At San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige took to the famed Hall H to announce Marvel’s entire MCU “Phase 5” slate of movies and TV series. Phase 4 saw older heroes retiring and new ones stepping up to follow in their footsteps, but what will Phase 5 hold? What’s the timeline of movies and shows coming out over the next couple of years? And how will Phase 5 usher in the exciting projects teased in Phase 6? Here’s what you need to know!
Phase 4, along with introducing exciting new characters like Moon Knight, Shang-Chi, and Ms. Marvel, also introduced the multiverse. In the comics, the multiverse is a whole heap of trouble for Marvel’s heroes, and it looks like it’s going to cause similar problems in the MCU. The culmination of Phase 6 will be a two-part Avengers event called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, both of which are adapted from comics. The Kang Dynasty will probably see Kang the Conquerer beginning his war to take over the multiverse and destroy all realities other than his own, and Secret Wars will likely see the reality-collapsing multiversal collisions known as incursions threatening to destroy all of existence. Although all that stuff is still a long ways off, Phase 5 will continue to introduce new characters while building up the threat of incursions and Kang’s multiversal war.
If The Multiverse Saga is anything like The Infinity Saga (that is, Marvel’s Phases 1-3 with Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet as the big bad), then all the separate threads that Marvel is introducing will start to tie together more and more as Phase 5 progresses and sets the stage for Phase 6. However, each Marvel offering is also its own project, helmed by directors who each have their unique creative vision, so they’ll still all have their own look and feel.
Overall, Phase 5 is currently slated to go from February 17, 2023, which is when Ant-Man: Quantumania comes out, all the way to the release of Thunderbolts on July 26, 2024. Here’s the release date and plot details for each Phase 5 project!
Ant-Man: Quantumania (Film, February 17, 2023)
Ant-Man 3: Quantumania will kick off Phase 5 in February 2023. While details on the plot are still under wraps, we do know a few tidbits. Scott Lang’s daughter, Cassie (now played by Kathryn Newton), will join Scott and Hope as Stature, a third shrinking superhero. Quantumania will also give us our next glimpse at Kang the Conquerer. Kang originally appeared in Loki Season 1 as He Who Remains, who created the Sacred Timeline in order to prevent an infinite number of his violent alternate selves from ever being born. Now that the Sacred Timeline has turned into the multiverse, Scott, Hope, and Cassie will have to face one of those Kangs.
Secret Invasion (Disney+ Series, Spring 2023)
The Skrulls, a shapeshifting race of aliens first introduced in Captain Marvel, have been slowly infiltrating Earth and disguising themselves as humans. We saw them impersonate Nick Fury in Spider-Man: Far From Home while Fury himself was off-world, and we saw them again at the end of WandaVision, when a Skrull disguised as an FBI agent invited Monica Rambeau to join Carol Danvers in space.
What is the Skrulls’ goal? We know that a large group of them are refugees from the Kree Empire, so that will likely tie into the plot of Secret Invasion. In the comics run that the MCU’s Secret Invasion is based on, the Skrulls spend years replacing well-known superheroes, so it’s possible that we’ll discover that some of the characters we’ve come to love are actually Skrulls.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (Film, May 5, 2023)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will see Star-Lord and the other Guardians butting heads with the High Evolutionary and Adam Warlock. Peter will also try to reconnect with Gamora, who was killed in Infinity War, and then another version of her was brought forward in time from back before she ever met the Guardians. Director James Gunn has also promised that we’ll get to see Rocket’s backstory, including at least one scene of him as a baby.
The Marvels (Film, July 28, 2023)
At the end of Phase 4’s Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers superfan-turned-superhero Kamala Khan got sucked into some kind of space vortex, which spit Carol out in her place. This weird occurrence presumably sets the stage for The Marvels, coming out in July 2023. The Marvels will see Carol and Kamala teaming up with WandaVision’s Monica Rambeau (who gained energy-manipulating powers by crossing Wanda’s Hex) as they take on Zawe Ashton’s currently secret villain, who’s rumored to be the Kree general Ael-Dan.
Loki Season 2 (Disney+ Series, Summer 2023)
Loki Season 1 ended on one of the biggest cliffhangers of Phase 4: Loki, after failing to stop his variant Sylvie from killing He Who Remains and unleashing the multiverse, finds himself stranded in an alternate TVA where no one recognizes him. Loki and Sylvie are the only beings in the multiverse who know that Kang is planning to start a multiversal war that will destroy the cosmos, and Loki is powerless to stop it. Will he find Sylvie and come up with a plan to stop Kang? We’ll find out in Season 2!
Echo (Disney+ Series, Summer 2023)
We first met Maya Lopez, a.k.a. Echo, in Hawkeye. Maya was originally a leader in Kingpin’s Tracksuit Mafia, but finding out that Kingpin was responsible for the death of her father led to her disillusionment and departure from the job. Last time we saw Maya, she was putting a bullet in Kingpin’s head, but Kingpin being Kingpin, he’s most likely still alive and probably not too happy with his former lieutenant. Echo will continue Maya’s story as a free agent and an unofficial member of Phase 5’s “street team.”
Blade (Film, November 2, 2023)
Marvel has been slowly introducing vampires to the MCU, and Blade will be their first official foray into the vampiric world (aside from Sony’s Morbius, which doesn’t count for a whole host of reasons). Blade, born Eric Brooks, is a half human, half vampire hybrid, born from a mother who was attacked by a vampire when she was pregnant with him. Mahershala Ali will be taking over the role of the daywalking vampire hunter from Wesley Snipes, who played Blade in the original, non-Marvel Studios movie trilogy. We’ve already seen—or rather, heard—Ali in the role, in the end-credits scene of Eternals, when Dane Whitman is reaching for his family’s Ebony Blade and someone offscreen says, “Sure you’re ready for that, Mr. Whitman?”
Ironheart (Disney+ Series, Fall 2023)
Riri Williams is a teen genius who goes to MIT at age 11 and builds herself an Iron Man suit out of parts she steals from school. Riri will make her MCU debut in this November’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, after which she’ll star in her own Disney Plus series, Ironheart. Her involvement in Wakanda Forever, including her friendship with Shuri, might shape her character going into her solo series.
Agatha: Coven of Chaos (Disney+ Series, Winter 2023)
When we last saw the centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness, she was trapped in Westview, NJ under Wanda’s spell, which turned her into the sitcom neighbor she pretended to be in WandaVision. We don’t have any details about Agatha’s spinoff yet, aside from the new title (it was originally called Agatha: House of Harkness), and we don’t know if it’ll take place pre- or post-WandaVision. Still, whatever Katherine Hahn touches turns to gold, so we know it’ll be awesome.
Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+ Series, Spring 2024)
Daredevil starred in his own MCU-adjacent Netflix series from 2015 to 2018, and an entry into the MCU proper didn’t seem likely until his surprise cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Since the new series is two years out, we don’t have any details yet, but you Daredevil fans can look forward to his upcoming role in Phase 4’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Captain America: New World Order (Film, May 3, 2024)
Although it wasn’t the flashiest of the Phase 4 Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a gift to Sam Wilson fans. At the end of the series, Sam finally accepted Steve Rogers’ gift of the vibranium shield and stepped into the role of the new Captain America. It sucks that we have to wait until May 2024 to see him kick more ass, but when Captain America: New World Order finally arrives, it’ll be worth it.
Thunderbolts (Film, July 26, 2024)
In the comics, the Thunderbolts are a group of villains who team up and eventually start using their powers for good. Although details about the plot haven’t been released yet, two likely team members have already been introduced. There’s John Walker, a.k.a. U. S. Agent, who was named Captain America after Steve Rogers’ retirement but proved too violent and erratic for the job. Then, there’s Yelena Belova, Natasha Romanoff’s adopted sister, a Black Widow assassin who was hired to kill Clint Barton in Hawkeye. Both John and Yelena have already been recruited by La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who’s building up the team.
This movie is slated to bring Phase 5 to a close and usher in Phase 6.
—
What Phase 5 movies and shows are you the most excited about? Any speculation on how they’ll build up to the multiversal war in Phase 6? Let us know in the comments!
(featured image: Marvel)
