The MCU is better when it goes back to basics

Agatha All Along just wrapped up a spectacular nine-episode run as strongly as it could have, easily cementing itself as the best series in the MCU (Loki‘s second season was far inferior to the first and just had a strong ending; fight me). The show, which saw Emmy nominee Kathryn Hahn reprising her role as the duplicitous and murderous witch Agatha Harkness, delivered a compelling, consistent, and engaging television project that not only offered a satisfying story, but also advanced the MCU, setting the stage for several new storylines and successfully expanding its corner of the ever-growing universe.

In many ways, Agatha feels like a Phase One project: small in scale, character-driven, and worried more about getting you enamored with the protagonist than with introducing the next multiversal story — and that’s why it worked. Indeed, the MCU used to shine the brightest when the superheroes were the real stars and not the universe they inhabited. Yet, somewhere along the way, the franchise lost itself in the mess of an ever-growing connected universe, and the only way to dig itself out of the hole it put itself in is to go back to basics.

Remember who the real stars are

Marvel Studios

A few years ago, Quentin Tarantino made headlines when he famously said that “Captain America is the star,” not Chris Evans, and he’s 100% right. At its core, the MCU began as a series of stories about a superpowered group of individuals who came together for the same purpose. The interconnectivity was there, vaguely, but the main draw was seeing these individuals shine on their own — that’s what made seeing them together so cool. The biggest proof lies in the first three superheroes the MCU turned into superstars.

No offense to Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor, but none of them were big stars in the late 2000s. Sure, Cap and Iron Man were well-known, but they were nowhere near the popularity of, say, Spider-Man or the X-Men. For his part, Thor was little more than the weird hero who looked straight out of an ’80s album cover, more silly than imposing. However, Phase One of the MCU turned them into icons by fleshing them out and building them up. The franchise took the time to introduce them as individuals rather than team members, allowing them to exhibit flaws, limitations, and strengths. Sure, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Chris Hemsworth all played huge roles in turning these heroes into stars, but the movies themselves did them a huge service by respecting and trusting them enough as solo players.

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Things changed after 2012’s The Avengers. The film’s overwhelming success gave the MCU a crutch to fall back on. From that point on, every hero wasn’t judged by their own merit, but rather as another potential member of the Avengers. It wasn’t so much about how cool Doctor Strange was, but rather how he could function within the Avengers. It got so bad that Spider-Man didn’t have a single movie without needing another MCU player to help.

To be clear, interconnectivity is not a bad thing; it’s the MCU’s whole deal. However, at one point, the franchise seemingly forgot that, for a shared universe to work, the individual pieces need to be great. After all, why should we care about yet another hero if the franchise doesn’t take the time to establish them away from the connected space? We need to see them shine alone before we can see them stand out in the group. I think this is one of the main reasons why heroes like Captain Marvel and Shang-Chi haven’t been as impactful, despite solid movies and great performers behind them: they’re not the stars of the show, but rather members of the choir. And with so many voices, even the loudest can get overlooked.

Back to square one

Disney+

It’s not a secret that the MCU’s Phase Four movies were quite underwhelming. A mixed bag of new characters, long-overdue solo projects, and some truly puzzling sequels resulted in the worst chapter of the MCU, one that people have already pretty much forgotten about. Phase Five, which is close to ending already, BTW, also had more bad than good, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion representing the worst of Marvel in every conceivable way.

However, amid this sea of mid, a few projects stand out, and what do you know — they’re the ones that are character-driven. WandaVision and Loki are the undeniable highlights of Phase Four, towering over their competition in scope, originality, and overall quality. Unsurprisingly, both projects were in-depth analyses of their central characters — Wanda, Vision, and Loki — to the point where they are the closest thing to character studies the MCU has ever done.

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WandaVision overflows with creativity and empathy, painting a profound portrayal of grief, pain, and enduring love. For his part, Loki’s show is all about redemption and self-awareness, as it usesa literal story about Loki falling for himself to drive its point home. Interestingly, both WandaVision and Loki are about delusion, a topic I would’ve never thought the MCU would address.

Every other decent Phase Four effort, from the low-stakes Hawkeye to the charming Ms. Marvel, places the titular character front and center, forsaking worldbuilding in favor of character-building to great critical and audience success — seriously, who in a million years would’ve thought a Hawkeye show would be better than the fourth Thor movie? The formula continues with Agatha All Along, a show many wrote off as a shameless cash grab greenlit because of the viral success of a one-minute song. Yet, Agatha offered an enthralling story about companionship and identity that blew everyone away and unironically became the highlight of Marvel’s post-Avengers: Endgame slate.

Marvel Studios

Agatha’s success relies entirely on recapturing the formula of Phase One. It uses Agatha to expand a new and still quite unexplored corner of the MCU and introduces a few major characters, at least one of which will surely play a main role in the MCU’s future — looking at you with hopeful eyes, Billy Maximoff. And yet, Agatha All Along does right by its titular character. Agatha Harkness is front and center, with the show exploring her backstory and the choices that made her such a ruthless witch. In a refreshing and much-appreciated twist, the show doesn’t redeem her, either; on the contrary, it fully confirms her as a murderous villain kept in check by her soft spot for a young witch who isn’t a delicate flower himself.

Lesson learned?

Marvel Studios

Considering the negative reception of many of its Phase Four and Phase Five projects, one would think Marvel would have gotten the memo and realized that small-scale, character-driven stories are where it should focus its efforts. However, the grotesquely successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine, two multiversal stories with a plethora of cameos and budgets that could feed a small city, suggest the opposite. Never mind that they are rather mediocre movies (I’m sorry, they are, and they fall apart at the slightest scrutiny); they made over a billion, so that means the multiverse is still where the money is at, right?

Sadly, I don’t see the MCU focusing on character narratives in any of their announced projects except maybe for The Fantastic Four: First Steps (yes, that’s the official title), largely because that seems to take place in a completely separate universe. Other than that, every other film project in Marvel’s current slate is multiverse-tied, meaning any chance for a character-centric narrative is futile. And yet, I have faith that Marvel will deliver more of these once it finally wraps up this messy and ultimately misguided multiversal business.

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See, I can’t help but feel whatever happens in the next Avengers movies might potentially serve as something of a reboot or at least a clean slate for the MCU. If so, then character-driven projects will be necessary to tell a new story, especially if we are indeed venturing into the Mutant Saga, as many of us seem to think. Real character development will be crucial in that particular chapter, and the MCU needs to understand it. Otherwise, we’ll end up with an X-Men team full of one-note stick figures without any real personality, and no one wants that; just ask the Fox movies that Deadpool has such a great time tearing apart.