Last week, Marvel Studios announced that The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania have swapped release dates. The Marvels was originally supposed to come out on February 17, 2023, but will now premiere on July 28 that year. Likewise, Quantumania was originally slated for the July 28 date, but will now come out on February 17. According to Marvel, the switch is simply because Ant-Man is further along in development, but what does the shakeup mean for Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Which stories will be affected, and what might change? Let’s take a look!
The Marvels, starring Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani, will see Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel team up with Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan in a spacefaring adventure. They’ll be joined by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury as they go up against Zawe Ashton’s as-yet-unnamed villain, who is rumored to be loosely based on a Kree villain named Ael-Dan. In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne will don their Ant-Man and Wasp suits again to battle the time-traveling villain Kang the Conquerer, played by Jonathan Majors.
The MCU is, of course, interconnected, with each series and film setting up future projects and propelling the overarching narrative of each phase. There have been numerous instances in which filmmakers have had to change scripts and conduct reshoots in order to accommodate changes in other Marvel projects. For example, Sam Raimi has said that the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness went through significant story changes when Marvel decided to release WandaVision first.
If Marvel claims that the only reason for the switch is that Ant-Man is further along in development, then we’ll take their word for it for now—but let’s take a look at what ripple effects the change might cause.
The Ant-Man/Loki Connection
Fans have been clamoring to get their first glimpse of Jonathan Majors’ Kang, because we’ve actually already seen an alternate version of him: Loki’s He Who Remains.
In the final episode of Loki, Loki and Sylvie enter a citadel at the end of time, only to find that the TVA is ruled not by lizard-like Timekeepers, but by a guy in sandals whom Miss Minutes calls He Who Remains. He Who Remains explains that the reason he prunes all alternate timelines is to prevent evil variants of himself from being born and starting a multiversal war. He warns the two tricksters that if they kill him, the events of the multiversal war will start all over again, and he’ll end up right back in the citadel. When Sylvie stabs him in the heart, he winks at her and says, “See you soon.”
Loki Season 2 is currently in pre-production, with filming expected to start sometime in June. This means season 2 may come out in early 2023. With Quantumania now releasing in February 2023, that means that Quantumania and Loki might come out in quick succession, with the events in Quantumania setting up the events of Loki Season 2. Remember that, when Loki gets pushed into the alternate TVA at the end of Season 1, he’s entering a multiverse in which the timelines have already branched, Kang has already risen to prominence, and the multiversal war may have even already begun. It would make sense for season 2 to open with Loki discovering the multiverse that Scott and Hope are already experiencing in Quantumania.
The Marvels and Ms. Marvel
Predicting what will happen in The Marvels is a bit trickier, since the plot hasn’t been set up by previous Marvel projects yet, but we can make some inferences.
First off, we know that The Marvels is currently building up its core team. In WandaVision, we met Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol Danvers’ best friend Maria. While trying to get to the bottom of the Westview anomaly, Monica crosses through Wanda’s hex barrier and gains some sort of cosmic power from it. At the end of the series, a Skrull agent tells her that an old friend of her mother’s needs her help in space.
On June 8, Marvel will release its next Disney Plus series, Ms. Marvel, which tells the story of teenager Kamala Khan, who idolizes Carol Danvers and dreams of being a superhero herself. Whereas in the original comics, Kamala is an Inhuman who has the power to stretch, grow, and shapeshift, the MCU version of Kamala will gain cosmic powers similar to Carol and Monica’s through a set of bracelets that may be based on the Nega-Bands. Since the series hasn’t come out yet, we still don’t know much about where Kamala will find the bands or how her powers will work. And although there are rumors that Brie Larson might make an appearance, it’s still not clear how Kamala will eventually find her way to space to team up with Carol and Monica.
With the new release date for The Marvels, it seems like we’ll have a long dry spell between Kamala’s introduction and her long-awaited team-up. However, there’s another project that may now bridge that gap: Secret Invasion.
Although we don’t know any details about Secret Invasion yet, we know that it’ll likely adapt the comic series of the same name, in which the shapeshifting Skrulls infiltrate Earth and replace multiple superheroes. The Skrulls have already made multiple appearances in the MCU: in WandaVision, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Captain Marvel. Nick Fury has already been replaced by a Skrull double in the MCU, and the last time we saw the real him, he was on a Skrull ship in space. It seems that the invasion is already well underway.
This means that, if Secret Invasion comes out before The Marvels, the events of the series might help set up the events of the movie. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Carol, Kamala, or Monica will make an appearance in Secret Invasion, but thanks to WandaVision, we know that the Skrulls are still working with Carol after she helped a group of Skrull refugees in Captain Marvel, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the series ties into The Marvels in some way. There’s no release date for Secret Invasion yet, but it’s currently in production, so we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.
(image: Marvel)
