Why Delaying Avengers: Secret Wars Is a Good Thing

Marvel Cinematic Universe fans got a surprising update this week, when nearly every film already announced for the next few years of the franchise got a new release date. In addition to highly-anticipated standalone fare like Deadpool 3, Blade, and Fantastic Four, this included year-long delays for the next two Avengers movies, with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty moving to May of 2026, and Avengers: Secret Wars moving to May of 2027. While release date changes almost-always provoke some sort of frenzy among blockbuster fans, there was something about Secret Wars' date change that felt inevitable... and necessary.

The delay isn't just necessary because of the domino effect of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike (and the potential other strikes that may or may not follow), or the still-developing legal trouble around Kang the Conqueror actor Jonathan Majors and what Marvel may or may not do with his role going forward. It's necessary for Marvel Studios to even begin to capture the might of what Secret Wars could represent.

Both comic iterations of Secret Wars — 1984's limited series by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, and Bob Layton; and the massive 2015 event by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić — are fascinating beasts within the landscape of event series. While the motivations behind each could not be more different, with the 1984 edition infamously existing to further Marvel's merchandising sales and conveniently capitalize on the hype of DC's just-published Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, both share a distinct commonality in how they impacted the Marvel universe. Purely on a superficial level, each Secret Wars has delivered on its central gimmick: throwing every conceivable Marvel character you love or hate (or could love or hate) into one awe-inspiring battle for the fate of the universe. And once the dust settled on those battles, there was a sense of permanent change — Spider-Man was bonded with the Symbiote and She-Hulk joined the Fantastic Four after the '80s event, while the Fantastic Four completely disappeared and Miles Morales leapt to Earth-616 after the 2015 event, just to name a few of the countless changes. The premise and punchline of both Secret Wars worked because they played directly off of the stories that came before them, with 2015's event culminating six full years of set-up from various Hickman-penned monthly comics. Sure, a reader could (and feasibly did) pick up copies of either Secret Wars and enjoy it with little-to-no prior knowledge, but both events became special because they were turning points for the larger Marvel mythos.

That brings us to the MCU's Secret Wars, which has been lauded as a possibility for the franchise before Avengers: Endgame even hit theaters in 2019, and was finally confirmed to be in development last year. Given the MCU's previous track record for adapting specific comic events, it has been safe to assume that a Secret Wars movie might take some narrative liberties, blending elements of both comic events with a hearty chunk of new. (To an extent, the film version might have to do that in parts, given the fact that some key characters in the comic events' lore are nowhere to be found in the MCU.) But even if that ends up being the case, there have still been some problems with the prospect of Secret Wars hitting the franchise in just a handful of years. Yes, by the current 2027 release date, the movie can play off of almost twenty years of the MCU, plus random nostalgia for whatever other ancillary Marvel properties it is able to fold in through the multiverse. It could, hypothetically, provide one final onscreen hurrah for the original six Avengers actors, in an effort to bookend the franchise's first two decades.

But the bulk of Secret Wars' ensemble will probably be the heroes and villains currently operating in the franchise — a mass of characters that continues to grow at a near-reckless abandon. While these newer characters (like She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Shang-Chi, and Werewolf By Night) and elevated established characters (like Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, and Shuri's Black Panther) have become genuine fan-favorites across Phase 4, virtually none of them are confirmed to appear anywhere else in the franchise before Secret Wars. The movies and Disney+ shows already announced for Phases 5 and 6 are set to introduce or pick up on a different crop of characters entirely, like Deadpool, the Fantastic Four, Wonder Man, and Blade — all of whom will presumably also be put on ice between their respective solo projects and Secret Wars.

Sure, the very image of seeing all of the MCU's costumed characters in a single frame of Secret Wars will immediately evoke glee in countless fans — but our attachment to them won't even come close to their comic counterparts, whose stories were excitedly chronicled in months and sometimes years of monthly comics. (There's also the nature of accessibility, as a lot of these new characters being introduced behind a paywall on Disney+, but that's a whole separate conversation.) Even the MCU's multiverse, and the emotional impact of certain Earths being Incursioned out of existence, has been grossly unexplored. Outside of the small changes of What If...? and the cameo-filled romps of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the audience hasn't been made to care about an Earth that isn't Earth-199999.

Delaying Avengers: Secret Wars by one year might not completely fix some of these narrative conundrums — but it's the bare minimum Marvel Studios can do to give the story the emotional impact it deserves. At very least, that extra year could make space for other key MCU entries that would enhance Secret Wars' story, like Shang-Chi 2, Doctor Strange 3, Spider-Man 4, and additional seasons of any of the Disney+ shows. At very most, it could give us another year to enjoy the franchise and the ever-growing crop of characters within it, before the inevitable fade to white and trip to Battleworld.

Avengers: Secret Wars is currently set to be released on May 7, 2027.