So let me get it out of the way right now; I generally enjoyed the MCU and its Infinity Saga, a few bumps in the road aside. It did the impressive job of telling a (mostly) coherent story about many, many characters, over roughly twenty-two films, while juggling far more characters than any sane franchise would attempt. Really, it did an excellent job of adapting comic book storytelling. Recently though, there’s been a lot of cultural backlash against the MCU, as well as many concerns about the current state of it. Ultimately, this is something that was inevitable, not because of superhero fatigue, but because of an issue inherent to comic books that the films were always at risk of replicating.

I specified the Infinity Saga earlier, which is to say, all the MCU films produced starting with Iron Man, and ending with Avengers Endgame (Far From Home works as an epilogue, but we’ll exclude it for the sake of an easily defined endpoint). This told the story of the Avengers forming and eventually challenging Thanos’ attempt to erase half of all life using magic space rocks. In case you forgot the plot of the most popular set of films produced in the last decade. In many comic book crossover storylines, the story is told by visiting the different characters in their own books for short periods, with the bulk of the major events occurring in the crossover issues, which became more common as the series goes on. Replace books and issues with “films” in that sentence, and you have the structure of the film’s version too. The issue that many comics face is that once you complete the story, the industry demands that you keep going. And going. We’ve been following the same characters for over seventy years, since Namor and Captain America were introduced. This often means characters regressing or being rewritten as new writers take over preexisting books and characters. It also means the story is never really allowed to end because the industry demands that something continues to happen, and not everybody can keep producing brand new stories, so we see retreads from time to time.

So how does this translate into the film series? Well, the story (the Infinity Saga) has concluded. And the movies are still going, just as the comics aren’t allowed to stop. But actors aren’t images on a page, so they, and by extension, the characters they represent, are aging out of viability. They can’t portray these characters forever, and audiences will resist the recasting of iconic characters we’ve been following since 2008. And Boseman’s tragic death has proven an unwillingness to recast these characters, since Black Panther was made into a legacy role almost immediately. The other problem is that for the story to keep going, we have to keep having new stories. While Marvel has decades of stories to draw from, the narrative of a film series typically demands escalation… which is kind of an issue in the wake of the mad titan erasing half the universe from existence. As a result, the individual stories haven’t escalated directly, but the overarching plot has immediately gone to the multiverse, the only place to escalate the stakes from “the entire universe.”

And the results have been questionable. Some of the films have been good, I loved Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but public reception to the MCU as a whole has been extremely mixed these past few years. So let’s talk about why that is. If we have our primary actors leaving and taking their characters with them, and if the long-term antagonist who carried the overarching plot has taken a bow, then what’s the draw for the coming works? The films are in the part of the comic series where writers are restructuring and trying to come up with the next story, and that story has to replace the bulk of the main cast. So which heroes can take us forward? It’s not going to be the new characters, not when they’re being introduced in Disney+ shows instead of dedicated films, and they have to rely on older characters to keep the existing audience invested. The default for this situation, given the loss of Cap and Iron Man, and the fact that Hulk is still in legal limbo, should be either Spiderman or Thor. However, Hemsworth probably won’t be sticking around for much longer, so we can’t rely on Thor. And the last Spiderman movie erased the entire cast’s memory of the character, so he can’t serve as a valid leader anymore. Without them, the next best options for the existing characters are Doctor Strange, Antman, and Captain Marvel. They’re characters capable of headlining their own movies, are respected in universe, and have obvious tie-ins to future plots (multiverse stuff for Dr. Strange and Antman, Skrull and general comic stories for Captain Marvel). However, we then have to consider if they’re strong choices right now. Multiverse of Madness and Quantimania were among the weakest entries in the franchise, and were very poorly received, making their headliners questionable choices to move forward with. Captain Marvel could do the job, but as she’s been in 1.2 movies as of this article’s writing, she still has some ground to make up. The Marvels might just do that for her, but with the behind-the-scenes nightmares surrounding it and Marvel publicly expressing fears over its opening weekend, I’m hesitant to believe that she’s going to be the face the series is hoping for. And if not those three, then who is going to lead the new films? Shang-Chi is fine, but he’s no headliner; despite their best efforts, Marvel still can’t make anybody care about the Eternals; Falcon/Captain America isn’t going to do the job, given that his show proved the character isn’t cut out to be a leading man. So with no obvious answer, we need to look in the other direction, at the villains.

Marvel’s generally killed off its antagonists at the end of their films, with a few odd exceptions. Loki continues to exist on Disney+, but once again, the actor is getting older, so we can’t rely on him to carry films for much longer. We need somebody new who can replace Thanos, and Marvel’s choice was… Kang the Conqueror? As we know, that entire plot has been placed on hold due to the legal troubles and accusations surrounding the actor, so Marvel is already considering backing out of that plan altogether. And they should. Not necessarily because of anything involving the actor, but because Kang sucks as a long-term villain, and no actor is good enough to fix that. We’ve already seen him killed off twice in his two appearances, and that frankly makes him look pathetic when he’s supposed to be the driving force of a multi-film narrative. The argument is that it doesn’t matter because the point of the character is that an endless supply of him will keep coming from across the multiverse, but let me ask you, does that sound like a plot you want to see? Do we want the same guy over and over again, always losing, never being able to form any relationship with the heroes? Do we want a plot that literally can’t end and renders any individual film featuring him pointless, simply because the new version will appear next week? Kang could make for a great one-off villain under this logic, and there’s serious potential in a single film where he’s getting killed off every third scene but keeps coming back, but he and his variants lack the gravitas necessary to fuel a longer series. The franchise already burned Ultron as an option, so where do we go from here? Who can lead the series as a recurrent villain? Well, there’s three possible sources.

The first option is to bring in the X-Men. They’ve got a whole host of worthy villains from magneto to Apocalypse to Vulcan. Of course, we’re still not 100% on if they’ll be coming to the MCU at all, so we have to put their entire cast on ice for the moment. Never mind the difficulty of recasting the X-Men after twenty years of their own separate films. The second option would be the Green Goblin, who absolutely has the comic storylines to draw from if they want to take a political approach. But, given his handling in No Way Home, it’s questionable if we’ll be seeing the character again or if that will be his only appearance. That leaves one source of a villain worthy of following Thanos, and it’s probably Marvel’s biggest risk.

Despite having three films in the last twenty years, only one Fantastic Four movie was good. I don’t know why audiences don’t respond as well to these guys as they once did, but after being Marvel’s A Listers for so long, modern audiences don’t seem to care about these characters. Perhaps it’s the nuclear family angle not quite fitting into modern values. Perhaps it’s because their films keep retreading the origin story and suffering from weak CGI. Either way, if Marvel wants to reclaim its throne, they’re going to have to make these characters work. Their villain roster is filled with options who can follow up Thanos (Galactus, Super Skrull, Annihilus, and of course, Doctor Doom), and the heroes could actually serve as the new faces of the franchise if handled properly. It would take some work from the writers, since these characters are supposed to be America’s first superheroes and not the new kids on the block, but if it can be made to happen, you have a new team of characters who can command enough respect to unite the roster again while telling interesting stories of their own. They’ve also brought in Spiderman, She Hulk, and Wolverine as reserve members before, so there’s instant crossover potential. Plus, once they’re established, they can act as a constant presence in other films by having one member appear without having to bring in all the actors for every crossover appearance. We just need to figure out how to make audiences care about them, and the best way to do that, I think, is to actually use their full roster.

Despite their name, the Fantastic Four actually has six members, following Reed and Sue having kids in 1970. It took a long time for those kids to actually grow up in the comics, but they offer massive storytelling potential while allowing the writers to test out new onscreen dynamics the previous FF films neglected. Franklin’s a mutant, as in an X-Men mutant, and his powers can easily key into any multiverse plot the studio needs. Valeria’s potentially a budding supervillain that can serve as a fascinating long-term character arc in the same way Nebula did. Bring in the children to shake up a tired dynamic, and bring in your choice of Doom, Super Skrull, or Galactus to present a proper long-term threat. It needs to be done well, perhaps with some explanation of how the team has been stuck elsewhere in the multiverse following their accident, so as to tie in with existing plot threads without making them newbies, but it could work.

Much as I’m sure they’re hesitant to pull the trigger, Marvel needs the Fantastic Four to salvage their crumbling cinematic universe. I know they’ve announced an FF movie is in the works, so I can only hope they do this right and entrust the franchise to its original heroes. Or we could just finally let Marvel take a break and wait for the next cultural phenomenon to hit cinemas, that could probably work too. Maybe that’s a better option than trusting these guys to star in a worthwhile movie.