Marvel lost their best characters post-Endgame and have been struggling to fill the void ever since
It’s nothing revolutionary to say that Marvel Studios has made some mistakes since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. In hindsight, I can’t really blame them for scrambling in its aftermath. Endgame was a near-perfect and natural climax to over ten years of stories, and a lot of casual moviegoers were happy to drop the franchise that was now losing its biggest stars rather than engage in the emotional labour of another ten-year build-up to another culture-defining Avengers movie.
I’ll probably wind up seeing every new-release MCU movie until either my death or studio’s, but I don’t blame people for tuning out. I think Disney underestimated how people would see the conclusion of the ‘Infinity Saga’ as a jumping-off point for the franchise, and figured they could coast on brand-recognition to keep people showing up for their stories, not realising that, in many ways, they would have to start from the beginning again if they were to ever replicate Endgame’s success.
One of the most-discussed issues they’ve recently run into is their push for quantity over quality, especially when it comes to their Disney+ shows. Since 2021, Marvel Studios has released ten different series on the platform. I’ve seen all of them — their varying quality perhaps a discussion for another day — but for a lot of people, this started to feel like homework.
If these had been self-contained ‘side stories’ in the world of the MCU, maybe things would’ve gone down better, but making shows like Wandavision and Ms. Marvel vital to understanding some of the movies just made things messy. Worse was that some of these shows could’ve been great movies in their own right, if they hadn’t suffered from extreme bloating to stretch out an episode count.
(Don’t even get me started on Loki. I think it’s a great show — one of the best on the platform — but if I’m right, Marvel Studios are going to face a real uphill battle in explaining what happened to Loki in his show to general audiences when he no doubt eventually returns to big screen.)
None of this is what I’m here to talk about, though. I think Marvel Studios’ business strategy gets a lot of air-time simply because it’s the easy thing to talk about — it’s fun to find holes in a marketing decision after the fact, and double fun if you get to make fun of an international conglomerate in the process, but Marvel Studios wouldn’t be facing any of this scrutiny if people were enjoying their output as much as they wished we did.
Simply put, Marvel Studios is facing a crisis of characters. This, more than ‘superhero fatigue’ or Bob Igor, is their real existential threat.
To recap, Marvel Studios lost three of its most bankable stars — and characters — following Avengers: Endgame; Robert Downy Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America, and Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (yes, Black Widow got her own movie in 2021, but it was a prequel, and too little too late).
While these characters did indeed have some of the biggest stars in Hollywood attached to them, I posit that it was the characters and the writing that kept people coming back to the well — not the star power. Middling reactions to Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Brie Larson’s The Marvels, and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor: Love and Thunder is proof of this.
A Relevant Tangent
My favourite Marvel superhero is Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil. This was a love first sparked with 2015’s Daredevil series (then a Netflix-exclusive; now on Disney+) that has since developed into a love for Daredevil comics — my bookshelves are bursting with them. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I love Daredevil so much, and the answer is, I think, simple:
Matt Murdock is a character at conflict with himself. He’s a lawyer but breaks the law as a vigilante. He’s a devout Catholic but he’s angry and dresses like a devil to beat up criminals. His dead dad — a boxer — had only one wish for his son: that he wouldn’t have fight like he did, yet Matt’s super-senses reveal to him a world that cries out for help, compelling him to fight like his dad once did.
Simply put, Matt is an interesting character. He’s never able to resolve these deep-seeded issues and contradictory facets of his personality, but he never stops trying, and that makes him fascinating. He has never-ending story potential, and more than enough complexity to keep him from feeling stale.
The three characters Marvel lost post-Endgame are similarly complex (although none as magnetic as Daredevil in this humble nerd’s opinion). Tony Stark’s ego and guilt around his past as a weapons developer both motivate and conflict with his desire to save the world. Steve Roger’s time displacement means that no matter how many people he saves, he can never return to the woman he loves, and his ability to stand up to bullies is especially impactful given the hardships he endured before he became a super-soldier. Natasha Romanoff was an assassin, and her desire to help people following her defection to the West stems from the need to ‘balance the scales’ of her past crimes — something she’ll never be able to achieve.
Now, it’s not like losing these three characters has left Marvel Studios totally devoid of interesting, conflicted characters. Pretty much every character in Guardians of the Galaxy has some kind of inescapable trauma motivating them, and Peter Parker — well, you don’t need me to explain the enduring appeal of Spider-Man. What is interesting though is the fact that there isn’t a single Guardians or Spider-Man film slated for release in the next three years.
Compare this to how regularly Iron Man, Cap, and Black Widow were showing up throughout the first three phases of MCU films, and you might begin to see the problem.
So, what characters are we getting instead? What characters are Marvel Studios expecting us to invest in at the same level we did Iron Man et. al? Let’s do a quick run-down.
(Please note, I’m only including characters from the movies on this list. As much as I enjoyed some of the Disney+ shows, they’re going to do very little to improve the state of the MCU so long as they stay on the small screen)
Simi Liu’s Shang-Chi
Shang-Chi is bursting with potential. Simi Liu was excellent in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He’s a real underdog with a fun backstory and a very personal character arc. For as extraordinary as his circumstances are, he feels like a regular dude and I feel like he’ll be used as an audience surrogate character in whatever Avengers movie he inevitably shows up in.
I’m not sure we’ve seen a level of complexity and conflict in his personality and history that will lead to an enduring character, though. At least, not yet. The legacy of his father’s villainy will likely play a part in his future characterisations, and if they go with the angle that Shang-Chi feels the need to atone for his father’s sins, we might just have another top tier character on our hands.
I really like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. So did most people. It’s baffling, then, that we haven’t had a sequel yet. Sure, it’s on the books, but there’s no release date. The movie came out three years ago. What’s taking so long? Three years after the release of Iron Man, Tony Stark had made three MCU appearances, with a fourth known to be happening in The Avengers.
Shang-Chi is one of Marvel’s best bets going forward, but they’ve really dropped the ball with him. Get Simi Liu regularly showing up, get him motivated by his father’s atrocities — which he can never fully make up for — and audiences will respond.
Gemma Chan’s Sersi (?)
The Eternals has become a bit of a hot topic again recently, as the future of the series looks uncertain. Personally, I really didn’t like it first time around, but it improved for me on a rewatch. I enjoyed the diverse cast and murder-mystery aspect of the plot, but my biggest problem with the movie is, unfortunately, Sersi, the main character.
This isn’t a criticism of Gemma Chan; I just think the movie fumbled by making the most boring Eternal the main character. Literally every single other Eternal has a more interesting backstory, power, relationship, or flaw than Sersi. She doesn’t have a strong arc, a strong moral stance, or a strong personality.
I’d be happy to see some of the other Eternals take the spotlight in a sequel (if it ever happens). As things stand, Marvel Studios will have to course-correct on this one. Sersi just was not a compelling substitute for the likes of Iron Man or Captain America in a post-Endgame world.
In the comics, Sersi acts as the Eternals’ Emma Frost — beautiful yet conniving. She’ll do the right thing… if it benefits her. I wish the movie had pushed this aspect of her character because as Sersi currently stands, she’s in dire need of some complexity if she’s ever to become a draw for audiences.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange is a funny one. His characterisation as a stern, arrogant Master of the Mystic Arts fits a unique niche in the world of the MCU, but it’s one that the studio seems a little afraid to commit to. Sometimes they nail his wise and worldly disposition, and other times he’s Tony Stark-lite.
Stephen Strange is not a very conflicted character. They gave him a decent arc in 2016’s Doctor Strange which was his origin story. Strange had to reckon with the loss of his hands — something that he overcame with the help of magic. You can see them struggling to find a suitable arc for him in the sequel, though.
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness basically forces Strange to accept that he won’t be in a relationship with Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer. It’s a strange arc (sorry) because of how devoid it is from the plot of the movie, which is fun but messy. Strange and Palmer’s relationship in the first movie wasn’t exactly bursting with romance, nor did their relationship feel like an important thread left hanging.
Doctor Strange storylines in the comics historically relied on the extremely trippy art style and outlandish plots to keep readers engaged. Unlike some of Marvel’s other successful characters, Strange wasn’t relatable. We didn’t get stories about his personal life. I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of Doctor Strange comics because I struggle to get engaged with his character. The movies have the same problem.
Strange works best as a foil to younger, peppier characters like Peter Parker or America Chavez. On his own, he just doesn’t have the complexity to power the franchise. Cumberbatch is enough of a star to continually draw audiences, but I don’t think his Doctor Strange movies have a hope of becoming as popular as, say, the Iron Man movies, until Marvel decide to something drastically interesting with his character.
Chris Hemsworth’s Thor
Thor’s been through a lot. He’s been going the longest out of all the original Avengers now, and in that time we’ve seen some drastic shifts in his characterisation (proving that it is possible to revitalise almost-there characters like Doctor Strange).
Many people aren’t fans of Thor and Thor: The Dark World, but I think they’re incredibly underrated, so perhaps my opinions are skewed. Nevertheless, I have to say that Thor: Love and Thunder was a new low in terms of Thor’s character. That whole movie is a tonal mess. I’ve seen it twice now but couldn’t tell you what Thor’s arc is at all. Being ‘funny’ (heavy quotation marks in the case of Love and Thunder) isn’t enough to make a hero interesting.
At least Thor is elastic. He can make a wide variety of characterisation work form serious and godly to grief-stricken, irreverent, and rageful. It gives me hope that future interpretations of the character might be able to find their footing again, but the fact Thor’s portrayals have been so scattered speaks to the underlining issue in his character: He’s not that complicated.
Look, I love Thor. I love the visuals and design of his world, and I love his family dynamics. I would go as far as to say that Thor is at his most interesting when he’s reckoning with his familial relationships. My pitch for Thor 5 is to make him reluctant king of Asgard and watch him buckle under that pressure. Thor is only interesting when the environment forces him to make tough decisions; left to his own devices, he’s flat as cardboard.
Letitia Wright’s Shuri/Black Panther
This one’s complicated. Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa was magnetic. His performance carried incredible gravitas, and in a franchise filled with quips and overwrought levity, Boseman maintained a regal dignity and sure stride that clearly made an impact. This combined with the burden of Wakanda’s crown and his father’s legacy made him one of the MCU’s most compelling characters.
Boseman’s tragic death obviously left a hole in the franchise, forcing Letitia Wright’s Shuri to step up and take the spotlight. I think Shuri is a fine character. Despite popping up a few times in the MCU, Wakanda Forever was the first time we really got to know her character, as she processed her grief and anger after brother’s death.
Much like some other characters on this list, Shuri has potential, but not as she is now. She’s not a conflicted character. Much like Thor, she has suffered great losses and while that can be enough to motivate a single movie’s worth of character arc, as things are now, there’s nothing built into her character that demands interrogation.
Shuri possesses a temper and emotionality not seen in T’Challa. Indeed, in the comics, her rage and impulsiveness are often used as a foil for the level-headed and perhaps overly cautious T’Challa. I think leveraging these traits and not being afraid to make Shuri incredibly flawed (especially in comparison to her lionised brother) could be way to add some depth and complexity to the character.
Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang/Ant-Man
Ant-Man (2015) was, for most, a surprise hit. Scott Lang as a thief who just wanted a relationship with his daughter was delightful. There were strong emotional stakes for Scott as he was forced into risking his relationship with Cassie in order to do the right thing.
Scott’s extreme underdog status is what keeps him interesting. Being the constant butt of the joke deflates Scott in a genuinely funny way. Add that to Rudd’s overall charm and you get a great comedic character.
There’s nothing inherently giving a comedic character a dramatic arc, but I really don’t think Scott Lang has the dramatic weight to maintain the kind of large-scale conflicts that are the backbone of the MCU. He’s perfect for smaller scale stories and as icing on the cake in Avengers movies, but Scott Lang is never going to be the driving force of the MCU.
I think his character is perfect for what he is. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a disaster, but not because of Scott Lang’s characterisation. Pitting him against a world-ending threat like Kang just felt really out of place tonally for the hero, but the movie also suffered by not putting his relationship with his daughter front and centre, or even having him be an underdog. Scott Lang kind of just mooched about in that movie.
Bring on more Ant-Man movies. Make them silly little action adventures. Recast the Wasp and actually give her a character arc. Maybe hire Edgar Wright to make one; I bet that would work out well.
Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel
You’re probably not hearing this for the first time, but The Marvels was a disappointment. No, it’s not because of women. Instead, I think the film ran into two big problems. One of them was that two-thirds of the main cast were introduced in Disney+ shows that shouldn’t have been a prerequisite having a good time.
The second is Carol Danvers herself. Captain Marvel has really struggled to find her footing in the MCU. Certain factions like to blame Larson herself for this, disguising their misogyny behind the fact that she gave a few awkward interviews.
2019’s Captain Marvel was a box-office success, grossing over a billion dollars. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but I do think those numbers give a skewed perspective. I think Captain Marvel was iconic for young girls, which drew a lot of parents to the cinema when they otherwise would’ve stayed home. It also had post-Infinity War hype propelling it.
But personally, as someone quite invested in that movie (I was very excited to see Clark Gregg back as Agent Coulson), I had a really hard time connecting with Carol. People like to lob criticism at her Superman-level powerset, but smart writing can get around that. My real problem was that I didn’t care about her as a person.
Giving her amnesia was a strange, unrelatable choice to make, and even after she rediscovers herself, there’s not much to her. She was a fighter pilot. She had a friend called Maria. She was helping the Skrulls because it was the right thing to do, but there was no deep motivation, no conflict in her character, no surprises.
Credit where it’s due, The Marvels did attempt to make her more interesting. In that movie, Carol’s direct actions resulted in countless accidental deaths as she plunged the Kree home world of Hala into a version of the Dark Ages. The blood Carol had on her hands could’ve created an interesting motivation for the character, but unfortunately the narrative wasn’t willing to let Carol process this in a meaningful way, and I can’t see this incident ever being brought up again.
Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson/Captain America
The topic of Sam Wilson as Captain America captured the hearts and minds of racists across the world a few year ago, so let me be clear: I think Sam Wilson has great potential as Captain America. But as things stand, he is not an interesting primary character… yet. He’s worked fine as Steve Rogers’ buddy — he’s been a funny, supportive everyman that helped ground Steve and bring him into the 21st century.
Now that he holds the shield, things have gotten a lot more complicated for him. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a mixed show but had some excellent moments. The best of those were Sam dealing with the not-so-nice history and weight of being a ‘black Captain America’ and dealing with the political and physical ramifications of the U.S. selecting the unhinged John Walker to be their new Cap.
We got to see a level of conflict in Sam we’d never seen before, which was great. Taking over from Steve Rogers means filling some massive boots. Having this be at the front of Sam’s mind going forward — always comparing his actions to Steve’s — will make for some great character conflict.
Good characters often suffer from some kind of wound in their backstory that motivates them. Steve’s wound was basically his entire life pre-super soldier serum. He was a pipsqueak who was constantly getting bullied. His desire to do good was always hampered by his lack of physical acumen. This made his actions as Captain America all the more thrilling — every time he stood up for himself or others, it was personal for Steve.
I think the biggest problem with Sam going into Captain America: Brave New World (2025) will be replicating the feeling of Captain America without Steve Rogers. I want them to truly dig deep into what’s motivating Sam to do the right thing no matter the consequences; to put himself in danger in order to save lives. Sam being just a regular guy without superpowers has the potential to really add to a sense of danger, too — decisions Steve might’ve made in the past on instinct will pose a much greater risk for Sam.
There’s a lot hanging on Sam’s character. Putting Ironheart from Wakanda Forever aside, Brave New World will be Marvel’s first attempt at ‘replacing’ one of their lost stars from an era that some have already become nostalgic for. If they pull it off, they could really put themselves back on course. They just need to take Sam to a whole new level and transform him into a character that can carry the franchise.
Conclusion
There you have it. Marvel Studios is facing a character crisis, but it’s not over yet. I’m convinced that with some strategic and creative character development, the studio could regain the glory they held for almost ten years before Endgame.
I’m interested in hearing if you have any ideas for how Marvel could improve their characters. Let me know!
***
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