Here's How The MCU Should Bring Avengers: Secret Wars To The Big Screen
Now that San Diego Comic-Con 2022 has come and gone, fans finally know what's ahead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" and "Avengers: Secret Wars." Kevin Feige announced the two event movies onstage at Hall H, crowning Phase Four, Phase Five, and Phase Six as "the Multiverse Saga." So that means that the MCU is about to get even bigger than it already is. Recent projects like "Loki" and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" have looked at the nuts and bolts of how alternate universes work, but all that's going to get blown up in these two massive "Avengers" films.
In "Loki," He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) explains that he's meticulously cultivated the timeline by sealing it off from the Multiverse to protect it from villainous versions of himself, who go by Kang the Conqueror. In "Multiverse of Madness," the Illuminati explain that traveling between universes can lead to cataclysmic events called "incursions," where both realities occupy the same space — and it can lead to the destruction of one or both of them.
This is clearly all groundwork for these future "Avengers" movies, but there are some issues with pairing these two titles together — mainly because the comics they're taken from are entirely separate events with no tangible connections to each other. Kurt Busiek and Alan Davis' "Kang Dynasty" sees the titular villain take over the planet, while Jim Shooter's "Secret Wars" is a 1980s battle royale featuring various heroes and villains on the cosmic Battleworld.
Since "The Kang Dynasty" arrives in theaters on May 2, 2025, and "Secret Wars" debuts on November 7, 2025, it's highly likely that these two events are connected. If "Secret Wars" is the culmination of the Kang storyline, here's how Marvel Studios should handle it.
Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's Secret Wars
Let's assume that "The Kang Dynasty" is going to be bolder than just assaulting the planet with the sole aim of overthrowing it like the Busiek storyline — "Loki" already revealed that he's got his sights set on the Multiverse itself, so he's surely going to aim bigger than just Earth-616. With that in mind, the first "Avengers" film of 2025 should end with a devastating incursion that obliterates different versions of reality. This would be a huge cliff-hanger that'd make "Infinity War" look like a soap drama.
From there, Marvel should borrow from Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's 2015 "Secret Wars" series, which destroys the main 616 universe and the Ultimate Universe on Earth-1610. As the incursion erases everything, chunks of reality are saved and pieced together to form Battleworld, where the survivors from different Earths are ruled by a malevolent force: Doctor Doom.
However, because Marvel Studios has only just got the rights back to the Fox characters, the studio has had more time to introduce Kang the Conqueror in live action. So when the "Secret Wars" movie does come around, it should be Kang sitting pretty on the Battleworld throne. We know that he wants to rule all of existence thanks to the Multiverse War from the "Loki" finale, so it makes sense that he'd take control and reshape reality how he sees fit after an incursion.
Kang as a big bad will feel earned since he's already shown up in "Loki" and is also set to appear in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." Remember, Thanos (Josh Brolin) was first teased at the end of "The Avengers" in 2012, and we didn't see the payoff until 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War" and 2019's "Avengers: Endgame." These things take time.
Save Doctor Doom for later
Could Marvel use Doctor Doom as the big bad of "Secret Wars" like he is in the comics? Of course they could. But unless he's introduced into the MCU very soon, it would feel like a huge leap to just bring him in for that film alone. It's possible that the "Fantastic Four" movie will bring him to the stage, but that movie isn't due until November 8, 2024 — that's only a year before "Secret Wars" arrives in theaters. That's a very short time frame to really sell Doom to general audiences — because remember, it's not just comic book readers that Marvel appeals to.
There's nothing wrong with using Doom in the "Secret Wars" movie if he's already on the scene, but it would be worth making full use of the chrome-dome villain later down the line in something like "Doomwar" — where he overthrows Wakanda for its vibranium (via Marvel Database). Kevin Feige has confirmed that the future of the MCU rests on Kang's shoulders, so throwing in a Doom curveball would get in the way of that.
It'd feel like a huge disservice to the character if he was added in just to be entirely faithful to the original comics. Kang would work just as well.
It's a cameo gold mine
"Secret Wars" is the ultimate cameo gold mine because of the sheer number of characters that show up on Battleworld, which is divided into different realms that feature classic characters and storylines, all living side by side (via Marvel Database). There's the Thor Corps (made up of multiple Thors), the 2099 world, Iron Fist's mystical home of K'un-Lun, Spider-Island, and many more. That's without mentioning that the story features the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Illuminati, Thanos, zombies, and the Annihilation Wave. And it's easy to imagine some of those groups in the live-action movie.
It'd also be very easy to feature entire realms dedicated to the Fox "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" movies — think of the crowd's reaction at seeing Hugh Jackman briefly return as Wolverine for a scene. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine Ioan Gruffudd standing next to Miles Teller and John Krasinski as Reed Richards, that's for sure. What would be even more impressive is if Kevin Feige convinced either Gruffudd or Teller to play the evil version of Reed who shows up in "Secret Wars" called the Maker – but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
How about a quick trip to the "Ghost Rider" reality with Nicolas Cage before a detour into the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." series with a dash of "Inhumans" just for fun? The possibilities are endless. It's worth pointing out that Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's 2015 comics end by streamlining the continuity into a new universe, so this could easily be how Feige folds the X-Men and other characters into the MCU.
Will "Secret Wars" lead to a soft reboot for the MCU? Only time will tell.