Phase 5 – The MCU Pushes the Message
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Phase 1: Proving It Could Work |
Phase 2: Finding the Formula |
Phase 3: The Payoff |
Phase 4: The MCU Becomes the MSHEU |
Phase 5: The MCU Pushes the Message |
Phase 6: The Reset
Fourteen projects across roughly two and a half years. The four films with conventional ratings average 2.25 and everything rated averages 2.57, the lowest of any phase, with a median of 1. Two more, Quantumania and The Marvels, sit at minus one hundred out of ten, which is this site declining to grade them.
The criticism this phase attracts is that the projects were built to deliver a message before they were built to be stories, and there is something in it. Several of these exist to install a successor, and installing somebody is not a subject. A character introduced so that a later project can use her is a character with no reason to be interesting on her own terms.
The complication worth stating honestly is that the message-forward projects failed and so did the ones with nothing of the kind in them. Quantumania fails on villain construction. Brave New World fails on reshoots. Thunderbolts is a team film with none of that argument in it and lands at 1. Whatever went wrong here was upstream of the messaging, and the messaging was one symptom of it.
The two entries that work prove the point from the other direction. Guardians Vol. 3 at 6 and Loki season 2 at 7 are the only things here above a 2, and both are continuations by returning creators of material established earlier. Every genuinely good thing in this phase was planted before the volume decision took hold.
Scores in gold are mine. Scores marked IMDb are the public figure, used where I have not watched something yet. Anything showing Score to come is on the list and gets a number once I get to it.
1. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
► Read the full review of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
⭐ -100/10
Paul Rudd
“You should be terrified.”
The phase opens by taking its most modest franchise and handing it the job of introducing the saga’s next antagonist, which is the volume era’s characteristic mistake in its purest form.
Jonathan Majors is genuinely good as Kang and the film cannot support him. He is given a monologue about the multiversal war, delivered in a chair, to characters who have no relationship with him, in a setting rendered so completely that nothing in frame has any weight.
What is lost is the thing the Ant-Man films had. Two of them were heists at human scale with practical gags about a shrinking man in a real kitchen. This one takes place entirely inside a digital environment where scale means nothing, which removes the only idea the series ever had.
Michelle Pfeiffer finally gets the material the previous film withheld, and it is the best thing here. Janet spent thirty years in the quantum realm, has a history with Kang, and refuses to explain any of it, which is a genuinely good engine for a first act.
Then the film explains it in a flashback and the engine stops. A character with a secret is interesting until the secret is delivered as exposition, and this one is handed over in a single sequence about halfway through.
The reception is the other half of the story. The film opened enormously and collapsed in its second weekend by a margin nobody in the franchise had seen, which is the clearest audience verdict available and the moment the volume problem became visible in the numbers.
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
► Read the full review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
⭐ 6/10
Chris Pratt
“We’ll all fly away together, one last time, into the forever and beautiful sky.”
The best film in the phase at 6, and the clearest evidence that what works here is a creator finishing something he started.
It is about what was done to Rocket, and the flashbacks are the cruellest material the franchise has produced. An animal was altered, kept in a cage, given friends and had them taken, and the film refuses to soften any of it.
The corridor sequence near the end is the best action staging in the streaming era, and it works for the reason these things always work: one continuous take, legible geography, and characters the audience has spent a decade with. The subject is specific, it belongs only to this film, and it is not setting anything up.
Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary is the phase’s only antagonist with a coherent philosophy. A being who makes creatures, judges them inadequate and destroys them, furious that his own designs keep failing him, played with a contempt that never once softens.
The film is also willing to be genuinely upsetting, which almost nothing else in the phase risks. The animal testing sequences are filmed without flinching, and the deaths in them are neither undone nor avenged in a way that makes them acceptable.
What holds it to a 6 is the shape around that material. The plot is a retrieval mission with a code and a deadline, the third act is a corridor and a ship, and the picture spends its final twenty minutes assigning everybody a future the franchise has not used since.
3. Secret Invasion (2023)
⭐ IMDb: 5.8/10
Samuel L. Jackson
Unscored for now, because I have not seen it. A score goes in once I have.
What is on the record is a six-episode espionage series built on a comic storyline about infiltration, generally received as the weakest thing the streaming era produced, and widely criticized for a title sequence generated with artificial intelligence.
That it passed without becoming an appointment is the phase’s recurring condition, and in this case it applies to a Nick Fury series with Samuel L. Jackson and Olivia Colman in it.
What is documented about it is unusually specific. The opening title sequence was generated with artificial intelligence, which drew criticism at a moment when that argument was live across the industry, and it became the thing most people know about the show.
The premise is also the strongest the franchise had left unused. A shapeshifter infiltration story requires an audience to suspect people they care about, and the reported problem is that the infiltrators were largely characters nobody had a relationship with.
On the record it is the lowest rated live action Marvel series, at 5.8 on IMDb, which is the figure standing in here until I watch it.
4. Loki (2023)
⭐ 7/10
Tom Hiddleston
“I know what kind of god I need to be. For you. For all of us.”
The other 7 in the phase, and the other continuation. It finishes an argument the first season opened rather than starting a new one.
The season is genuinely about something: whether a person who has spent his existence pursuing a throne would accept one that consists entirely of obligation and isolation. The ending gives him exactly that and treats it as both a victory and a sentence.
It also does the hardest thing available to this franchise, which is to conclude. Loki sits down and holds the timelines together forever, and the show does not leave a door open for a third season. Almost nothing else in the streaming era was permitted to finish.
Ke Huy Quan’s O.B. is the addition that changes the season’s texture. A technician delighted to finally be asked a question about the machine he maintains, and the closest thing the franchise has to a character who simply enjoys his work.
Benson and Moorhead direct most of it and bring a visual discipline the franchise rarely pays for, with long takes down the corridors and a palette that degrades as the organization does.
It is also the last full statement the franchise made about its multiversal plan before circumstances changed around it, which leaves this season carrying more weight than it was designed to.
5. What If…? (2023)
Score to come
Jeffrey Wright
Unscored for now, because I have not seen it. A score goes in once I have.
A second season of the animated anthology, released across nine consecutive days in December 2023, which is a scheduling decision that tells you how the project was regarded internally.
Dropping a season daily over the holidays is not how a company treats something it expects to be discussed.
The first season scored a 7 on this site and the format was the strongest the franchise found for streaming, so a second is a reasonable thing to want.
What is on the record is that it continued the anthology structure while carrying forward more of the thread the first season attached at the end, which is the element I thought was the weakest part of the original.
No score here yet, and there is no IMDb figure I could verify for the season on its own. It goes in once I have watched it.
6. The Marvels (2023)
► Read the full review of The Marvels (2023)
⭐ -100/10
Brie Larson
“You want me to be the hero? Fine.”
The lowest score in the phase and the entry that requires the most homework of any film the franchise has released.
To follow it a viewer needs Captain Marvel, WandaVision, Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion, which is one film and three series. Somebody who watched only the films meets two characters they have never seen and a relationship established elsewhere, and the picture cannot pause to explain.
The body-swap premise is a good idea used briefly, the running time is the shortest in the franchise and still feels padded, and the film ends by introducing another character for a project that has not been made. It is a hundred and five minutes of connective tissue.
The musical planet sequence is the one place it finds an identity. A world where communication happens in song, committed to for about eight minutes, played straight, and unlike anything else in the phase.
Iman Vellani is also doing the same work she did in her own series and it lands here for the same reason. A fan meeting the person she idolizes, unable to be normal about it, which is the only relationship in the film with any energy.
The commercial result was the worst in franchise history and the causes are structural rather than mysterious. Four prerequisites, a lead the audience had been given no reason to care about since 2019, and a release into an audience that had stopped assuming these were essential.
7. Echo (2024)
⭐ IMDb: 5.9/10
Alaqua Cox
Unscored for now, because I have not seen it. A score goes in once I have.
A five-episode series released in a single drop in January 2024, and the first project under the Marvel Spotlight banner, which was created to signal that a project stands alone and requires no other viewing.
That banner is the most interesting thing about it. A studio inventing a label to tell audiences that homework is not required is a studio that has recognized the problem this page describes.
Alaqua Cox carried the best supporting role in Hawkeye and the character was the strongest new element in that series, so a continuation is a reasonable decision on its own terms.
The reported shape is a five episode story about returning home, released in a single drop, running under four hours in total. That is closer to a long film than to a season and it is the shape several projects in this phase should have taken.
It sits at 5.9 on IMDb, which is the figure standing in here until I watch it.
8. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
► Read the full review of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
⭐ 1/10
Ryan Reynolds
“I am Marvel Jesus.”
The commercial high point of the phase by an enormous margin, rated a 1 here, and a film built almost entirely out of references to other films.
What works is Jackman. Bringing Wolverine back after a definitive ending was a risk, and the film gives him a genuine reason, a version of the character who failed everybody and knows it, which is more than the premise required.
What holds it to a 1 is that the picture is a tour. The pleasure on offer is recognition, the jokes are about corporate acquisition and casting history, and a viewer without twenty-four years of Fox X-Men films is watching an in-joke at feature length. It made more money than anything else in the phase and it is about nothing.
Jackman is doing more than the film requires. This Wolverine failed everybody in his world and knows it, and the performance carries a genuine shame underneath the healing factor and the yellow suit.
Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova is wasted in an interesting way. A telepath ruling a wasteland of discarded characters is a good image, and the film gives her a lair, a monologue and a defeat, because the plot has somewhere else to be.
The Void is also the film’s thesis stated out loud. A landfill of abandoned intellectual property, populated by performers whose franchises were cancelled, treated as a joke and as a graveyard at the same time. That is a sharper idea than the film does anything with.
9. Agatha All Along (2024)
► Read the full review of Agatha All Along (2024) Review
⭐ 1/10
Kathryn Hahn
“Who died and made you the boss?”
A spin-off built from a supporting character in a Phase 4 series, which is the structure this phase kept returning to and the one that reliably produced its weakest work.
Kathryn Hahn is good and was good in WandaVision, and the show is constructed around the assumption that her being enjoyable in a supporting role means she can carry nine episodes.
The Witches’ Road is a quest structure with a new obstacle each week and no accumulating stakes, and the season’s central reveal is a reworking of the relationship the show had been withholding. It exists because a character was popular, and popularity is not a premise.
Patti LuPone’s Lilia gets the only episode with a genuinely interesting structure, experiencing her own life out of order and arriving at her death having already seen it.
The Ballad of the Witches’ Road is a real piece of songwriting and the most memorable thing the franchise produced in the phase, repeated across the season in arrangements that change with the situation.
The seventh episode is also the best one, which states the problem exactly. Everything that gives Agatha an interior life arrives with ninety minutes left in a nine-episode season that was announced as having no continuation.
10. What If…? (2024)
Score to come
Jeffrey Wright
Unscored for now, because I have not seen it. A score goes in once I have.
The third and final season, released daily across eight days at the end of December 2024, in the same holiday burial slot as the second.
An anthology that began at 7 in Phase 4 and finished with two seasons dropped over consecutive days at Christmas is the phase’s structural story in miniature.
It was the final season, announced as such, which at least gives the anthology an ending rather than a cancellation.
The reported structure pulls the strands from all three seasons together into a conclusion, which is the impulse that weakened the first season’s finale applied across the whole run.
No score here yet, and no IMDb figure I could verify for this season alone. It goes in once I have watched it.
11. Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
► Read the full review of Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
⭐ 1/10
Anthony Mackie
“This isn’t about you.”
A film assembled and reassembled, with extensive reported reshoots, and the joins are visible throughout.
Anthony Mackie is doing the work and the picture will not let him have a subject. The interesting question, what it means for this man to carry that shield in this country, was raised in Phase 4 and this film declines to engage with it in favor of a conspiracy plot about an element.
Harrison Ford is present, the Hulk material arrives late and resolves nothing, and the film draws on The Incredible Hulk from 2008 for a callback that most of the audience has not seen. Seventeen years of shelf life used to service one reveal.
Ford is doing the job properly and the part is a structural problem. A president who becomes the monster is a real idea, and the film needs him to be both the antagonist and a man Wilson is trying to save, so he is neither for most of the running time.
Giancarlo Esposito arrives in a role reportedly added during reshoots and the seams show. A mercenary with a grievance introduced late, given a fight and a defeat, in a film that already had two antagonists competing for room.
What the film never engages with is the question Phase 4 raised. A Black Captain America working for a president is a premise with obvious tension in it, and the picture routes around that entirely in favour of a conspiracy about an element.
12. Thunderbolts* (2025)
► Read the full review of Thunderbolts* (2025)
⭐ 1/10
Florence Pugh
“We’re not heroes.”
A team film with a genuine idea about depression and a resolution that undercuts it.
Florence Pugh is the best thing in it and the premise, a group of people who are all bad at their jobs and worse at being alone, has something real in it. The Void as a manifestation of a person’s worst memories is a good image, and a 1 is where the film lands once it has to do something with all of that.
What it cannot do is finish. A film about people who cannot be fixed resolves by having them collectively hug somebody out of a depressive episode, and the asterisk in the title is a marketing device attached to a rebranding that the film has not earned.
Lewis Pullman’s Bob is the reason the film works as far as it does. A man who does not know what he is, is frightened of himself, and is played with a gentleness that makes the later material genuinely unpleasant.
The Void as a manifestation is also well staged. People pulled into their own worst memory and left standing in it, with the film treating each one as specific rather than generic, and Pugh’s is the best of them.
The 1 registers what happens next. A group of damaged people are assembled, renamed by a public relations department, and installed as a replacement team, which is the introduction-as-purpose pattern applied to six characters at once.
13. Daredevil: Born Again (2025)
⭐ IMDb: 8.1/10
Charlie Cox
Unscored for now, because I have not seen it. A score goes in once I have.
What is on the record is a production that was substantially rebuilt mid-development, originally conceived as an eighteen-episode series with a different creative team before being restructured into a nine-episode continuation closer to the Netflix show it follows.
Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio return, and the reception was the strongest of any streaming project in the phase.
The development history is the part worth knowing. It was originally an eighteen episode series with a different creative team, was substantially rebuilt mid-production, and emerged as a nine episode continuation much closer to the Netflix show it follows.
That rebuild is the opposite of the pattern this page documents. A studio looked at what it had, concluded it was wrong, and spent money to change course rather than delivering on schedule.
It sits at 8.1 on IMDb, the highest of any Marvel streaming project, which is the figure standing in here until I watch it.
14. Ironheart (2025)
► Read the full review of Ironheart (2025) Review
⭐ 1/10
Dominique Thorne
“I’m gonna be the greatest to ever do it.”
The project that closed Phase 5, released in June and July 2025, and the phase ended without most people registering that it had.
Riri Williams was introduced in Wakanda Forever in 2022, which is the pattern this page keeps documenting: a character installed in one project and handed a series three years later on the strength of the installation.
The magic and technology material has an idea in it, and the show is built on a premise the audience was told to accept rather than shown a reason to want. An entire phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe began and finished, and this is where it stopped.
The best thread is an assistant Riri builds from footage of a dead friend, which comes out close enough to the original to be unbearable. It is introduced in the second episode and set aside for a heist plot.
Anthony Ramos plays a man who has taken a deal he does not understand and is being changed by it, which is a more coherent antagonist than most of the phase managed.
The final scene turns toward a much larger antagonist, and the casting of it generated more discussion than the nine hours preceding it. A series that has not persuaded an audience to care about its protagonist cannot borrow attention by pointing at somebody else.
Phase 5 averages 2.25 across its conventionally rated films and 2.57 across everything rated, with a median of 1. Five of the fourteen have no score yet because they passed without becoming appointments, and that is a finding as much as a gap. Scores go in as I get to them.
The messaging criticism is the one this phase gets and it explains part of the record. Several of these projects exist to install a successor, and a character introduced so that somebody else’s story can continue has no reason to be interesting on her own terms.
What the numbers show underneath it is a selection problem. The failures include films with no argument of that kind in them at all, and the successes are both continuations that were planted before the volume era began. Whatever is broken here was decided at the level of how many projects a year, not at the level of who is in them.
The Essays Behind These Ratings
The ratings on this page come out of a longer argument about what the franchise did to itself. These essays set it out.
- A Reviewer’s Journey: The Complete MCU, Reviewed
- The Emasculation of the MCU
- The Comic Source Material Defense Examined
- Load-Bearing Versus Decorative Social Content
- Why I’m Watching the MCU in Fast Forward
Frequently Asked Questions