Going small with their next big arc instead of bigger

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.