The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one year away from Avengers: Doomsday and two years away from Avengers: Secret Wars, the latter of which it has been building to for several years now. Of course, at first, it wasn’t Doomsday, but Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and that movie was set up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. While the Kang movie was changed, the Ant-Man movie did lead to the Loki Disney+ series, which was created to help set up both Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, and that series still works well to set up Secret Wars. That said, the MCU had to reconfigure things, and it seems that all the pieces are in place now for the next big event.
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From the breakdown of the multiverse to the introduction of the Fantastic Four and X-Men, here are the moments that helped set up Avengers: Secret Wars.
7) Spider-Man Almost Breaks The Multiverse
While Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was there to set up Kang as the next big bad, Marvel started to put together the overall story arc two years earlier. It all started in Spider-Man: No Way Home when Peter Parker tried to use a Doctor Strange spell to erase his secret identity from the world’s knowledge. Instead, it opened a rift to other Earths and brought characters from the Sony Spider-Man Earths to the MCU. As Doctor Strange told him, this could damage the rift in the multiverse, and this is where the Multiverse Saga officially began.
6) Doctor Strange Learns About the Incursions
Right after Spider-Man almost broke the multiverse with his actions, Doctor Strange found himself in a massive battle to keep the multiverse from collapsing on itself. In Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Strange discovered the multiverse-hopping America Chavez and then ended up trying to stop Wanda Maximoff from going to another Earth to steal another Wanda’s life. This is where he met the Illuminati and learned that simply traveling to another Earth puts that universe in danger of destruction in an event called an Incursion. That introduced one of the most critical aspects of the Secret Wars series, as anyone who reads Marvel Comics already knows. It also showed that there were variants of heroes on all the different Earths, many differing from the ones in the MCU.
5) Loki Discovering The Branches at the End of Time
Loki’s first season saw a little bit about the multiverse as he met a variant from another Earth in Sylvie Laufeydottir, and he learned about the Time Variance Authority, which wanted to punish him for hopping through time and disrupting the timeline in Avengers: Endgame. However, it was the second season in 2023 that really shook things up. This was supposed to follow Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in setting up Kang as the big bad guy, as it was Kang at the end of time pulling the strings. While Kang won’t be the big bad guy, this did set up Loki as the new protector at the End of Time, and it is his job to protect the multiversal strands. Secret Wars proves that he will fail at this task.
4) Monica Rambeau Ends Up In X-Men’s Universe
The Marvels hit theaters right after Loki Season 2 ended, and it had a parallel story that sets up the events in both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. That is because Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan, and Monica Rambeau discovered a rip in the space-time continuum between realities and had to seal it before it destroyed the MCU’s Earth. They succeeded, but Monica sacrificed herself by going to the other side. This was almost an actual Incursion that they stopped, and the twist came when Monica woke up. She was on an Earth where the X-Men existed, including a parallel variant of herself called Binary and The Beast, from the original Fox X-Men movies.
3) Deadpool Hops Through the Multiverse
The MCU only released one movie in 2024 as they tried to start the road forward without Kang involved in the Avengers movies. To do this, they set up a new storyline featuring the world from the Loki Disney+ series, Deadpool from his movie’s world, and Wolverine from an Earth variant where the X-Men were all dead. Deadpool was reality-hopping, much like Doctor Strange, and as that movie showed, it is extremely dangerous to do so. By the end, Deadpool and Wolverine survived, the Time Variance Authority was in disarray, and it was clear that the Incursions remained a danger.
2) Doctor Doom Finds Franklin Richards
This leads to a jump in movies, as the events in The Fantastic Four: First Steps take place before the events in Thunderbolts*, even though the latter film came out first. This was the first MCU film other than Deadpool where the events happened on a different Earth than the one in the MCU. However, the end of the film showed that Reed Richards had figured out how to get to a different dimension, which was important for what happened at the end. In the very last scene, Doctor Doom made his MCU debut and was talking to a toddler Franklin Richards. This is what will directly lead to Avengers: Doomsday, which will set up Avengers: Secret Wars.
1) The Fantastic Four Heads To MCU In Thunderbolts*
The movie before The Fantastic Four: First Steps sets up a bunch of things for the upcoming Doomsday movie. First, the Thunderbolts became the New Avengers at the end. However, it also revealed that Sam Wilson had his own team of Avengers as well. Humans were in a panicked state after Secret Invasion and had little tolerance for aliens, which will come into play when the spacecraft lands on Earth with the Fantastic Four and, presumably, the X-Men onboard. This will lead to the giant battle in Doomsday, and that should all end with Doctor Doom somehow pulling the trigger and ending all reality, creating Battlworld, and leading into Avengers: Secret Wars.
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