Captain America: Brave New World is the latest step forward in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse Saga, which will soon culminate with the release of two films: Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. There’s not that much runway left until Avengers: Doomsday arrives in 2026, so it fell on Captain America: Brave New World to start steering things toward that event. While Brave New World‘s ending and post-credits scene offered some minor teases of what’s to come in Secret Wars, they did manage to sell what the real intrigue of the film will be.
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Avengers: Secret Wars Will Force Heroes to War With Themselves
If you don’t know the basic premise of Marvel’s “Secret Wars” events, they involve select Marvel heroes either being snatched out of their world or surviving multiversal incursion and being brought to a “Battleworld,” a patchwork world made up of fragments from other realities from the the Marvel Multiverse. On Battleworld, the heroes of the main Marvel Universe have to not only face off against traditional villains or foes, but they also have to face their own variants from other realities, or heroes from other worlds that they’ve never met before. It’s why the two Secret Wars events (1984-1985 and 2015-2016) have had such lasting effects on the characters involved (at least the ones who remember): being confronted with alternate versions of their own heroic identities (or having those identities upended entirely) changes their perspectives forever.
This is exactly the thematic line that Captain America: Brave New World introduces in its credits scene. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) goes to visit Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) in his cell at The Raft; Sam is there to goad the Leader about how he beat the gamma-powered villain’s genius probabilities about surviving a fight with President Ross as Red Hulk. However, Sterns retorts that Sam has only won a small battle when there’s still a much bigger war to come. He teases how “the probabilities” have shown him that the multiverse exists and that the war between heroes of different realities is approaching. Sterns poses the question of how Captain America’s noble sentiments about defending the world will play when that task requires him to battle other heroes who are also trying to save their worlds from extinction.
This sets the stage for Marvel Studios and Avengers: Secret Wars directors the Russo Bros. to make a version of Avengers: Secret Wars that is a worthy cinematic event, while also telling a story that has depth and meaning for the characters involved, as well as the viewers’ understanding of these characters.
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Keeping with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson/Captain America, for instance: Sam’s Cap could conceivably get to Battleworld and have to face both some variant of Steve Rogers’ Captain America (say… the evil Hydra Version?), as well as a variant version of Bucky’s Captain America, as well as any variants of himself and/or The Falcon persona. After Brave New World, Sam having to battle Steve and/or Bucky in a three-Cap showdown is at once a sick echo of Captain America: Civil War; premium-grade fan-service cameo and character variant work, as well as a duel that would resonate with any MCU fan who has followed the arc of Captain America’s story throughout the franchise.
And that’s just the kind of work Avengers: Secret Wars can do with just one veteran character of Marvel movies and TV shows. If the Russos works their Avengers: Endgame magic again, then Secret Wars will be full of powerful mirror reflections and/or self-reflections of the Avengers characters we know and love, while the newer characters get to step up and earn their spot as not just saviors of the universe, but all universes.
Avengers: Doomsday has a release date of May 1, 2026; Avengers: Secret Wars has a release date of May 7, 2027.
