Marvel’s Phase 6 Delays Could Be a Big Opportunity for Secret Wars

Not everything in the MCU is good news. The release dates of several major upcoming movies have been pushed back, meaning we now won’t be seeing Avengers: Secret Wars and the end of Phase 6 until 2026. But where there are delays, there are also big opportunities.

Let’s take a step back and explore why these release date changes may actually be a good thing for the MCU, and why they could help the Multiverse Saga really stick the landing.

Marvel’s Phase 6 Delays

There’s been a lot of release date shuffling in the MCU recently, with the Blade movie being the first of many dominoes to fall. That upcoming Marvel reboot is reportedly experiencing some trouble behind the scenes. Star Mahershala Ali is said to be unhappy with the short, action-light script, and director Bassam Tariq recently dropped out of the film. Blade has now been pushed back into 2024, causing a chain reaction of delays that means Fantastic Four won’t begin Phase 6 until February 2025 and Avengers: Secret Wars won’t cap off the Multiverse Saga until May 2026. 

But the most interesting thing about these Phase 6 delays is what wasn’t affected. Even though Fantastic Four and Avengers: Secret Wars have both been pushed back, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is still slated for release in May 2025. That means there will now be a full year separating The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.

This may simply be a sign that things are progressing more quickly on the fifth Avengers movie than they are on these other projects. The Kang Dynasty already has its director and writer and hasn’t dealt with the same setbacks as Fantastic Four or Blade. But there could be more to the decision to double the gap between the next two Avengers movies.

Phase 6’s Big Gap

Given that we’re still in the tail-end of Phase 4 right now, it’s no surprise we know very little about the plots of The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. We only just met one version of Kang in Loki: Season 1, and there’s no hint of the Fantastic Four or other key Secret Wars players yet. (Multiverse of Madness’ Variant of Reed Richards notwithstanding.) 

But based on the comic book source material, we can make some inferences about the direction of the next two Avengers movies. The Kang Dynasty will likely pit the new incarnation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Kang as the self-proclaimed Conqueror tries to bend the entire multiverse to his will. As with Avengers: Infinity War, it’s probably safe to assume the Avengers won’t save the day by the end of the film, setting up the rise of Battleworld and God Emperor Doom in Secret Wars.

One of the things that makes 2015’s Secret Wars comic so great is the fact that its premise allows for a huge amount of spinoffs and side-stories. When you have a setting like Battleworld – a hodgepodge planet made up of fragments of dozens of dead universes – the possibilities are endless. Marvel Comics definitely took advantage of that, putting most of its ongoing comic book line on pause in Summer 2015 in order to focus on new books set in the chaotic Battleworld realm. 

There was a comic called Thors, about the members of the all-thunder god army who enforce Doom’s will. There were multiple books revisiting classic X-Men crossovers like Age of Apocalypse and Days of Future Past. There was Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, a comic set in a reality where Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are still married and have a super-powered daughter.

The problem with only spacing out The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars by six months is that the MCU has far less opportunity to explore the potential of Battleworld. But with a full year between them, Marvel has a lot more opportunity to play in the sandbox before moving into the climax of Phase 6 and the Multiverse Saga. That may very well be why The Kang Dynasty’s release date hasn’t changed.

Phase 6’s Mystery Movies

Granted, even having a year between these two Avengers sequels doesn’t guarantee Marvel will dig deeper into Battleworld. Marvel released two movies in between Infinity War and Endgame, and both were set before the Snap. The MCU movies never got around to exploring the state of the world during those lost five years, instead leaving it up to shows like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to fill in a few gaps later on.

But the difference between then and now is that Marvel releases a lot more MCU content each year. There have been reports of several untitled Marvel movies scheduled for 2025 and 2026, though it’s unclear how much those dates have been impacted by the other MCU delays. There’s also the possibility of unnannounced Disney+ series that might debut during that time.

We can only hope that at least one or two of these mystery projects will be direct tie-ins to Secret Wars. Thor 5 could be an ensemble movie about the Thor Corps, pairing Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman’s characters with any number of other multiversal Thors. Marvel Studios could build on Deadpool 3’s Wolverine return by reuniting the full Fox X-Men cast for one final sendoff set against the backdrop of Battleworld. Or what about a series set on the Shield, the barrier protecting the rest of Battleworld from the ravenous hordes of zombies and androids? That could very well be Marvel’s answer to Game of Thrones.

Even if Marvel doesn’t actually introduce Battleworld until the Secret Wars movie, there are ways to expand and enrich this story in the year leading up to its release. If nothing else, Marvel should use that period to flesh out the Fantastic Four characters as much as possible. Secret Wars is both a story about the power of hope in the face of overwhelming darkness and an examination of the rivalry between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Doom is presented as the all-powerful savior of reality, yet he proves unable to rise above his hatred of Reed and his own insecurities. It’s a story that banks heavily on the decades of Fantastic Four lore in the Marvel Universe. 

Secret Wars is both a story about the power of hope in the face of overwhelming darkness and an examination of the rivalry between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom.

The MCU, unfortunately, doesn’t have that long history to draw upon. Apart from a potential cameo in a movie like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we aren’t likely to meet the FF before their movie drops in 2025, at which point the Multiverse Saga will be rapidly moving to its big climax. There’s an argument to be made that it’s simply too soon to be attempting a Secret Wars movie. But for better or worse, that’s Marvel’s plan. The least they can do is take full advantage of the one-year gap between The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.   

Do you think the longer wait for Avengers: Secret Wars is a good thing? What Secret Wars spinoffs are you dying to see? Let us know in the comments.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.