The Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to get a fresh start—and not everyone’s invited to the party.
Kevin Feige dropped a bombshell this past summer that’s sent shockwaves through the fandom: after Avengers: Secret Wars hits theaters in 2027, Marvel Studios will implement what he’s calling a “reset” of the MCU. Notice he didn’t say “reboot”—that’s deliberate. As Feige explained, “Reboot is a scary word. Reboot can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Reset, singular timeline—we’re thinking along those lines.”
But here’s where it gets interesting. According to reliable industry leaker Alex Perez, this reset will involve “a quick scrub of details the MCU wants to sort of forget and redo,” including the resurrection of some heroes and villains and the erasure of minor events. His estimate? About 20-25% of the original timeline will be altered or removed entirely.
That might sound like a minor adjustment, but let’s be real—a quarter of your continuity disappearing is massive. And as someone who’s been covering the MCU since its early days, I can tell you this is both the best and worst news Marvel could deliver right now.
Why Marvel Needs This Reset (And Why It Should’ve Happened Sooner)
The Multiverse Saga has been… complicated. That’s putting it diplomatically. Where the Infinity Saga built toward a singular, emotionally resonant climax in Endgame, the Multiverse Saga has felt like Marvel throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Multiple timelines, variants, incursions—it’s become nearly incomprehensible for casual viewers, and exhausting even for die-hard fans like myself.
The 2015 Secret Wars comic by Jonathan Hickman served as a soft reboot for Marvel Comics, folding the Ultimate Universe into the main 616 continuity. The MCU appears poised to do something similar, using Secret Wars as a narrative reset button that maintains continuity while opening doors for the X-Men and Fantastic Four to finally join Earth-616 proper.
This is Marvel learning from its own mistakes. Phase Four should’ve been treated like Phase One—smaller budgets, character-focused stories, building toward something bigger. Instead, they went massive right out of the gate, and the cracks started showing immediately.
The Casualty List: What’s Getting the Axe
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Secret Invasion is almost certainly getting memory-holed.
The 2023 Disney+ series holds the dubious distinction of being one of the lowest-rated MCU projects ever, with a 53% Rotten Tomatoes score and some of the most negative fan feedback Marvel has received. The show’s failure is particularly painful because the 2008 comic storyline it’s based on is genuinely brilliant—a paranoid thriller where anyone could be a Skrull in disguise. What we got instead was a plodding, poorly paced mess that wasted incredible actors like Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman.
Made on a reported $212 million budget, Secret Invasion was both a critical and financial disaster. The series’ poor reception reportedly killed plans for related projects, including the Armor Wars special that was supposed to follow up on the Rhodey-Skrull twist. When your show is so bad it takes down other projects with it, you know you’ve got a problem.
The beautiful thing about erasing Secret Invasion? It’s actually easy to do. The show had almost no lasting repercussions addressed in other MCU properties. Sure, Maria Hill died—but in a post-Secret Wars timeline, you could simply have Cobie Smulders show up alive and well, Days of Future Past-style. Problem solved. Hell, you could actually do the story right this time as a proper Avengers movie with real stakes.
The Eternals are likely next on the chopping block. Despite opening to $71 million domestically, the film earned the lowest critical reception of any MCU movie to that point and finished with a disappointing $164.9 million domestic total. It was a movie with tremendous ambition—Chloé Zhao’s meditative approach to superhero storytelling was genuinely refreshing—but it never connected with audiences the way Marvel hoped.
Here’s my take: the Eternals movie isn’t bad, it’s just overbudgeted for what it’s trying to be. Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor weren’t masterpieces either, but their smaller price tags meant they could afford to be imperfect origin stories. When you’re spending $200 million, you can’t afford a lukewarm reception.
That said, I’d love to see Harry Styles’ Starfox join an Annihilators-type cosmic team with characters who are already contractually locked in—Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock, maybe even the Guardians replacements. There’s potential there, even if the Eternals as a franchise might be done.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is probably living on borrowed time. I actually enjoyed the show—Tatiana Maslany brought genuine charm to Jennifer Walters, and when it leaned into legal comedy, it sang. But the series drew intense (often unfairly toxic) criticism, and Maslany’s public stance on political issues likely didn’t endear her to Disney brass. More importantly, the show’s meta-commentary finale, while conceptually interesting, created continuity headaches for the larger MCU.
Still, She-Hulk herself deserves better. In the comics, she’s been a fantastic Avengers and Fantastic Four member—a powerhouse who brings both strength and personality to team dynamics. Maybe she shows up in a movie with proper effects budget and a less divisive creative approach.
The Post-Credits That Lead Nowhere
One of the most frustrating aspects of the Multiverse Saga has been the sheer number of post-credits scenes that set up… nothing. Remember when these teases actually mattered? When Thor’s hammer in Iron Man 2 or the Tesseract in Captain America: The First Avenger were genuine breadcrumbs leading somewhere specific?
Now we’re drowning in dangling threads:
- Shang-Chi’s beacon calling to… someone
- Dane Whitman becoming Black Knight and teaming with Blade
- Brett Goldstein as Hercules (please, Marvel, don’t waste this casting)
- That Venom symbiote in the MCU (maybe resolved in The Last Dance?)
- Moon Knight’s third, more violent identity
- Clea recruiting Strange to fix incursions
- Ms. Marvel being a mutant
- The Council of Kangs (LOL, good luck with that one)
Some of these will pay off in Doomsday or Secret Wars. Others? We may never see them again. And honestly, that’s probably for the best. Not every tease needs to become a full narrative arc, especially when the connective tissue isn’t there.
What Marvel Absolutely Must Keep
While we’re playing cleanup crew with failed experiments, let’s talk about what Marvel needs to protect at all costs.
Daredevil: Born Again is the blueprint for Marvel’s television future. The series launched with 7.5 million viewers in its first five days and has already been renewed for a third season, making it the first live-action Marvel Studios series to reach that milestone. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are delivering career-defining performances, and the show’s street-level grittiness is exactly the tonal variety the MCU desperately needs.
This is what Marvel Television should be: quality-driven, character-focused storytelling that doesn’t require viewers to have seen seventeen other projects. Kevin Feige has mentioned scaling back to one show per year, but I’d argue they need a two-tier approach—one interconnected “event” series annually, plus standalone shows like Daredevil that can just be great television without worrying about multiverse mechanics.
Shang-Chi and his supporting cast absolutely need to stick around. The Ten Rings organization is a perfect connective thread for street-level stories—imagine Daredevil fighting Hand ninjas who are actually Ten Rings operatives, or Xialing showing up as a morally ambiguous ally/antagonist in multiple projects. The potential for crossover is enormous, and Simu Liu brings charisma to spare.
The Young Avengers pipeline needs protection too. Kamala Khan, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang (if she’s still around post-Quantumania), America Chavez—these characters represent the MCU’s future. And yes, even Hulk’s son Scar deserves a shot. That terrible haircut notwithstanding, the character could be compelling with the right creative team, and a Champions-style Disney+ series featuring these young heroes feels inevitable.
The Wolverine Question (And Why Hugh Jackman Might Stick Around)
Here’s a controversial take: Marvel should keep Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine around for another decade.
I know, I know—everyone’s worried about Hugh overshadowing the new X-Men. But hear me out. Feige confirmed that the X-Men will be recast following Secret Wars, giving us a fresh, younger team that can carry the franchise forward. Laura Kinney’s X-23 (played brilliantly by Dafne Keen) can join that team and represent the Wolverine role organically.
Meanwhile, Hugh and Ryan Reynolds have lightning in a bottle. Their chemistry in Deadpool & Wolverine was undeniable, and while that movie was more “greatest hits compilation” than character study, it proved audiences still want more of that dynamic. Keep them doing R-rated adventures in their own corner of the MCU—maybe even that proper Old Man Logan adaptation we’ve all been begging for—while the main X-Men timeline develops independently.
Think of it like having both MCU Spider-Man and Sony’s Spider-Verse existing simultaneously. Different tones, different audiences, both successful.
The Recasting Elephant in the Room
Feige didn’t dance around the recasting question, drawing parallels to James Bond and Superman as franchises that have successfully changed leading actors. The implication is clear: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and other retired characters could return with new faces.
This is where my feelings get complicated. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark in a way that even Sean Connery wasn’t James Bond. But the MCU doesn’t need Tony Stark—it needs Iron Man. And there’s a difference. If they wait long enough (maybe that full decade after Secret Wars), audiences will be ready for a new interpretation.
The key is treating these characters like the comics do—as mantles and legacies rather than one definitive version. Sam Wilson can be Captain America while Steve Rogers exists elsewhere in the timeline. Riri Williams can be Ironheart without erasing Tony’s legacy. These aren’t replacements; they’re evolutions.
What Phase 7 Could Look Like
If Marvel plays this right, Phase 7 becomes their second Phase One. The X-Men film, directed by Jake Schreier, is positioned as the first major post-Secret Wars project, and that makes perfect sense. The mutant metaphor—about feeling different, othered, unwanted—has never been more relevant.
Picture this: a smaller, character-driven X-Men film that actually explores Xavier’s school and the core team dynamics. No world-ending threats, no multiverse nonsense. Just compelling characters learning to use their powers while society fears them. Build from there.
Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four (who are being positioned as potential new leaders of the MCU) can handle the cosmic and scientific side of the universe. Spider-Man remains your friendly neighborhood centerpiece. The street-level corner belongs to Daredevil and the Defenders. And gradually, deliberately, you build toward Avengers: The Kang Dynasty—sorry, I mean whatever they’re calling the next team-up movie now that Jonathan Majors is gone.
This is Marvel’s chance to remember that Phase One succeeded because they told good individual stories first and worried about interconnectivity second. Iron Man works as a standalone film. So does Thor: Ragnarok. The MCU’s best movies have always been the ones that prioritize character over universe-building.
The Bottom Line
Here’s the thing about a 20-25% timeline alteration: it’s massive, but it’s also necessary. The MCU has become bloated, convoluted, and creatively exhausted in many ways. As Feige himself put it, “Endgame, literally, was about endings. Secret Wars is about beginnings.”
Some beloved characters will disappear. Some post-credits teases will never pay off. Some shows we endured will be mercifully forgotten (I’m looking at you, Secret Invasion). But in exchange, we get something potentially more valuable: a fresh start that maintains the MCU’s legacy while fixing its most obvious mistakes.
Will they actually pull this off? That’s the billion-dollar question. Marvel has stumbled repeatedly during the Multiverse Saga, making choices that prioritized quantity over quality and interconnectivity over coherent storytelling. But they’ve also shown they can course-correct—look at how Daredevil: Born Again was completely overhauled into something genuinely excellent.
The pieces are there for Phase 7 to be special. The X-Men. A streamlined, focused narrative. Lessons learned from the Multiverse Saga’s mistakes. Characters we actually care about getting the stories they deserve.
Now Marvel just needs to stick the landing. And maybe, just maybe, give us that Brett Goldstein Hercules movie. Please?
What characters do you hope survive the Secret Wars reset? And more importantly, which ones are you happy to see go? The comments are open, and honestly, I’m fascinated to see if anyone out there is actually going to defend keeping Secret Invasion in the canon.