Marvel Cinematic Universe

That's something that made me stop reading Marvel/DC comics as much as after a while as new writers would just continually change or retcon things.

It's not as bad a retcon as Dennis the Menace no longer being up Walter the Softie.

😄 haha, oops

I was put off comics by the retcons and odd development but mostly by how convoluted it felt when trying to follow some big crossover stuff. Really couldn't be arsed trying to follow a storyline across a number of different comic titles, when big crossover events happened.

It does feel like the MCU is going that way too, I honestly think there are some massive pros when a storyline can just exist but itself without needing to tie itself in knots to reference other films. The MCU had largely not been that bad, most films do work reasonably well in isolation, but some films have suffered massively because of it (Age of Ultron most notably I think. So concerned with setting up the future it just become disjointed).

I've tried looking up a few heroes on wikipedia and it's just insane how many times they've been linked, unlinked, killed, unkilled, powered-up, de-powered and how many of them turn out to be at some point related to other random heroes.

You read the synopsis of something like the infinity gauntlet stuff and it's all "and then wolverine and the fantastic 4 showed up, but Mr Fantastic who was actually the secret child of thanos and univers8 spiderman betrayed them because he was secretly married to Scarlet Witch, but Adam Warlock and Squirrel Girl rebooted the time continuum, only to find out that it wasn't Earth-1's adam warlock but it was actually the adam warlock created by the merging of Swamp Thing and Vision (version 3). Just when all seemed lost...."

I try not to care about retcons personally, because how the hell are these characters still in their 20s or 30s when they've been around and contemporary for something like 70 years?
It would be more jarring to retcon an onscreen character for sure, but even then I'm not bothered as Star Wars has been doing that for decades.

The current incarnation of the X-Men makes a whole mockery of the resurrection trope. But it's still super silly.

I mean, I think this will actually help the MCU.

One of the things that sucks about most comics is the failure for characters to age, and if they do, somehow, age and get replaced, they usually get rebooted back to the "original" guy within 2-10 years, which keeps the continuity fucked and them in this sort of endless reboot loop.

The MCU can't really do that (with current technology at least lol), because eventually, even with digital de-aging and so on, an actor is going to be done with a part, and there's just no way to keep them playing that part, no matter how many people love RDJ as Iron Man or whatever (I actually thought if anything he could have stood to retire a bit earlier, it had got a bit weird), they can't just decide, in say 10 years, he's Iron Man again (and even with tech moving on we're a long way from that being really possible and "worth it").

So as people quit, we're actually going to get new/different versions of the characters - the Falcon version of Cap, Ironheart instead of Iron Man, likely another Hulk pretty soon (if She-Hulk doesn't just take over), obviously some kind of new Black Panther (still hoping for multiversal Killmonger-as-BP myself, Michael B. Jordan is awesome) and so on. Possibly Rambeau as Captain Marvel and Miles Morales as Spider-Man, but I think that would be too many Black people at once for the Mouse (even though those are objectively the best versions of those two characters!) and I suspect Brie Larson is happy to do a few more. Miles Morales would most likely happen if Tom Holland decides he wants to return to the stage as he's hinted - post No Way Home I'm actually kind of hoping he doesn't! The whole little thing with him, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon is really cute and works very well (who knew Spider-Man needed a third wheel?).

Anyway I think that has potential to keep the MCU fairly fresh.

I've been thinking about the X-Men and universes and it might be that the very best thing to do is indeed put them in a separate universe, but just one that sometimes has people cross over back and forth from the main MCU one (Earth-19999).

I’d be surprised if they decided to boost Letitia after her alleged anti-vax rants on set.

Whats her deal?

She doing a Le Tissier?

She's not sorry for spreading anti Vax bullshit and the church she gets her shit from is deeply homophobic. I mean they really don't need her, they have choices they can recast.

Thats a shame. She was decent in Death on the Nile too.

But then so was Russell Brand.

It seems like Shuri has a fairly major role in Black Panther 2, but I'll be shocked if they keep Wright on as anything but supporting cast past that, given her behaviour/views/complete lack of repentance. Given they did some significant reshoots to BP2, supposedly particularly of the ending, I think it's unlikely she's taking over.

I note Okoye played by Danai Gurira, a fan-favourite but let's be honest, not exactly primary character, is now getting an entire TV series backstory (it is solidly rumoured - screenrant.com/black-panther-spinoff-shows-okoye-disney-plus-details/), so there are reasonable odds she's becoming Black Panther. She and MBJ have been the absolute fan favourites for it, which means nothing, but it does seem weird to do six+ high budget TV episodes giving a backstory for essentially a bodyguard/secret service agent, as badass as she might be, unless she's destined for greater things (which might be BP or just an even higher level of badass). The timing of that stuff was all after Wright decided to throw her rattle out of the pram too.

EDIT - There's also a somewhat credible rumour that it's Winston Duke (which would be pretty great), based largely on the fact that a guy leaked a bunch of stuff about She-Hulk and also claimed Duke was the new BP, and it's increasingly looking like the (bizarre) claims re: She-Hulk may actually be true. He also got Ms. Marvel's change to her powers correct (i.e. to vaguely Green Lantern-like construct generation instead of size-change/stretching).

EDIT EDIT - Who do we think Marvel are getting for Namor by the way? We know Tom Cruise is bumping around Marvel at the moment, but there are rumours placing him in a very different role, and he's kind of too old. I'd have suggested Jason Momoa but he's already Aquaman, the lamer but much nicer equivalent of Namor (who legendarily a jerk). Assuming the rumours he's going to turn up soon are true, but it does seem kind of likely as we descend the scale of major Marvel characters.

Namor is in Black Panther 2 under an alias, can't remember the name.