It’s April 22, 2025. I’m seated at a fan screening of Thunderbolts, and the crowd is electric. They’re laughing at the expected funny moments, impressed with the action, and giddy when Bucky Barnes rides in on his motorcycle to save the reluctant team of antiheroes. As everyone exits the theater and I head to my car, the vibe all around me is pretty positive, and I overhear someone utter three words we’ve all seen or heard some variation of, most likely online, since Deadpool & Wolverine: “Marvel is back.”
It’s not hyperbole to say the Multiverse Saga and the three phases that make it up haven’t been the studio’s A-game. But after all the mixed bags and setbacks that have hovered over the MCU since 2021, Deadpool & Wolverine seemed to right the ship in fans’ eyes. A smaller output in 2024—just that film, plus Agatha All Along, Echo, and the final season of What If…?—gave way for more in 2025. Alongside the aforementioned Thunderbolts, there’s been the movies Captain America: Brave New World and Fantastic Four: First Steps and the TV series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, Eyes of Wakanda, and Marvel Zombies.
It’s tough to decide which format had the stronger output. Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four had stronger receptions than Brave New World, but none of them seemed to stick with audiences in the way Marvel was hoping. All three had uphill battles to climb: the Fantastic Four franchise mostly consists of bad movies, and First Steps was set in a whole new universe; Thunderbolts stars B- and C-listers from various MCU projects, some of whom have been missing longer than others; and Brave New World was bogged down with thematic and political baggage it couldn’t measure up to. Whatever their individual merits are, they all collectively put their respective characters in a place for us to see them return in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday.
Meanwhile in TV land, the various shows had their own hurdles to get through, be it creative—Born Again, overhaul, you know the whole deal by now—or their release cadence. Born Again is the only show with one you could classify as “traditional”; otherwise, the shows had all episodes released at once or in chunks of two and three apiece. While it didn’t really affect these shows’ quality, it did create a sense that Marvel really just wanted to get things out the door, particularly ones that came at the year’s midpoint like Ironheart and Eyes of Wakanda.
The early part of the decade was impacted by the pandemic and a full year without anything from the MCU hitting screens big or small. It’s too bad that being in a hurry is still such a problem hovering over the entire Multiverse Saga, brought on in part by the all-consuming hunger for content, to the point even Galactus would pull a Mark Grayson and ask for a time-out, and a desire to move on from what may ultimately wind up a misfire of a storytelling chapter.
Wherever you want to pin the blame, be it a lack of creative conviction or a natural part of the franchise lifecycle, the MCU is having a concerning ’20s. If it’s not hesitantly trying out new ideas and then keeping them in its back pocket for longer than seems ideal, it’s trotting out old ones hoping to recapture its glory days and remind the audience (and likely itself) that it’s still got it.
But that part we already knew; we’ve been talking it over and over for years, and we’ll keep doing it long after Marvel’s gotten the multiverse out of its system and moved onto the mutants. As it stands right now, 2025 has been a big Marvel year in terms of output and the moves made. (The best thing about the Wolverine game getting a trailer is the knowledge that fans can now stop being weirdly parasocial and impatient about information on it.) Quality-wise? About the same as previous years, where individual projects rise and fall on their own terms and a solid effort. The best things to come out were probably Spider-Man and Fantastic Four since they felt so fully realized or not in their own way, like the other works of the year.
Knowing what’s ahead in 2026—Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man: Brand New Day on the big screen; more seasons of Spider-Man, X-Men ’97, and Daredevil, and brand new shows Vision Quest and Wonder Man, plus Wolverine on the PlayStation 5 and the multiplatform Marvel 1943—here’s hoping all of those come out as their best selves. And like this year, we’ll surely be here for all of that and circle back around to how the studio did once 2026 winds down.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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