The Marvels, the 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the third released this year, opened over the weekend. Despite being an entertaining affair that spotlights the formation of a new team of superheroes, it’s off to a rough start at the box office by Marvel Studios’ lofty standards.
Directed by Nia DaCosta, the Captain Marvel sequel is the shortest MCU movie, and it uses its limited running time effectively. The Marvels brings together Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in a cosmic adventure that features some hilarious gags (including an adorable yet horrifying horde of Flerken being used to evacuate a space station), along with one of Marvel’s most innovative action sequences in recent memory, which features its three leading heroes swapping places and enemies when their light-based powers become entangled. But with a muted opening weekend in theaters, the film is off to the worst commercial start Marvel Studios has ever seen.
The Marvels grossed an estimated $47 million at the domestic box office, ranking its debut below 2008’s The Incredible Hulk ($55 million) and 2015’s Ant-Man—and it also received mixed reactions from critics. The film’s plot is a little flimsy, as it rushes past providing a proper backstory for a somewhat forgettable villain, a Kree leader named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) who is attempting to steal natural resources from various alien planets in order to revitalize her dying homeworld. And it will certainly leave you asking some questions, such as whether Dar-Benn’s brutal conquest even needed to happen in the first place if Captain Marvel can do things like casually fly into a dying sun to reignite it. But The Marvels still packs a lot of fun moments and performances into a breezy, 105-minute narrative that works much better than some of the studio’s recent TV shows and movies that have taken themselves too seriously.
The Marvels’ lackluster financial opening goes beyond the merits of the movie itself. It’s no secret that it’s been a tough year for the once-invincible Marvel Studios, and things haven’t been the same since the MCU peaked with the Infinity Saga. Just days before the release of The Marvels, Disney chief executive Bob Iger spoke on an earnings call about the company’s desire to reduce overall output so that it can concentrate on each project and improve quality control. The new film’s connections to five previous MCU films and TV shows—Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, and Secret Invasion—and multiple future titles speak to the oversaturation that’s led many fans to feel burned out on superhero content.
Still, The Marvels works well in several ways and provides plenty of lessons, both positive and negative, that the studio can learn from. For better or for worse, some of the film’s most exciting moments come from its setups for future MCU projects, including the upcoming reintroduction of one of Marvel’s most beloved franchises: the X-Men. Let’s break it all down.
The Marvels: Connecting MCU TV to the Movies
The longer the MCU exists, the more challenging it becomes for new projects to weave the events and characters from previous Marvel titles into a new narrative that can stand on its own. This balancing act has grown even more difficult since the emergence of Marvel’s streaming series during the Multiverse Saga, as fans are now expected to watch TV shows and movies to keep up with the franchise’s many moving parts. It’s part of the reason the studio is rolling out a new “Marvel Spotlight” banner to coincide with the release of Echo in January, creating a distinct brand within the MCU that will establish street-level stakes and won’t require much knowledge of existing series.
The Marvels does a better job of juggling preexisting projects than some recent MCU features have, such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The film succeeds on this score by seamlessly porting the best parts of Ms. Marvel into The Marvels, giving the movie some of its most endearing qualities.
Vellani’s Kamala Khan is the real MVP of The Marvels, a source of pure joy in her role as the annoying yet lovable younger sister to her two older teammates. The film does a great job of tying the events and style of Ms. Marvel into its story, with Kamala’s big-screen reintroduction coming in the form of one of her playful animated fan-fiction works, not unlike the Endgame mini-doc that opened her series. Kamala’s bangle and its counterpart, which Dar-Benn finds in The Marvels, are crucial to the events of the film after appearing in the hero’s solo series under mysterious circumstances. And the rest of the Khan family—Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff), Yusuf (Mohan Kapur), and Aamir (Saagar Shaikh)—provides some of the funniest and most heartwarming moments in The Marvels, just as they did in Ms. Marvel. Perhaps best of all, it doesn’t really matter if you didn’t watch the series ahead of the movie because the important parts get explained anyway—the connections between the two projects just make everything in The Marvels click a little better.
To a lesser extent, this also applies to the way in which WandaVision fits into The Marvels, as Parris’s Monica Rambeau takes on a more prominent role in her big-screen debut in the MCU. Rambeau is only a supporting character in the 2021 limited series, but her experience during the Blip, the death of her mother, and her superhero transformation are memorable moments in WandaVision that work well within its larger story about Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her grief. Some of these scenes are recycled in The Marvels for fans to relive or witness for the first time, providing something of a foundation for the film to build on while remaining easy enough to follow for first-time viewers. Monica’s origin story unfolds across three projects—her childhood in Captain Marvel, her superhero rebirth in WandaVision, and her rise to prominence in The Marvels—so it’s spread a little thin compared to the introductions of some of her caped counterparts. Nonetheless, introducing a new superhero over the course of multiple projects serves as an interesting, mostly successful experiment for Marvel Studios.
It’s telling that, as much as Ms. Marvel and WandaVision enrich the viewing experience of The Marvels, the same can’t be said for the other TV series that was expected to tie into the latest MCU film: Secret Invasion. If you skipped Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) disappointing solo series, you didn’t miss anything that would help you understand or appreciate the finer details of The Marvels. If anything, watching Secret Invasion in advance only added some confusion to the viewing experience, considering how little bearing the show’s events had on the movie. Beyond the peace summit between the Skrulls and the Kree that goes awry thanks in part to Captain Marvel’s intervention, the events of Secret Invasion aren’t even mentioned in the film. (Secret Invasion teased these peace talks between the warring alien races in its series finale, but Fury and his wife, Varra, don’t play any part in them in The Marvels.) It’s as if The Marvels forgot that Secret Invasion ever happened, along with that Celestial that’s presumably still floating around in the ocean after the events of Eternals. And if simply forgetting that lackluster projects like Secret Invasion existed becomes the new status quo for the MCU, we’d all probably be better off for it.
In Marvel’s post–Infinity Saga era, the studio’s escalating release schedule has become an issue that has led to declines in both content quality and viewership, and The Marvels shows some of the strains that juggling so many stories can impose. At the same time, the film’s usage of Kamala Khan and Ms. Marvel, in particular, provides a strong example of how the studio can build off its TV projects.
The Young Avengers
Before the film’s credits roll, The Marvels concludes with a scene that feels more like a stinger than it does a true ending to a movie. That’s because it basically is a post-credits scene, one that spoofs the very first stinger Marvel Studios ever created.
The MCU’s inaugural film, 2008’s Iron Man, ended with Nick Fury emerging from the shadows of Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) living room to tell him about the wider world of superheroes he’s joined, and the Avenger initiative. In The Marvels, Kamala plays the Fury-esque recruitment role, breaking into the apartment of another superhero: Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), the MCU’s new Hawkeye. Although Kate doesn’t formally agree to this stranger’s request, she and Kamala have become the first members of the Young Avengers. (Also, shout-out to Kate’s companion Lucky the Pizza Dog, who makes a brief cameo in the scene as well.)
This superteam of younger heroes has been in the works ever since the start of the Multiverse Saga. As the original roster of Avengers has thinned out in the aftermath of the Infinity Saga, it’s become a pattern for Marvel Studios projects to feature or tease the next generation of superheroes. Here are all of the other characters we’ve met in Phases 4 and 5 who could be candidates for the Young Avengers:
Now, not all of these characters appear to have their powers or super suits yet (Eli Bradley), or even exist within the MCU’s main universe (the Maximoff twins and Kid Loki). But with the exception of Skaar, Hulk’s alien son, every one of them has been a member of either the Young Avengers or another team of young superheroes, the Champions, in the comics. (The Champions were cofounded by Ms. Marvel, so it seems as if these two factions are being combined in the MCU.)
It’s unclear which of these young superheroes will end up making the final roster, but Kamala tells Kate that she’s sent out some “feelers” and mentions that Ant-Man has a daughter, so it seems safe to say that we can at least expect the group to feature Cassie Lang in addition to Kamala and Kate. Whether this new team finally comes together in a TV series or a feature film remains to be seen, but the Young Avengers are officially coming to the MCU.
The X-Men
As exciting as the Young Avengers tease might be for some comic book fans, The Marvels saved its most exciting universe-building moment for last. During the film’s mid-credits scene, Marvel Studios gave a glimpse into the aspect of the MCU’s future that we’ve all been waiting for: the X-Men.
Ever since Disney’s acquisition of Fox was announced in 2017, Marvel fans have wondered when the X-Men would finally share the screen with the likes of the Avengers and the other characters from the MCU. WandaVision faked us out with the inclusion of Evan Peters’s version of Pietro Maximoff from Fox’s most recent X-Men film series, as the speedster ended up being some guy named Ralph Bohner. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had an even more brutal fakeout, as it featured Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier, only for the X-Men founder to be killed by the Scarlet Witch. The fact that Xavier’s death occurred in a different reality—on Earth-838 as opposed to the MCU’s main Earth-616—did, however, clue us into how the studio might introduce the X-Men in earnest.
In The Marvels, Monica wakes up in some sort of medical facility after closing off a tear in space-time and trapping herself on the wrong side of the wormhole. As she comes to, she sees her mother, Maria (Lashana Lynch), in a very emotional yet one-sided reunion. Because as Monica soon realizes, this isn’t her mother at all, but rather another version of Maria from a different dimension.
This reunion is cut short by the emergence of a third figure in the room: Dr. Hank McCoy, the X-Men’s very own Beast. Kelsey Grammer reprises the role after he was introduced in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and returned in 2014’s Days of Future Past, the latter of which also featured Nicholas Hoult as a younger version of the character. As the scene carries on, it becomes clear that this facility—which has massive X’s etched into its doors—belongs to the X-Men and bears a strong resemblance to the set design of the original X-Men trilogy that featured Grammer. Beast even mentions that “Charles” wanted an update on their strange visitor, further establishing what feels like Marvel Studios’ first true introduction of the X-Men.
As Monica attempts to reorient herself in this chaotic situation, Beast rightly theorizes that she has found herself in “a reality parallel to [her] own,” which he understands to be impossible. The fact that the X-Men’s genius scientist isn’t clued into the existence of the multiverse differentiates this reality from the one we were introduced to in Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness, as Earth-838 wasn’t fazed in the slightest by Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrival.
Further adding to the mystery of it all, Beast also refers to Maria as “Binary,” and at the end of the scene, she reveals a distinctive supersuit of her own to match the character’s costume from the comics. After appearing as 838’s version of Captain Marvel in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Lynch’s Rambeau returns as yet another superhero, one we’ve never seen before on-screen. In the comics, Monica Rambeau once held the title of Captain Marvel, along with a variety of aliases that include Spectrum and Photon. And for a time in the 1980s, Carol Danvers went by the name Binary after her usual powers had been temporarily stolen and she gained new cosmic abilities while hanging out with the X-Men in space. Although there are plenty of lingering questions about this new setting seen in The Marvels, Marvel Studios appears to be combining Danvers’s comics history as Binary into a new character tied to Maria Rambeau who incorporates Carol’s ties to the X-Men.
With no release date and no official cast announcements for Marvel Studios’ much-anticipated X-Men film, there’s still a lot we don’t know about how this project will come together. With Grammer reprising his role as Beast, just as Stewart returned as Xavier before him, it’s possible that The Marvels is just giving a nod to Fox’s original X-Men trilogy while showing the reality-bending potential that the multiverse provides. Will this new reality serve as the one that the upcoming X-Men project exists in? Will Monica and Maria Rambeau appear alongside the mutants whenever that happens? Or are these simply more smoke screens from the studio to buy itself more time to work on the IP that its future hinges on? And how will the reveal that Ms. Marvel and Wakanda Forever’s Namor (Tenoch Huerta) are both mutants factor into everything? Unfortunately, we will probably have to wait a lot longer to find the answers to these questions.
As always, the Marvel Studios content machine is churning out projects that may dispense more details soon enough, with next summer’s just-delayed Deadpool 3—which will feature the return of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine—serving as the next release to look forward to. The animated X-Men ’97 could be coming even sooner, with the series anticipated to arrive on Disney+ sometime next year. The revival of X-Men: The Animated Series, which picks up where the classic ’90s show ended in 1997, may serve as a nostalgic appetizer for the MCU’s live-action main course. Kevin Feige recently told Entertainment Tonight that he watched the final episodes of X-Men ’97 and that they “really bring you back to that core of who the X-Men are and that soap opera that those characters represent,” before teasing that fans may see their live-action counterparts “perhaps soon.”
The Marvels is an entertaining entry in the MCU’s ever-expanding catalog of films, but with its opening box office returns falling short of already low tracking predictions, the studio may be growing desperate as its hold on popular culture continues to slip. As Feige and Co. appear to be signaling, the studio may see the X-Men as the superhero team to save it.