Seven years ago, Marvel Studios wrapped up the Infinity Saga with the releases of Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, and after that, a huge mistake was made with the MCU that only Avengers: Doomsday has the opportunity to fix. In 2019, when Avengers: Endgame was released, Marvel was the biggest and most beloved franchise on the planet. Although everything fans had known essentially came to an end, the future felt bright. However, things quickly changed.
After the release of Avengers: Endgame (which is about to come back to theaters), a new era was ushered into the MCU in the form of the Multiverse Saga. Immediately, Marvel Studios made the critical mistake of not quickly establishing a core group of superheroes as the next faces of the Avengers. Instead, the franchise spent time telling self-contained stories with characters like Moon Knight and Kate Bishop, instead of connecting everything together.
Because Marvel didn't use the early days of the Multiverse Saga and essentially all of Phase 4 to establish a new group of characters who would eventually come together to fight against a common threat, fans quickly lost interest in the MCU as a whole. Everything felt disjointed, the direction of the franchise as a whole wasn't clear, and no one knew who would be brought back in future titles.
In the Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios spent nearly all of the first two phases fleshing out the core members of its Avengers lineup, while also sprinkling in supporting characters and making it feel like everything was leading to the same place. In Phase 3, after two Avengers movies, the core group was broken up in a sense, but that created intrigue throughout the fanbase.
Then, at the end of Phase 3, all of those characters (like Thor, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark) were brought back together to battle Thanos. They suffered a defeat at the hands of the Mad Titan, which made sense because the Avengers had, in a sense, broken up. The defeat caused them to really dig their heels in and come back together, which led to the ultimate victory.
The Multiverse Saga never established a core group of heroes for the MCU's next Avengers film like the Infinity Saga did. There were also no real connections between the different characters and superhero teams that existed throughout Phases 4-6. For example, the Fantastic Four have never met the Thunderbolts or the New Avengers, and the Wakandans don't really have strong ties to anyone.
Marvel should have spent the early days of the Multiverse Saga (Phases 4 and 5) copying the formula of the Infinity Saga, so that the Avengers would have felt connected and there would have been some history between them.
However, Avengers: Doomsday can fix that. Although the film will feature returning legacy characters like Chris Evans' Steve Rogers and Chris Hemsworth's Thor, the upcoming team-up film could still establish its next core group of characters who will then go on to make up the Avengers in future films and phases.
For example, it would be a great time to bring the Fantastic Four and the Thunderbolts together, as they will be teaming up to stop Doom. Then, in the future, it would make perfect sense for those two teams to come together once again to fight a major threat, since there would be history between them and they would know one another.
So, Marvel clearly made a big mistake with the Multiverse Saga. Unfortunately, there's no erasing that, and no way the MCU can go backward and undo any of that. However, Doomsday could be the problem solver and could right the ship for the future.
How Marvel's Fixing Its Biggest Mistake Will Impact Avengers: Secret Wars
As mentioned, Marvel has the opportunity to fix its biggest Multiverse Saga mistake in Avengers: Doomsday by establishing a core group of characters for the next Avengers team. Obviously, with Avengers: Secret Wars being the next Avengers flick on Marvel's slate, and due to the fact that it will be released just one year after Doomsday, fans would immediately be able to tell if Marvel did a good job at solving its biggest problem or not.
If Marvel Studios does, in fact, bring that core group of characters together in Doomsday, it could already start paying off as soon as Secret Wars. No one knows what is going to happen on Doomsday and how the film will end, but one would have to assume that Doom is going to be victorious, the same way Thanos was in Infinity War.
Most likely, if that were to happen, the Avengers will then come together even stronger in Secret Wars and beat Doom once and for all. That formula has been followed before, and it was successful, so there's no reason it shouldn't work with Doomsday and Secret Wars.
However, it would feel a lot more rewarding if the Avengers team in Secret Wars felt as tightly-knit as the Avengers did in Endgame, and that can only happen if Marvel establishes that core group of characters in Doomsday. If not, the payoff won't feel as earned, and it will continue to set Marvel up for failure in the future.
