Today at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel released a series of announcements, including the end of Phase 4 and timelines for Phases 5 and 6. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will now close out Phase 4 of the MCU on November 11, 2022 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania officially begins Phase 5.
Under this new plan, Phase 6 will unfold with the next Fantastic Four movie, and close a year later with a double-header: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. The first half of this two-parter, Kang Dynasty, will be released on May 2, 2025, and Secret Wars will arrive on November 7, 2025.
Marvel didn’t announce any of the cast members or other creatives attached to these new Avengers movies, but a good portion of the Ant-Man 3 panel was devoted to the threat that Kang (played by Jonathan Majors) poses for the wider MCU. “There will be conquest,” Majors told the audience in Hall H on Saturday, and there are plenty of comedians backing him up.
Kang appears to be an even more formidable foe than Thanos, but there’s an even more cataclysmic inspiration for the final chapter of Phase 6. As comics editor Susana Polo wrote, Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars “evokes Grandpa of all event comics, DC Comics.” Crisis on Infinite Earths, with a promise of universal armageddon and the mixing of different parallel Earths.” Hickman also played a major role in reshaping Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, so it seems that Phase 6 will see even more of his work on screen.
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