Marvel’s Timeless Trailer Spoils the Future of the Marvel Universe

Marvel has released a new trailer for Timeless, the “next big thing” from the House of Ideas. Started a in 2021, Timeless is a series of year-end one-shots that look back on the previous publishing year and ahead to the next, giving fans a sense for what’s to come in the near future of Marvel Comics through the lens of out-of-context glimpses of the world as it will be. While he’s absent from the trailer, Kang the Conqueror — the Timeless POV character since 2021 — is as important now as he’ll ever be, with the character poised to be the next big bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and rumors starting to swirl about who will play him now that Jonathan Majors is officially out.

In the year to come, Marvel has already teased a few events. The most notable seems to be a showdown between Power Man and Iron Fist, with the classic partnership straining under the weight of the conflicts ahead.

You can see the trailer below.

The teaser above also shows off glimpses of some pretty intriguing concepts, like the Avengers versus an army of the undead; Doom as the Sorcerer Supreme; Amadeus Cho battling Blade; and big stories teased for the X-Men and Miles Morales.

The concept is a fun one — it feels a little bit like those single-panel teasers that Geoff Johns and Geoff Katz did in the first couple of years of DC’s Booster Gold reboot. Seeing quick, out-of-context glimpses of the hero being swallowed up by an army of Mr. Mind worms, or facing off against a dinosaur, gave a tantalizing tease of what was to come, without actually spoiling so much it felt like the whole year was just driving toward one inevitable story.

Unfortunately, while they issue might tease big things for the Marvel universe, it’s still ultimately not that satisfying a read on its own. According to ComicBook.com’s own Chase Magnett, “The newest iteration of Timeless proves that the potential charms of this annual Marvel Comics one-shot were already thin when it first appeared in 2021. He adds, “Rather than tying itself to any current stories, Timeless opts to briefly remind readers of a nostalgic Silver Age status quo between Luke Cage and Danny Rand before leaping to an apocalyptic future in which the remaining dregs of humanity are threatened by Khonshu. It’s trope-laden superhero storytelling from origin to finale and is unlikely to thrill even the newest reader, although it offers enough questions to spark some curiosity for the largely-uninitiated about what strange things may occur in Spider-Man and X-Men comics in the year ahead.”

You should still be able to get the issue — to pick it apart, and judge it for yourself — at your local comic shop now. These big event books are usually pretty easy to come by. If your local shop is sold out, you can snag a copy digitally to get in on the speculation.