Phase 6 – The Reset
Series Navigation
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
Phase 6 is in progress, so this page is a live document. I score released entries. Announced entries are placeholders, and I’ll fill them in as they arrive.
What the phase is trying to do is legible from its shape. Marvel has reduced the slate, the release rate has dropped from the ten projects a year that produced Phase 5, and Marvel is using the two Avengers films at the end to close the Multiverse Saga and clear the board.
The correction is real, it’s late, and the first data point supports it.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps rates a 7. That’s higher than anything in Phase 4 or Phase 5 and the best number the franchise has posted since Doctor Strange in 2016. One film isn’t a trend, and it’s the first time in a decade the line has moved upward.
Scores in gold are mine. Scores marked IMDb are the public figure, used where I haven’t watched something yet. Anything showing Score to come is on the list and gets a number once I get to it.
1. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
► Read the full review of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
⭐ 7/10
Pedro Pascal
“We’re a family.”
The phase opens with the property Marvel had wanted for two decades, placed in a retro-futurist 1960s and separated from the main continuity, and the separation is the whole reason it works.
The design is the achievement. A world that took the 1960s vision of the future and simply kept going produces the most distinctive look the franchise has managed, and because the family sits on their own Earth the film owes no homework to anybody. A viewer can start here. That hasn’t been true of a Marvel release in years.
What holds it to a 7 is Galactus, who arrives as scale instead of as threat, and an ending that points at what comes next. The family itself works, the decision at the center of the third act costs somebody something, and the film is about a choice and not about an introduction.
2. Eyes of Wakanda (2025)
Score to come
Winnie Harlow
Unscored for now, because I haven’t seen it. A score goes in once I have.
An animated anthology following Wakandan agents recovering vibranium artifacts across different historical periods, released in August 2025.
Four episodes, each set in a different century, which is the shortest commitment any Marvel project has asked for. The anthology form is the one that worked best for this franchise on streaming, and setting it in the past removes any obligation to service the current plot. Animation also removes the cost problem that shaped the streaming era. A historical anthology in live action is period costume and location for every episode, and the same material drawn is a fraction of that.
It carries no score here yet and I couldn’t verify an IMDb figure for it. A number goes in once I’ve watched it.
3. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
Score to come
Tom Holland
Released July 2026 and unrated here, pending viewing.
Peter Parker investigating a new threat as his abilities change, following an ending that removed his entire support structure and every relationship he had.
That ending is the strongest starting position the character has been given, because for the first time since 2016 he begins a film with nothing inherited from the wider franchise.
No score yet. It released at the end of July 2026 and goes on this page with a number once I’ve watched it.
The structural opportunity is clear in advance. A character with no money, no relationships and nobody who knows who he is, is exactly where the comics have always had him, and no previous film in this run has been able to start there.
4. Avengers: Doomsday (2026)
Score to come
Robert Downey Jr.
Scheduled for 18 December 2026, directed by the Russo brothers, with heroes from multiple universes facing a shared threat. Placeholder entry. A score goes in on release. The stated shape is the one that produced the weakest films of Phase 3. That’s an enormous cast converging on an event. Whether the reduced slate around it gives that convergence something to be about is the question the phase turns on.
The one structural advantage it’s over Infinity War is a smaller board. Phase 5 removed or retired a great many characters, and a convergence with forty arrivals is a schedule where one with fifteen can still be a story.
5. Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)
Score to come
Announced
Scheduled for 17 December 2027, and announced as the conclusion of the Multiverse Saga.
Placeholder entry. A score goes in on release. An ending that’s permitted to be an ending is the one thing this franchise has almost never allowed itself. If Secret Wars closes the saga and makes something irreversible, it’ll be doing what Loki season 2 did and what Endgame declined to do.
The title also carries an obligation. The comic storyline it draws on ends one universe and begins another. That’s a real reset instead of a restoration, and a franchise that’s spent seventeen years avoiding permanence has announced a story whose entire subject is permanence.
6. Marvel Zombies (2025)
Score to come
Elizabeth Olsen
Unscored for now, because I haven’t seen it. A score goes in once I have. An animated series extending the What If episode that was the darkest thing the anthology produced.
That episode ended with a planet of the infected and no resolution. That’s the correct place for a spin-off to begin, since the source material was already complete.
No score here yet and no IMDb figure I could verify. A number goes in once I’ve watched it.
7. Wonder Man (2026)
Score to come
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Announced and unreleased at the time of writing. Placeholder entry, scored on release. Reported as a Hollywood satire about an actor auditioning for a superhero role. That would make it the first project in the franchise whose subject is the industry that produces it.
That premise is either the most interesting thing on the slate or the clearest sign that the franchise has run out of things to be about. There’s no way to tell in advance.
The comic character is an actor who gains powers, so the satire is the material. That’s the strongest argument that the approach is deliberate instead of a save.
8. Daredevil: Born Again (2026)
⭐ IMDb: 8.1/10
Charlie Cox
Announced for 2026 and unscored. Placeholder entry, scored on release.
The first season was the best-received streaming project of Phase 5, following a mid-development rebuild that moved it closer to the Netflix show it continues. A second season arriving with the same team and no restructuring is the version of continuity that’s reliably worked for this franchise.
It’s also the only project on this page carrying a score from an existing body of work and not from anticipation, since the first season sits at 8.1 on IMDb, the highest of any Marvel streaming project.
9. The Punisher (2026)
Score to come
Jon Bernthal
Announced as a special following Jon Bernthal’s return in Daredevil: Born Again. Placeholder entry, scored on release. A one-off special is the format Werewolf by Night used, and it’s the most efficient shape the streaming era found: a single hour, one idea, no season to sustain and no setup to deliver.
Bernthal has played the character across three separate productions over a decade. That’s an unusual continuity for this franchise and the reason a special can assume an audience already knows who he is.
No score yet. Placeholder entry until release.
One entry scored on my own scale so far, at 7, with a couple carrying IMDb figures where I haven’t watched them yet. Everything else is unreleased, and the placeholders fill in as the phase arrives.
The structural signs are better than the previous two phases. Fewer projects, a stated ending, and a first film deliberately separated from the continuity that scores higher than anything in six years. Against that, the two Avengers films at the end are built on the convergence structure that produced the weakest films of Phase 3.
The trajectory across the whole franchise runs 8.00, 6.80, 5.40, 3.25 and 2.25. Phase 6 sits at 7.00 on a single film. That’s either the turn or an outlier, and the next two years decide which.
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
- Why Marvel Cannot Make a Good Fantastic Four
- How the Multiverse Destroyed the MCU
- The Press Tour Is Part of the Work
