How Secret Wars Can Jumpstart The X-Men Takeover & Save The MCU (By Ending The Avengers)
We're still a long way away from "Avengers: Secret Wars" — the current release date is 2027, and it keeps getting kicked further and further down the road — but if you're a Marvel fan, that's still the movie you can't look away from. "Secret Wars," with its multiverse-shattering implictions, could and should be "Avengers: Endgame" 2.0, with an almost certain promise of more Marvel hero and villain cameos than we can comprehend, down to the current rumors of a big team-up between Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man.
Well, great. After "Secret Wars" comes out, then what? How can you tell more "Avengers" stories after that, once they've well and truly peaked? Easy: you don't. You dissemble the Avengers, wish them well, and make way for the brand-new MCU X-Men to take center-stage in their place.
We all know the MCU versions of the X-Men are coming. With Marvel Studios officially on the hunt to hear "X-Men" movie pitches, it's only a matter of time before the Blackbird gets fired up and a new Charles Xavier-funded team of gifted heroes go into action. If you're thinking the MCU isn't big enough for a full slate of Avengers and X-Men movies, though, you're right — and that's why the mutants need to take over. Sure, it'd be a bold choice to pump the brakes on Marvel's biggest moneymakers, but Marvel's big enough to take such chances, and a bonkers release like "Secret Wars" is the perfect place to end the Avengers for good.
Give it a rest, Avengers: the X-Men have got this
X-Men is a proven brand. Back in the 1990s, the mutants were the most talked-about Marvel franchise out there. And whatever your view on the 20th Century Fox movies, the previous "X-Men" movie series not only kickstarted superhero films as we know them today, but spawned 13 films worth of sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. What we haven't seen yet is the mutants making their way in a world that's also full of super-soldiers, talking raccoons, and hidden, technologically advanced nations.
That said, X-Men is big. To give them the time and attention they deserve, the MCU needs to take some cues from Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's comic book version of "Secret Wars" and wipe some of the major MCU players off the board for a little bit. When the dust settles, the secret war is over, and whichever fallen heroes have fallen for the last time, it's time for longstanding Avengers folk like Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) to take a good, long break. Meanwhile, the Avengers — as a unit, and a concept — should be done, and the end of this team should be a plot point that makes room for Xavier's team of mutant heroes to enter the world stage.
Because keep in mind, the X-Men's MCU debut isn't just about X-Men. They come with many, many, many other sub-franchises that could revitalize the MCU at large.
The MCU could expand on the X-Men universe like Fox never did
Just before the game-changing takeover of 20th Century Fox by Disney, the former studio had all the pieces to capture the same success that the MCU was reaping. Instead, Fox ended their reign with a limp and unappealing sequel entry, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix," and a misfit movie, "New Mutants," which both bombed in their own special way.
To be blunt, Fox blew it.
Xavier's team might be the center of Marvel's mutant scene, but Fox's lack of imagination to see the spin-off possibilities proved to be their own undoing. From the sewer-dwelling Morlocks to X-Force (not the laughable version from "Deadpool 2") to the reality TV-style X-Statix, unique mutant teams are all over the Marvel comics universe. Meanwhile, the X-Men IP also comes with wild dimension-hopping characters like Longshot and the Mojoverse, the Canadian strike force Alpha Flight, to say nothing of the fun (albeit confusing) multiverse adventures of Nate Grey.
Admittedly, that's a lot to take on, and the MCU has to first knock their plain-and-simple "X-Men" debut out of the park. How do you hit the ground running with the X-Men, though? Again, it's easy. Just handle their arrival exactly like the MCU previously brought in everyone's friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Take the Spider-Man approach with the X-Men's introduction
One of the smartest things that Marvel Studios ever did was skipping over the most iconic chapter of Spider-Man's history: his origin story.
The spider-bite? Uncle Ben kicking the bucket? We've seen it, twice, and the MCU refreshingly got it across with by giving Peter (Tom Holland) a quick two-minute chat with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in "Captain America: Civil War." From there, Spider-Man was good to go. Marvel Studios trusted you to bring your knowledge of past entries to this new version.
There's no reason that the same approach can't be taken when the X-Men arrive in the MCU. We know about the tense friendship between Erik and Charles. We know Wolverine has memory issues. How great would it be, then, to have the X-Men seamlessly slip into the MCU without pausing to give us filler we already know?
Relying on audiences remembering the stories of figures like Xavier and Logan, meanwhile, also opens the door for more focus on fan-favorite mutants who didn't get enough attention in the past films. Gambit could be the MCU X-Men's ace in the hole. Cyclops, the expert tactician, has enough tortured backstory for his own solo film. The same is true for Apocalypse, who could really shine with an MCU budget instead of the goofball Papa Smurf treatment he got before. Meanwhile, even though the major Avengers players should be taking a break during all this, there's still room for a few of them to continue getting new stories — but in solo films.
While the X-Men handle the frontlines, let the former Avengers go solo
Try not to fret, though. Just because this potential strategy of making space in the MCU for the X-Men would mean getting rid of some big hero names we know and love, it doesn't mean that the rest of the non-mutant superhero society is totally off the table.
Newer non-mutant heroes like Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) will get their big shiny Avengers badges in "Kang Dynasty" and "Secret Wars," and following the latter, they can continue getting their own solo projects while the mutants handle the team-up side of things. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) can keep swinging in New York handling street-level threats with Daredevil (Charlie Cox), and Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac) can continue leaping across rooftops.
Meanwhile, though, non-mutant heroes can also start to get involved with the X-Men side of things, building up to future Avengers-level movies that have the X-Men at their center, rather than the MCU's previous superhero team. In the comics, for instance, Storm forms her own team of X-Men that include Richard Rider, aka Nova, a space-saving hero who has been highly anticipated to make his way into the MCU for years now. Spider-Man, meanwhile, once taught classes at the X-Mansion.
This tactic would allow these heroes to be integrated into the X-level threats of the future, while still keeping the X-Men front and center. And when the time comes for the non-mutant superheroes to form a new team, well, the key is to not bring the Avengers back. Instead, a different — shall we say, ultimate — team should be in the cards.
After Secret Wars, don't revive the Avengers - bring on the Ultimates, the Midnight Sons, and more
In the comics, the 2015 "Secret Wars" event ended with universes colliding, and the birth of a new superhero team built to take on larger, more cosmic threats than the Avengers had tended to deal with in the past. That team was the Ultimates.
The Ultimates — whose name came from a prior alternate universe Avengers-style team in the then-defunct Ultimate Universe — headlined a comic by Al Ewing and Kenneth Rocafort, and featured heroes Captain Marvel, Black Panther, America Chavez, Monica Rambeau, and Blue Marvel. Add a few team members, and this would be a very natural next step for the surviving MCU heroes, who would respond to the prior multiversal carnage by assembling to proactively take on universe-wide events before such enemies come for them. After all, if "Secret Wars" really did wipe the slate clean, what better way to bring back some of Earth's Mightiest than in a brand-new form?
Meanwhile, the more supernatural Avengers like Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Moon Knight could easily become the Midnight Sons, Marvel's preeminent horror team. Daredevil could form the Marvel Knights. You get the idea. Let the Avengers moniker lay dead, allow the X-Men to take over, and spin off other heroes into different teams. In doing so, this could revive the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a way that it is desperately in need of, sending it in a new direction accompanied by adamantium-laced Canadians, metal-obsessed tyrants, and furry blue scientists.
X-Men and Ultimates are the future, Charles, not Avengers. They no longer matter.