MCU Secret Wars?

Category: Secret Wars
Last article published: 15 February 2022
This is the 28th post under this label

Because Secret Wars was my first superhero crossover event and I've retained an inordinate amount of affection for it, I was early on advocating for the MCU to attempt the story eventually and would like to believe the rumors that have been floating around since at least 2020. There's a big problem however. While I have no doubt - because they've proven it again and again - that the MCU people could rewrite the story for their current crop of characters, I simply can't (or won't) imagine Secret Wars without its main characters. While I've no doubt such a movie would be called Avengers: Secret Wars, it was never an Avengers story. It was a Fantastic Four story first and foremost (even without Sue). Reed is instrumental. Johnny has a romance subplot (and knocks out super-threat Ultron). And Ben ends up staying on Battleworld. But more than that, the main villain is Doctor Doom. The mid-series threat is Galactus. And as it turns out, the Beyonder wouldn't have gotten to peep into our universe if not for Molecule Man. These are all FF villains, and none of these characters are in the MCU yet. I also happen to think Captain America is key to my enjoyment of the original story, and no longer a concern in the MCU.

There's another problem. While I'm an old dog and remember the original Secret Wars fondly, there have been series called Secret Wars since, and the MCU's writers could conceivably pollute the original with ideas from these. Several MCU directors have reportedly expressed fondness for the original, so maybe not, but the last Secret Wars at least has an idea that could help fix the FF problem. Think about it. We're now entering the phase of the MCU where they are introducing and exploiting (even over-exploiting) the concept of the Multiverse. One of the difficulties in bringing in the FF and the X-Men - which the MCU HAS announced - is that they have long histories that seem at odds with the universe that was Thanos-snapped. You could have young FF (not that it worked when last tried), but if there are mutants, we should know about it by now. But in the last Secret Wars, reality was undone and what you could call different Earths and timelines were smushed together into a new Battleworld. Could this be the key to integrating new properties into an all-encompassing MCU Earth?

This would be tail end, possibly the next macro-phase's Endgame. Your FF and X-Men movies come out, but they are set on their own Earths. We know them when Secret Wars happens, and we might even know new versions of Cap and Iron Man (even if it was Rhodey in SW) who are then 'ported over to Battleworld, and then to a fully-integrated MCU, just as Miles Morales' Spider-Man joined the main Earth when the last Secret Wars wrapped and destroyed/absorbed the world of Ultimate Marvel. By then, there might be other retirees that Marvel would want to keep in play and recast, including Spider-Man, Hulk, etc.

It's not a perfect plan even if I don't think it's particularly confusing to current audiences who seem to have embraced multiversal shenanigans (while old comics nerds see it as old hat and even annoying), but making it a big finale years in the making means it can't be used to effect some of the other changes brought on by the original that you might want earlier in the sequence. Chief among these is giving Spider-Man the black costume that turns out to be MCU Venom. Surely, you'd want to play this out before Tom Holland is out of web fluid. The smart Hulk reverting to savagery could be another one. And what about the Beyonder? Keanu Reeves has been in talks for a while now about playing an MCU character, and I always thought he'd be great as the Beyonder, but would we be happy with him just playing a voice? Or would we want him to show up in the disco outfit in some somehow-good version of Secret Wars II? It all seems too late if the MCU is gonna strike while the iron is hot.

Whatever happens, it seems to me that "Secret Wars" is too iconic an IP for it NOT to show up in the MCU sooner than later. But when and in what form? Will it be recognizable to our eyes, or just a repurposed title? Who knows!