It’s general knowledge now that Marvel’s First Family will be facing off against the entity Galactus in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. But how will the Devourer of Worlds, who eats planets for breakfast, ultimately be defeated? Since the Fantastic Four live in their own alternate timeline, maybe they won’t actually defeat him, and they lose their world. But we think that’s unlikely. It’s too much of a bummer of an ending to have billions of people die in the Fantastic Four’s triumphant return to the big screen. So we don’t think they are going to do that exactly.
But what if Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) saves his timeline with extreme measures, by somehow merging it with another one? What if through his super science equations, he fuses his timeline with that of the Sacred Timeline? We’re not sure exactly how that would work, but Reed’s a super genius. We’ll leave the super science to him. Also, his young son Franklin could play a part in it. We know that Reed Richards and his family are going to play a big role in the next two Avengers films. We think by saving his own reality, he might have doomed another one.
Since First Steps takes place in an alternate 1960s, Reed’s tampering with time means that the reality where Steve Rogers became Captain America in 1941 and saw Tony Stark become Iron Man in 2008 would be altered, with the Fantastic Four now filling in the timeline gap of heroes. The FF’s presence would no doubt change the history of the MCU, even if only somewhat. We think that doesn’t just sound like an incursion, it sounds like the biggest incursion ever. But also, a low-key stealth incursion, where no one would immediately notice. How would everyone know that someone altered history? It also might be the catalyst to end the Multiverse as we know it.
We’ve long suspected that as a result of Secret Wars, several timelines will fuse together into a new sacred timeline. That lines up with how the 2015 Jonathan Hickman comic book series ended. Even though Marvel Studios makes big changes to the comics lore, they tend to keep to the broad strokes. This allows for a timeline where all the Marvel characters co-exist, even the X-Men. But we had assumed the FF wouldn’t be a part of this new reality until after Secret Wars. Now, we have a feeling that it may happen at the end of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
In the comics, Reed Richards is the smartest man alive, but often his hubris is his own undoing. To save his reality, we could easily see his MCU counterpart taking drastic measures without consulting anyone else. Although, in a world without a Tony Stark or a Stephen Strange, we’re not exactly sure who he would even consult with when making such a big decision. We’ll have to wait and find out just how Mr. Fantastic saves his Earth from Galactus when The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theater screens this July.
Content shared from nerdist.com.