Here’s Why Marvel Studios No Longer Needs Phases

For the past twelve years and over the course of 23 films (and counting) Marvel Studios has defined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of “Phases”. Set up almost like chapters, each phase of the MCU ultimately told a larger story — the Infinite Saga — by introducing the main players in the MCU, offering their origin stories, and carefully crafting a much larger plot that came to fruition with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Phase Four, which will kick off with Black Widow when it opens in theaters later this year, will mark a new beginning for the MCU — and it’s one that doesn’t really need the phase system anymore.

The primary reason that Marvel doesn’t really need the Phase system anymore is story. One of the major elements of the Phase system is that those films were moving parts of a much larger machine, as it were. The Infinity Saga was a tale that played a very long game, spreading details and elements over the course of the films but still working with one primary villain – Thanos. Given the magnitude of Thanos and the storytelling that went into that ultimate story, it’s unlikely that Marvel will do such an overarching villain again. The stories told going forward with the MCU will still be “big”, but they won’t be of quite that large a scale. Considering that, there’s not necessarily a need to divide them into phases, at least not in the more meaningful way we’ve previously seen.

There’s also the matter of how the MCU deals with the locations of their stories going forward. The future of the MCU is very likely to include a lot more cosmic-centered stories while also continuing to tell the tales of Earth-bound heroes as well. While there will certainly be some overlap, depending on the time frames of the stories and other factors, there may not be a lot of connection between the stories taking place in the stars and the stories on Earth. If those stories are more individualized, the phase organization, it again isn’t quite as meaningful. They’re just movies that happen to be set in a much larger universe.

It’s also worth considering that at this point, Marvel doesn’t really need to lean so much on origin stories as we know them. Many of the characters we expect to see in the upcoming Phase Four are characters that we already know. With the grand exceptions of The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (in terms of movies; television is a slightly different story thanks to Moon Knight and Mrs. Marvel), the characters we will see in Phase Four require no introduction. One could argue that going forward, even with the addition of new characters — such as the X-Men and Fantastic Four, perhaps — the work of establishing new characters requires a little less in terms of world building than what we saw in Phases One, Two, and Three. The MCU is well-established. It the road is already traveled. Everyone now is just making the map a big larger.

That might be the biggest reason why Marvel doesn’t really need the phase system anymore. Sure, from an organizational standpoint it works and is something that may well continue. It’s kind of a handy way to keep track of what’s in the works. But in terms of it being a way build a universe that fans will want to continue visiting — something the first Phases of the MCU did in a big way — that’s not so necessary anymore. Marvel Studios has created an incredible world of storytelling that has truly changed the way movies are made and how comic book characters are seen. The MCU is a cultural phenomenon and that’s not something likely to change anytime soon. It’s an established cinematic world that’s here to stay, no matter how it’s organized. The fans will keep coming, phases not required.