Marvel’s Next Avengers Era After AVENGERS: SECRET WARS Reportedly Revealed
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is gearing up for a massive shift once Avengers: Secret Wars wraps the Multiverse Saga. It’s safe to assume the franchise is preparing for a fresh direction that leans heavily into mutants and the long awaited X-Men reboot.
Marvel Studios seems to be treating Secret Wars as both a finale and a launch pad and the landscape on the other side could look dramatically different for the Avengers brand.
A soft reboot has been rumored for a while and plenty of fans have wondered if Secret Wars might serve as the Avengers swan song for a bit. But Avengers movies remain the biggest powerhouse in Marvel’s library and Disney is not about to shelve that title. Success for Doomsday and Secret Wars is still an unknown, but optimism in the industry is high.
According to Alex Perez in a new Cosmic Circus Q&A, Marvel will rework how it approaches the team going forward. Perez explained that the Avengers name will be refreshed to support multiple types of storytelling.
He said the Avengers brand will be "retooled" post Secret Wars and added that in addition to the "big, world-ending blockbuster team-up stories featuring different groups and factions, they’ll also use the Avengers title for Avengers adventures and stories with an actual group."
Perez also addressed what direction the next big Avengers movie might take and he believes Marvel is leaning cosmic again. He shared two paths Marvel has explored for the next team up film.
"One route they originally planned was the massive blockbuster team-up film tying into Judgement Day, featuring the Eternals, the Celestials, and the Horde.
“A newer route they plan to take features a smaller scale story with Annihilus and the Annihilation Wave, who will serve as the main antagonist of the film and be introduced in an upcoming Disney plus project as a secondary antagonist for the Nova Corps.
“The villains of that show would be high-ranking members of his army, possibly Admiral Salo or one of his concubines, Eradica, Extirpia, or Extermina."
This is not the first time Annihilus has been floated as a major MCU threat. It is interesting to hear that Marvel once considered adapting A.X.E.: Judgment Day for the big screen. The 2022 crossover from writer Kieron Gillen and artist Valerio Schiti brought together the Avengers, the X-Men and the Eternals in a conflict sparked by mutant resurrection protocols.
A movie inspired by that storyline would have been massive but the pivot to an Annihilation Wave storyline lines up more naturally with the in development Nova series.
Perez was also asked about variants and whether audiences should expect any versions introduced in Doomsday or Secret Wars to make it into the 616 timeline after the dust settles. He said:
"Yes and no. It’s a very confusing circumstance. If the 616 universe post Secret Wars timeline we see is the ‘original version’ of that timeline, so to speak, are any of those characters variants, or are the variants the characters we are seeing now in the MCU movies?"
There is still a lot Marvel has not shared publicly about its post Secret Wars roadmap, but these reported plans suggest the Avengers name is here to stay and headed for a new era filled with cosmic threats, new teams and obviously the arrival of mutants.
What do you think about the rumored direction for the Avengers after Secret Wars?