The Avengers aren’t part of Marvel Phase 4 – that much we know. But the makeup of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the MCU is still very much up in the air. With (spoilers!) Iron Man and Black Widow gone, Thor off-world, and Cap off feeding the ducks at your local park, there’s a big power vacuum waiting to be filled when it comes to the next Avengers team. Head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, has hinted that the new squad will include some characters that haven’t appeared in the MCU yet.
“It will be a very different team than we’ve seen before,” Feige told MTV News when asked about the Avengers’ future. “It will be a very different incarnation of the team with some people you’ve already met and some you haven’t met yet.”
Unless Marvel throws a serious curveball, we won’t be clapping eyes on the new team, regardless of who they are how they all come together, for at least another three years. As SDCC 2019 more than showed, the MCU has a lot on its plate between now and 2021 – with 10 projects announced, without discounting the likes of Blade revving into sight beyond that.
Previously, the biggest gap without an Avengers movie was technically the four years it took to lead-up to 2012’s Avengers. After that, it was three years until Age of Ultron, two until Infinity War, and a snappy window, only a year, between that and the release of Avengers: Endgame. We could be looking at more than any of those for Avengers 5.
The message is clear from Kevin Feige and the rest of Marvel, though: The Avengers are dead; long live the Avengers. The old guard may be gone, but Phase 4 is looking to continue its legacy by introducing new and exciting characters to (hopefully) build up towards a new iteration of the Avengers some years down the line.
For now, it’s the perfect opportunity to give faces fresh and familiar alike some ample breathing room in the MCU without the A-word breathing down their necks.
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