The MCU launched in 2008 with Iron Man, and the massive success of that first film allowed them to come together for the insanely huge Avengers, which propelled the MCU to become the biggest film franchise of all time - even Star Wars, the 10-going-on-11 film mega-blockbuster that it is, is in a distant second place with half the money the MCU has generated (and about half as many films.)
Warning: this post will have unmarked spoilers for Infinity War.
But as you might notice, 2008 was ten years ago, and people like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Evans have been playing their various iconic superheroes for over a decade.
Many years ago, Infinity War was going to be a two-parter, and in practice it is, only that the second movie is called Endgame instead.
Given that the Infinity Stone saga and Thanos as a villain have been building up since the first Avengers movie (we found out that Loki and the Chitauri were working on his behalf in the post-credits scene) it makes sense that this final confrontation, after the horrific losses at the end of Infinity War and the need - both for the Marvel Universe and for us as an audience - to find a way to get a cosmic do-over, should be a major transformational moment in the MCU.
Other than the definitely-getting-reversed snap, the MCU hasn't killed off any major superheroes. But given the gravity of what is happening, not to mention the fact that some of these actors might be getting ready to move on or becoming more and more expensive with each film, I think there is a high possibility that some of the core Avengers characters are either getting killed off or taken out of the franchise permanently.
To my mind, the most likely candidates are Iron Man and Captain America. Their relationship (and conflict in Civil War) has been central to the Avengers' story, and the films have focused the most on their arcs - arcs that are sort of mirror images of one another, Cap as the idealist waking up in a more complex world and Tony as the cynic who learns to be a hero - means that specifically the two of them making the ultimate sacrifice would be a fitting end to their stories.
(Though part of me hopes that Dr. Strange will use his time magic to instead send Steve back to the 40s so he can live the life that he missed.)
Though a number of them are dust in the wind right now, recent movies have established a new group of heroes who could easily form the core of the Avengers moving forwards: Black Panther and Captain Marvel are both super-popular. Spider Man, arguably the most popular Marvel character overall, has gotten a fantastic and MCU-compliant version in his latest iteration. We've got Dr. Strange, too. Basically, there are a lot of people who could step in and fill the shoes of the first generation of Avengers, and if Disney/Marvel want to keep printing money, they just need to figure out how best to arrange the personalities of these characters to find interesting dynamics like the ones that the original crew had.
While Thor has had his own trilogy along with Iron Man and Captain America, there's a part of me that feel like we only just realized his potential as a character in Thor: Ragnarok, and so somehow I feel like there's more they could do with him, even though he's been a part of the series slightly longer than Cap.
Meanwhile, we're finally (finally) getting a Black Widow movie, though this could be a prequel, so it might not say anything about Natasha Romanoff's future in the franchise. And Hawkeye... well, he was never the most popular Avenger, but damn if anyone deserves to just retire to his nice ranch in the country to raise his family, he does.
Finally, Hulk is great as he is - popping up in other peoples' movies or the Avengers ones.
Really I think the huge transformation to look for is losing Iron Man and Captain America - it, assuming it happens as I guess it will, will change the feeling of the MCU.
It's crazy to think so soon after Captain Marvel that we're getting this next month, but it'll be very interesting to see how it goes down.
I don't think the MCU is going anywhere (we're sure to get sequels to Black Panther and Captain Marvel at least) but this is probably a good moment to take a step back and see how these movies have become the gold standard of blockbuster filmmaking. It's something unique that people will look back on and study in decades' time.
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