Can Avengers: Doomsday Carry the Entire MCU?

Welcome to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, back with you for a different kind of episode. Today I want to talk about something that started as a completely different episode. Originally, I was thinking about doing an episode called What I Miss About the Early MCU, and the more I thought about it, the less I liked that idea. Not because I don't miss parts of the early MCU. Of course I do. There's something incredibly special about going back to Iron Man, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and those first few years when this entire universe was being built. But I don't want this to become another conversation about how Marvel was better back then, because I don't actually believe that. I think everything Marvel has done— the good, the bad, the weird, the absolutely incredible— has been part of one giant evolution. And when I start thinking about what actually made those early years so special, I realized something. It wasn't necessarily that Marvel was better. It was more that Marvel was focused. And that brings me directly to Avengers: Doomsday, because I think Doomsday may have more pressure sitting on its shoulders than the original Avengers ever did. And that sounds crazy, but hear me out. Phase 1, it was kind of like a video game. When Iron Man came out in 2008, there was no guarantee that this giant interconnected Marvel Universe was actually just gonna work. There was a post-credits scene with an idea. There was an idea, as we know. We know what happened now, so it's easy to look backwards and see Iron Man as the obvious beginning of something massive. But at the time, it was just a really good superhero movie, and it had to be. The Incredible Hulk had to happen, then Iron Man 2, then Thor, then Captain America, and eventually all of those roads pointed towards one place: The Avengers. We also got to meet Black Widow through Iron Man 2. We got to get a glimpse of Hawkeye and Thor. We get to see the Avengers form over this short arrangement. Of pretty awesome superhero movies. The Avengers is still one of my all-time favorite movies. I put it on for comfort. So I've been thinking about Phase 1 almost like a video game, because Marvel had to clear every level before they were allowed to fight the final boss. They couldn't just announce The Avengers and expect everybody to care. Tony Stark had to work. Thor had to work, and Steve Rogers had to work. These characters had to become people audiences actually wanted to see again. And the reward, the culmination— what if we put them all in the same movie? That sounds normal now, but it wasn't normal then. It was insane. You had characters from completely separate movies standing in the same room, arguing with each other, fighting each other. And eventually working together. And the thing that made Avengers feel enormous wasn't necessarily the number of heroes involved. It was that we knew those heroes before they ever actually met. That was the magic trick. The Avengers wasn't introducing the shared universe. It was rewarding you for already being invested in it. These smaller cards at play, like the Tesseract and Captain America, Thor being worthy, setting up with Loki the main conflict in Thor itself. And it was harder than it sounds, but it just worked so well bringing those pieces together. It was satisfying because we all knew about the Tesseract, we all knew about Tony Stark's ego, you know, we knew what— we knew who he was. How is he going to be on a team with all these other main character energy people? And I think that's one of the most important distinctions between where Marvel was then and where Marvel is right now. The Avengers was a major event after Captain America. I think everyone was ready, and there was a hint towards it in the post-credits scene of Captain America: The First Avenger when that came out. It was pretty much a trailer for The Avengers, and it was almost just this epic thing on the horizon that everyone was on board for because Let's just see how they— if they can make this thing work, this culmination of different franchises coming into one franchise. And that moment, the iconic moment circling the team, the Battle of New York, the aliens screaming or roaring on the buildings, and then the Hulk roaring out back at them, and Iron Man landing, and then— and their perfect Avengers formation. Amazing cinema, right? Absolute cinema. It was amazing, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I mentioned this shot before. It's like that shot where we see Hawkeye on the roof taking out guys, and Iron Man flies past him. We see Iron Man take out a couple guys, land on the ground. There's Steve Rogers. He uses Steve's shield as a reflector, shoots a beam off of it, hits another guy, shows more Avengers in that same shot picking up from that moment. That was The Avengers. That was the action, the actual action that made it feel like a payoff. And obviously Marvel didn't stop there. The Avengers worked, and I mean, it really worked. So you, you then get Age of Ultron, then Civil War, which is basically an Avengers-sized event disguised as a Captain America movie. Then Infinity War, and then Endgame, all over a wide period of time. And every time Marvel returned to that crossover formula, the universe got bigger, but the principle stayed basically the same. You cared about the crossover because you cared about the individual pieces. When Thor meets the Guardians in Infinity War, it's exciting because you already know Thor and you already know the Guardians from 2 movies. When Peter Parker meets Doctor Strange, you understand both personalities before they ever start knowing each other on that ship on their way to Titan in Avengers: Infinity War, and then later on when they have their team-up movie in, uh, No Way Home. And when those portals open at the end of Endgame, Marvel doesn't have to explain why any of those people matter, why this moment matters, why it's sending chills down my spine. You spent years learning why they matter, and that's why that moment works. The audience did the homework naturally just by watching the movies, and Endgame became the ultimate culmination of that entire system. Everything had been building toward from 2008 through 2019 collided in one gigantic event, and somehow, against every possible expectation, they pulled it off. And then it ended, and Marvel had an incredibly difficult question to answer. What do you do after Endgame? Logically, I think it was smart for them to take a year off. However, the quarantine and that, you know, pandemic definitely had a part in that. I think things would have happened a little bit quicker if that didn't happen. This is where I think the conversation gets more interesting than simply saying Marvel should have made another Avengers movie sooner. I've said that a million times because I do believe that, but I think the deeper problem is something slightly different. The Multiverse Saga doesn't have too little buildup. It has an enormous amount of buildup. We've met Shang-Chi, we've met Kate Bishop, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, the Eternals. Yelena as an increasingly important character growing throughout this whole saga. One of my favorite stories of this saga. Sam Wilson has become Captain America. We've watched Wanda's story completely transform. Doctor Strange has gone deeper into the multiverse. The Fantastic Four have entered this universe, and maybe most importantly, Loki went from being the MCU's craziest original villain to becoming one of the most important characters in the entire mythology. There has been a lot of Marvel. The problem isn't necessarily a lack of pieces, it's that we haven't always gotten enough moments showing us how these pieces fit together. And that's where I think Marvel lost some of the connective tissue that made the MCU feel different from every other franchise. Because an Avengers movie isn't just a giant superhero fight. It's a checkpoint. It's Marvel saying, here's where the universe is right now. Here are the relationships. Here are the heroes who know each other. Here are the heroes who don't. Here are the conflicts we're carrying forward. And here's where all of these separate stories finally collide. We haven't really had that during the Multiverse Saga. And now instead of periodically bringing everybody together along the way, Marvel is asking Doomsday to do a whole lot of that work at once. The original Avengers had a difficult job. It had to prove that these characters could share a movie screen. But Doomsday might have an even harder job because Doomsday potentially has to prove that this gigantic universe still feels like one universe. That's a completely different level of pressure. You've got years of stories after Endgame. You've got movies, you've got Disney Plus series, you've got the multiverse mythology, you've got legacy characters. We had the Kang shift, right? You've gotten newer heroes, you've gotten the Fantastic Four, you've got whatever's happening with the Avengers themselves, or the lack thereof Avengers. What's going on with the Avengers after 7 years? You've got Doctor Doom, you've got the road to Secret And you also have the remains of a saga that originally appeared to be building around Kang before Marvel dramatically changed its direction. That is a lot. And I want to make something very, very clear here. I am rooting for Tombsday hard. I'm probably going to be one of the people defending the movie unless Marvel somehow produces like a Secret Invasion-level catastrophe where I'm sitting in the theater wondering what the hell happened? And I don't expect that. I'm excited. I, I think that's actually why I, I'm thinking about the pressure, because I don't just want Doomsday to be a good Avengers movie. I think Marvel needs Doomsday to make the last several years feel more connected in retrospect. And it can do that if it's done right, and the Russo Brothers are the guys to do it. It's an enormous— but it's really an enormous responsibility to put On one movie. The Avengers had to bring a handful of heroes together, and Doomsday may have to bring an entire era together. That is a much heavier assignment. We've got trailers for Doomsday now. We get an idea about where the movie's going. We don't know everything. We don't know the why, who, or what about it, but we know some of the things that are going to go down from the trailers. And I am rooting for the movie. I just think, who's gonna dislike that the Eternals aren't included? Because they seem like part of the setup. Is there going to be a follow-up to this or that? Because they can't follow up every single story thread like Ironheart or even Daredevil. Like, there needs to be definitive walls put between certain franchises to keep them their own franchise. And it needs to make sense for some of these heroes not to be in this movie exactly. Forget about Secret Wars for a second, just thinking about Doomsday. Like Moon Knight, is there a possibility Moon Knight shows up in Avengers: Doomsday? I don't, I don't think so. And if he did, it'd be a great surprise. But that's the thing, you know, if I'm rooting for something, it doesn't mean that I'm pretending like the pressure isn't there. And this brings me to another argument I've heard lately: maybe Marvel needs fewer team-ups. And I understand, you know, what people mean when they say that. You don't want every movie filled with 10 cameos. You don't want characters showing up just because Marvel wants the audience to point at that screen. A crossover without a reason isn't automatically exciting. But I don't think team-ups themselves are the problem. I think the meaningful team-ups are one of the things that make the MCU so special, because otherwise, what is the shared universe? If Shang-Chi exists completely separately from everybody else forever, then he's basically just starring in another movie franchise, which, dang it, should have had a sequel by now. I'll say it again. It was a great movie, maybe one of their best in the last 7 years since Endgame. They should have done a sequel to Shang-Chi, at least another sequel outside of the Spider-Man movies. If Moon Knight never interacts with anybody outside of his own corner, that's just another isolated franchise. If the Fantastic Four never meaningful— meaningfully collide with the Avengers, then eventually you start asking what makes This cinematic universe instead of several Marvel properties happening to exist under the same studio. The connective tissue matters, not because everybody needs to appear everywhere, but because when the right characters finally do meet, it should feel important. And that's the difference. I don't want more cameos. I want more consequences from these characters sharing a universe. And I think there are two completely different things. That's what Phase One understood so well. The connections were small. Nick Fury appears, Coulson appears, Tony Stark shows up at the end of The Incredible Hulk, Mjolnir sitting in the desert. Those aren't massive crossover events; they're promises. And eventually, the Avengers cashes the check. And strangely enough, I think Marvel may eventually get another opportunity to do something like that. Because whatever happens in Secret Wars, the MCU coming out the other side is probably going to look different. The X-Men are clearly going to become a much bigger part of Marvel's future. And what I'm not so sure some people realize yet is the X-Men is slated for May of 2028. Do you know what that is? The 20-year mark of the MCU. 20 years of Marvel movies, 20 years of story, 20 years of everything we've been going to see at the theaters through these giant spectacles under the same roof. That's a huge deal. Not only the X-Men, you got possibilities like the Young Avengers, Midnight Suns, West Coast Avengers, and whatever other teams Marvel eventually decides to build, which I think will be very small. Have cosmic teams, have ground-level teams. Big potato, little potato, you know? And maybe the lesson from the Multiverse Saga isn't stop doing team-ups. Maybe it's build towards smaller ones again. Let 5 characters matter instead of 25. Let one corner of the universe slowly connect to the other. Let us wonder what's going to— like, what it's going to feel like when these people finally meet. And then when the big crossover happens, it feels more like a destination. Because that feeling Marvel created with the Avengers, I don't think that belongs exclusively to Phase One. I think Marvel can create it again, but you have to give the audience enough time to want the meeting before you give them the meeting. I think subdivision team-up movies like let's just say Midnight Suns and West Coast Avengers, it's going to give us a lot more depth. These smaller team-ups will feel more like the original Avengers than the culmination of Endgame. Every movie doesn't need to be Endgame. Every movie doesn't have to have the whole universe relying on it to be saved, as extremely awesome as that is. I think that the team-ups like the ones I stated, like Midnight Suns, but Young Avengers, all that stuff Um, I think all that will build into the bigger universe, and I think Marvel's kind of idea was to try and do that. And we'll see how it succeeds with the new Avengers slash the Thunderbolts and the Fantastic Four, along with bringing the X-Men back. It's kind of what we want to see out of the future of Marvel, kind of manufactured over the last 2 or 3 years to make all of this feel like a big buildup towards Doomsday, which I think they've done a decent job of picking up the pieces and deciding this is where we go from here after Kang Dynasty doesn't happen. And I think the beauty of the X-Men is it's such a beloved franchise, they want to get it right. They've already casted the, the people. Sadie Sink, genius to put her in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. I think that role, um, of Jean, of Jean Grey, is probably going to be like more of the heart of the team. She's has— she already has a dark past to relate to from this movie Spider-Man going into her own story with the X-Men. And we're going to see such a close-up view of the X-Men forming, it's going to be quite special. So when I look back at the early MCU, I don't necessarily wish Marvel would just recreate it. You can't recreate it. The audience knows the trick now. We'll never again live in a world where seeing Iron Man and Captain America in the same movie feels impossible. But Marvel can still recreate that feeling behind it— the anticipation, the connection, the payoff. And that's why I'm so fascinated by Avengers: Doomsday, because this movie isn't simply following Endgame. It's being asked to reconnect a universe that has spent 7 years expanding in every possible direction. Maybe it pulls it off. Maybe Doomsday arrives and suddenly all these scattered roads look like they were leading to the same place all along. If that happens, Marvel could be sitting on something incredibly special. I think either way there's going to be something special and unique about Doomsday. I think that's the genius in bringing RDJ back. to a role in the MCU. But it also makes the stakes pretty fascinating, because The Avengers was the reward for successfully building Phase 1. Doomsday may be the movie responsible for proving that the Multiverse Saga was building towards something worth waiting for. And that might be the biggest difference between the MCU then and the MCU now. The original Avengers had to prove that the experiment worked. Doomsday has to remind everybody why the experiment was special in the first place, and I cannot wait to see whether they pull that off. It's a lot of pressure, but if pulled off, could be an enormous payoff. Thank you for listening to Marvel Maniac, an MCU after show. It would be awesome if you join our Discord server. It's in the notes of this episode. Join us, theorize, discuss I got my Harry Potter podcast section in there too. If you haven't listened, Magic Muggle, a Harry Potter after show, give it a listen. We go chapter through chapter. We're in Order of the Phoenix now, but it is also a great companion piece to the books, something I've been working on for the last year on the side. I wouldn't really call it the side anymore. I'm pretty passionate about it. But anyway, if you're excited for Avengers Doomsday, let me know what you think. [email protected], or like I said, join the Discord in the Discord server in the show notes. Does this movie have too much pressure riding on it, or is Marvel exactly where it needs to be heading into its next giant crossover? If you're new to the show and enjoy it, please make sure you're following wherever you listen. Leave a rating or a review if your podcast app allows it, and check the show notes for all the other places you could find Marvel Maniac. There's also a tip jar in there if you'd like to leave a little tip if you enjoyed the episode or the episodes. Zero pressure whatsoever. Never expecting that. Does this conversation make you more or less excited for Doomsday? What are you thinking? What is on your mind? Again, reach out. I would love to hear your opinion. And thank you so much for listening. It means the world. I know you guys are out there, and I appreciate all the support for the show. And until next time, Avengers disassemble.