a classic Marvel supervillain, but Kang is confusing. Even diehard Marvel Comics fans struggle to explain him. Beyond everything with Jonathan Majors and Marvel’s decision not to recast, it says a lot that the character didn’t resonate. Who or what is Kang? How do you explain Nathaniel Richards and his ties to Reed Richards and Doctor Doom without using either character—or even acknowledging they exist? And then you have him lose to Ant-Man. ANT-MAN!

Compare that to how Thanos was built up: introduced as Loki’s superior, intimidating enough to boss around Ronan the Accuser, and then finally unleashed in Infinity War. It worked.

I’ve read tons of comics but never ran into Kang until Avengers: Forever, where Avengers from different eras united to stop him and other Kangs. It was good, but I had to research just to fully understand it. The more you deal with Kang, the more research you need. Time travel villains don’t have to be confusing, but Kang often is. He’s mostly an Avengers foe, and not a Marvel-wide threat like Thanos. There were other cosmic-level villains to choose from, yet Marvel picked one of the hardest to adapt.

Maybe they planned to hint at his connections—like being Rama-Tut in ancient Egypt or using Doom’s time platform to link him to Fantastic Four. But instead, we got a post-credit scene of the Council of Kangs—just multiple Jonathan Majors in bad makeup. His MCU debut was shaky too: He Who Remains beating other Kangs to control the timeline isn’t a strong hook. Try explaining Loki season one and how it ties into Quantumania without sounding unhinged. Thanos just needed magic rocks. Simple.

Maybe Kang should’ve been a one-off like Red Skull. Instead, they introduced him in two quirky projects and had him fight Scott Lang and his ants. Then he loses, shows up in Loki with a goofy haircut, and gets evaporated. He had a strong first appearance, but Marvel didn’t know what to do with him. Turning him into the core of the Multiverse Saga was likely the big mistake.

Secret Wars has always been about Doom—not Kang.

What I don’t care for is how the MCU has turned The Avengers into a brand instead of a consistent presence. Because of the films’ box office success, Marvel now treats the team like a summer comic book event—something you “build up to.” In comics, both Marvel and DC have always had tentpole summer crossovers—House of M, Civil War, and Secret Invasion from Marvel; Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and 52 from DC. These events bring together a wide cast of heroes, spark tie-in stories, and launch new characters. But between those events, The Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four are always around.

In the MCU, though, there’s been no proper team in action until Thunderbolts* and the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps. And that long wait just feels unnecessary.

One of the charming things about The Avengers in the comics is that the roster was often oddball: a couple of scrubs and one star. Within six issues, you had “Cap’s Kooky Quartet”—Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. No Hulk, Thor, or Iron Man. That model worked, and it still would today. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a team of Shang-Chi, Wong, Sam Wilson and the new Falcon, and She-Hulk trying to help people? And maybe they’re not doing great at it.

Now that the Netflix characters are canon, was The Defenders ever referenced again? Did they team back up? Was it on the news? The MCU also keeps teasing Young Avengers or Champions, but won’t commit. These characters show up in cameos or secret side roles, but never truly form a team. Why not just pull the trigger and let them grow across projects?

This approach makes fans feel strung along. Instead of building real momentum or emotional investment, Marvel just keeps hinting at what’s next—without giving us the actual teams that made the comics worth coming back to every month.

Go all the way back to Phase One, and you see how each post-credit scene pushed the larger narrative leading to The Avengers. The end of Captain America: The First Avenger is directly followed by a post-credits scene, which is actually a scene from the film. This continued into Phase Two, and it felt like even if the movie you saw wasn’t the best, that last scene could give you the hype you needed to make sure you were in theaters for the next film. It perfectly captured the early days of Marvel Comics, where you’d see little cameos of characters from other comics in panels, and then, as you read, you’d see a little editor’s note directing you to check out another title.

Yet now, most of the post-credit scenes feel like dangling cliffhangers that will never be realized in a new movie or show. We were teased Blade in The Eternals years ago. What happened to Dane Whitman, the Black Knight? That was Kit Harington — Jon freaking Snow — and he can’t be brought back after all these years? Many Phase Four and Phase Five scenes felt, at times, like they were trolling the audience and going against what we expected.

While it seems like they’re getting back on track with the post-credit scene in Thunderbolts, it just feels a bit too late, as we’ve been burned too often. Building on what I stated earlier, with the phases functioning as story arcs on their own while still advancing the saga, they need to return to making each post-credit scene feel like it’s pushing the larger story forward. Even if they want it to be funny or a bit of a troll, there still has to be some meat there for our appetites to hook onto—so we don’t walk away feeling like our time was wasted.

This might just be a personal thing, but why does every Marvel movie need so much humor? It’s gotten to the point where the tension is constantly undercut by jokes, making it feel like the characters aren’t taking anything seriously. They make it seem like they know everything will work out. This also weakens the antagonists, reducing them to mere obstacles in the protagonist’s personal drama.

One of the biggest victims of this is Thor: Love and Thunder. It’s so silly that when Thor and his crew are on screen, it feels like Christian Bale is acting in a completely different film. Nothing ever feels dangerous; at best, it plays like a Scooby-Doo episode with superpowers. Even Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie I enjoyed, leaned too heavily into jokes. Compared to the first two Deadpool films, the humor here often overtakes the heart and personal stakes Wade once carried.

This overreliance on humor and the tendency to make every Marvel movie an action-comedy flattens the superhero genre. Not only has it become formulaic—it’s become a punchline. In the recent film Friendship, a character mentions going to see “the new Marvel” and everyone immediately gets the joke. That’s a bad sign. Marvel’s slump isn’t just about box office—it’s about perception. People are tuning out.

Marvel keeps promoting new movies or shows by claiming they’re tapping into other genres, but most of the time, they’re just more MCU fare with jokes at timed intervals. It feels like they’ve abandoned genre experimentation. Phase Two gave us real variety: The Winter Soldier worked as a political thriller, Ant-Man was a heist comedy, and Iron Man 3—a movie I don’t even like—at least felt like a Shane Black buddy action flick.

Marvel used to be the “cool” alternative to DC. Now it’s the “quirky” one. It’s time to dial back the humor—not to go dark, but to be sharp, confident, and cool again.

Early on, the MCU felt very focused on adapting the tone and vibe of Marvel comics. While not one-to-one adaptations, they blended the spirit of classic Marvel, Modern Marvel, and the Ultimate line. Iron Man’s origin, for example, was captured perfectly, appealing to general audiences while wowing diehard fans by bringing beloved characters to life. Involving comic creators in the production helped strike the right balance to make it enjoyable for everyone.

But once the MCU hit massive success, it started treating the comics more as a hindrance than a guide. For me, that shift began with Captain America: Civil War. The setup and themes were changed completely. While the film technically split the heroes, most audiences were just excited to see Black Panther and Spider-Man debut. I’m not even a big fan of Mark Millar’s comic or his post-9/11 worldview, but the premise—young heroes botching a mission, sparking a national debate on superhero accountability—was compelling. In the movie, it boiled down to Tony being mad that Cap chose Bucky over him, and Zemo manipulating everyone. It stripped away the political nuance in favor of hero-on-hero spectacle.

Fans would ask what to read before watching Shang-Chi or The Marvels, and I had nothing to recommend. Even explainer accounts are often just guessing based on Wikipedia and trailers. Straying too far from the comics could repeat the mistake Game of Thrones made: abandoning the source led to a disappointing ending. Unlike that series, Marvel doesn’t have to guess—the stories are already there. Bringing more creators back into the fold would help course-correct.

The MCU should lean more on its strongest stories to win fans back. Let the comics lead, rather than just using characters as loose inspiration. I’d love to see them attempt stories like Annihilation, Avengers: Forever, Inferno, or Wolverine: Enemy of the State. They could spark wildly different films and shows, while recapturing the shared tone that once connected the comics and MCU so well.