The build-up for Avengers: Doomsday has officially begun, with Marvel working hard to win people over for the Multiverse Saga’s hopefully-triumphal final act.We’re eleven months out from the film’s release, and already Marvel has dropped four Doomsday teasers alongside Avatar: Fire & Ash, a smart way of reaching mainstream audiences who aren’t quite so online. Excitement is building for this year’s Super Bowl, where there are strong rumors we’ll get a full trailer. Naturally, though, this is leading to some debate about whether the setup has worked.
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Many are contrasting the Multiverse Saga (phases 4-6 of the MCU) with the previous Infinity Saga (phases 1-3, culminating in Avengers: Endgame and with Spider-Man: Far From Home as something of an aperitif). Let’s face it, the buildup to Doomsday hasn’t exactly been consistent, partly due to Marvel’s own stumbles and also due to forces beyond the studio’s control; the Covid pandemic undoubtedly complicated things, as did the Jonathan Majors scandal that led to his being fired as main Multiverse Saga villain Kang the Conqueror. But is this comparison with the Infinity Saga actually fair?
The Multiverse Saga’s Buildup Wasn’t As Good As You Think
The Infinity Saga is generally seen as a masterpiece of storytelling, a single cohesive narrative that somehow flows consistently through 23 films. The truth is slightly different though, the Infinity Saga’s reputation is best compared to a sort of Mandela Effect, a shared false memory created by smart marketing from Marvel. When you look back, it’s easy to see the stumbles and pivots, the smart retcons and the inconsistencies everybody tends to ignore because they’ve bought into the Infinity Saga’s reputation. After all, Marvel only decided to make Thanos the big bad because Joss Whedon used him for a post-credits scene in The Avengers.
The first few MCU post-credits scenes don’t really make sense. The Incredible Hulk‘s post-credits scene sets up a confrontation between the Hulk and the Avengers that doesn’t happen, and Marvel actually released an entire one-shot to make sense of it. Thor‘s suggests that Loki is already in control of Dr. Selvig when Nick Fury recruits him to work on the Tesseract, but the Trickster God has to take over Selvig’s mind again in The Avengers. Even The Avengers‘ post-credits scene doesn’t work, because it hints at a comic-book-accurate Thanos who was eager to court death, rather than one who desired to rebalance the universe.
Thanos’ motivations are the most transparent pivot of all in the Infinity Saga. The Avengers‘ post-credits scene sets up a faithful version, and Guardians of the Galaxy confirms this by revealing Gamora is the sole survivor of the Zehoberi race. That’s explicitly retconned in Avengers: Infinity War, which gives Thanos a very different motivation – a desire to cull half the universe’s population – and reveals he’d “only” killed half the Zehoberi. Infinity War and Endgame‘s Thanos is nothing like the comics, but he’s also nothing like the setup. And that’s not all.
The problems are also well illustrated by comparing Infinity War to Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi’s debut movie and effectively a relaunch of the Thor franchise. Infinity War‘s creative team don’t seem to have liked the creative decisions Waititi made, and Thor’s entire plot is basically a reversal of everything he did, with the Thunder God getting his eye back and deciding he does need a weapon after all (albeit Stormbreaker instead of Mjolnir). The films were made too close together, meaning they weren’t coordinated, and Ragnarok‘s post-credits scene clashes a little with Infinity War‘s opening.
Marvel’s Grand Plan Has Always Been in the Eye of the Beholder
This isn’t to suggest the Multiverse Saga has been better than we think, of course. There have indeed been countless pivots and changes of direction; entire character arcs have been handled inconsistently (Scarlet Witch is basically a different character when you contrast WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for example), and there’s been a shocking lack of narrative momentum. Most egregious of all, Marvel only decided what the “rules” of the multiverse really were partway through, leading to so much confusion and uncertainty – including some out in the open.
But the truth is, Marvel’s reputation for smart long-term planning has always been in the eye of the beholder. That’s the big difference between the Multiverse Saga and the Infinity Saga; we’re no longer quite so forgiving, and we’re not buying into the marketing anymore. The dramatic expansion of MCU content has made the disjointed story a little too evident, there are too many parts that don’t quite fit, and the shift from Kang to Doctor Doom is far too abrupt for us to overlook. We’ve finally seen the reality through the illusion, and the Multiverse Saga suffers for it.
There’s a sense in which we’ll never be able to properly assess the Multiverse Saga until we acknowledge that the idea of a “cohesive narrative” was an illusion all along, though. Worse still, we’ll also never be able to give Marvel a proper chance when it comes to the upcoming Mutant Saga, because the same problems will inevitably recur – although hopefully to a much lesser extent. Marvel Studios bosses were never the strategic long-term thinkers we thought they were, so we’re expecting too much when we expect them to be that now.
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Image Courtesy of Studio Pierrot -
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
