Marvel Needs to Stop

By Allyson Johnson | TV | August 2, 2023 |

By Allyson Johnson | TV | August 2, 2023 |

Secret Invasion is proof that the Marvel Cinematic Universe should have closed its doors with Avengers: Endgame. At the very least, they needed a significant pause to better plan out the future trajectory of their storylines. By 2019, superhero fatigue was already being felt. A genre that picked up tremendous momentum in the 2000s, with films such as Bryan Singer’s X-Men, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, hit its peak once the MCU started playing the long game. Iron Man wasn’t just a relaunching of Robert Downey Jr.’s career but the beginning of cultural domination. From the moment Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury stepped onto the screen in the post-credits scene, the saga and its many predecessors and copycats were launched. It wasn’t just about Iron Man, but about how the film was going to become the vehicle to shepherd every other most popular member of the Avengers roster to the big screen.

There have been definite highlights since the 2019 film. WandaVision delivered a concise story on trauma and loss, Loki premiered with stylish flourishes that capture notes of Doctor Who science fiction wonder, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings gave us some strong fight scenes and the beautiful Tony Leung. There are also plenty of supporters of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. That said, everything to do with the multiverse has been a mess, and this new, post-Endgame Marvel lacks any semblance of cohesion in its storytelling. And it’s made abundantly clear in its most recent series, Secret Invasion, which is the worst television series the studio has released and a glaring sign of writers scrambling to find meaning and connection in the story.

As has been the case with many of its most recent, worst offerings, Secret Invasion is less a singular story and more a device to bridge certain key elements into the next big Marvel release. What might’ve been a fun espionage thriller with Jackson’s Fury at its center became bogged down by stories about the Skrulls, the variant that allows them to manifest and utilize the powers of superheroes, and the corrupt political system that acted both as a lazy comparison to modern time, bigoted inspired extremism but also as a means to setup ongoing conflict in later series, such as the upcoming Armor Wars. Dark and grim, sure, the series lost any ounce of remaining intrigue in the finale when Emilia Clarke as Skrull G’iah appeared on screen flexing her Drax borrowed arm. It’s silly, it’s drivel, and it’s tough to even equate this with the best Marvel has to offer.

Marvel, at the least, needed to take a year or two off following Endgame. The film was a critical and commercial success and while it didn’t live up to the heights of its predecessor, the refreshingly dour Infinity War, it offered closure to the massive saga. Fan favorites died in powerful moments of self-sacrifice, and those who survived mourned those losses. The big bad, Thanos (Josh Brolin), was defeated and it was hard-earned — the big battle had tremendous stakes and had been telegraphed for years without being the main push of each film. Sure, Thanos lurked overhead as an omnipresent threat for viewers to know about, but individual films worked more to establish the world within the MCU, how it reacted to the existence of superheroes, and then the beings they attracted to the world, and the dividing lines that would split the heroes making their eventual reconciliation to face down imminent threat all the more impactful.

Not to say that all of the pre-Endgame films were good. God no. They existed for the fun and mindless escapism they offered while continuing to sell merchandise. For every Spider-Man: Homecoming there was a Thor: The Dark World. Even films considered Marvel’s best, such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, had their critics (hi, it’s me) due to the bizarre editing and Sebastian Stan’s negative charisma. But at the very least, there seemed to be a purpose behind them. From the color-soaked escapades of Guardians of the Galaxy to the poignant farewell between Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) in Captain America: The First Avenger, even if the lesser films became factory-line-produced, the stronger ones had distinctive moments that gave them a necessary personality.

Meanwhile, one look at Secret Invasion — a show that admitted to using AI for its opening credits — demonstrates how little sense of self it has. It’s a mere cog in the machine, a stepping stone to help loop together ongoing stories with no perceived end in sight. Thanos and the road to getting to his story had a clear-cut path that allowed for deviation whereas the multiverse story is increasingly muddled. Because of this, Secret Invasion never amounts to anything consequential. Instead, Fury ends his journey with a whimper, finally delivering answers as to why he returned to Earth after such a long absence away that is little more than an exposition dump. We don’t get to experience the real hardships he’s faced — we’re simply told of them and expected to go along with it so as to not disrupt the trajectory of the billion other projects on the docket.

Marvel will continue to hit the pavement with little sense of patience and with no end in sight. If they’d taken a breather or, at the very least, downscaled to release one film a year with fewer series, they might’ve been able to create a second wave of storytelling that matched the highs of the first. Instead, what once was a studio that produced highly anticipated films has become one where the releases feel obligatory, rather than exciting. Nobody is going to see Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania for the storyline. They’re going because god forbid they miss a significant hint or piece to the puzzle of any upcoming releases.

The MCU was never destined to sustain the monumental level of success it enjoyed during its peak moments — the bubble was going to burst, inevitably, especially given the sheer volume of superhero releases and intertwined series that sought to emulate its formula. However, the most revealing aspect lies not in the onset of superhero fatigue, but in the incapacity of Marvel to get out of its own way.