What This Essay Is And Is Not
This essay engages with a craft pattern in the post-Endgame Marvel Cinematic Universe: the systematic diminishment of established male characters across Phase Four and Phase Five productions, often paired with the introduction of female successors who inherit the diminished characters’ titles, weapons, or institutional positions. The pattern is documented. The discourse around it’s been extensive. Marvel Studios has acknowledged the criticism explicitly by mocking it within She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s third episode in 2022.
I loved what Marvel built between 2008 and 2019, and I think the way the studio spent the following years sanding Thor, the Hulk and Steve Rogers down into punchlines is the worst run of creative decisions a franchise this size has made. My complaint is a craft complaint. Those characters took a decade of films to earn, and the studio treated them like a car it could strip for parts.
This essay isn’t an argument against female protagonists in superhero fiction. Ripley in the Alien franchise works. Sarah Connor in Terminator works. Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road works. Wonder Woman in her 2017 standalone film works. Strong female-led superhero storytelling is a real category that’s produced major creative achievements. The category exists independently of what the MCU has done with its female characters since 2019. The issue addressed here’s not the existence of female protagonists.
The issue is the way Marvel Studios chose to develop them: through subtraction from established male characters instead of through addition of independently developed new characters.
Viewers also don’t need to share any particular political position.
The craft criticism stands regardless of where the reader sits on broader cultural questions. Audiences who actively support diverse representation can still recognize that subtractive replacement diminishes the source characters instead of raising the new ones. The pattern documented here’s a craft problem first and a cultural question second.
The Endgame Fact Pattern
Avengers: Endgame in 2019 concluded the Infinity Saga by removing nearly every major established male protagonist from active franchise duty. The list is documented:
Tony Stark dies during the climactic Snap that defeats Thanos. The character had led the franchise commercially and creatively since Iron Man in 2008.
Steve Rogers retires from the Captain America identity by traveling back in time to live a full life with Peggy Carter in the 1940s. He returns as an elderly man and passes his shield to Sam Wilson. The character had grounded the franchise’s moral structure since Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011.
Vision dies in Avengers: Infinity War, with Thanos extracting the Mind Stone from his forehead. The character had been one of the franchise’s more philosophically interesting supporting figures since Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015.
Loki dies in the opening sequence of Infinity War. The character had been the franchise’s most successful villain across multiple Phase One through Phase Three appearances.
Thor leaves the Avengers at the end of Endgame, departing with the Guardians of the Galaxy in a comedic tone that signals the character has been functionally retired from his previous role as Asgardian prince and moral force.
Hawkeye is effectively retired at the end of Endgame, with his later Disney+ series functioning primarily as the launch vehicle for Kate Bishop’s inheritance of the role.
The pattern is incomplete. Natasha Romanoff also dies during the Endgame events. She’s the only major female protagonist to receive equivalent removal treatment. The fact pattern is therefore not strictly “every male hero killed or retired” but is something more specific: the franchise concluded the Infinity Saga by removing nearly every major character of the previous decade, with the deliberate retention of certain figures (Captain Marvel, Wanda Maximoff) and the introduction of new replacements who would inherit the established titles.
The result is that Phase Four opened with the franchise systematically clearing its male protagonist roster while establishing female successors for the cleared positions. The clearing wasn’t accidental. The clearing was the foundation for the later phase’s casting and character development decisions.
The Replacement Pattern
The titles and weapons of the diminished male characters were systematically transferred to female successors across Phase Four and Phase Five productions:
Captain America passes from Steve Rogers to Sam Wilson in Endgame. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series in 2021 follows Wilson’s eventual acceptance of the identity. Captain America: Brave New World in 2025 features Wilson in the lead role. The succession from Rogers to Wilson involves a male-to-male transfer of the title, but Wilson’s Captain America has consistently been framed within Phase Four-Five marketing as part of the wider diversity initiative instead of as plain succession.
Thor’s hammer Mjolnir passes to Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). The previous Mjolnir had been destroyed in Thor: Ragnarok. Foster reassembles the hammer and becomes the Mighty Thor. The film positions the transfer as Foster’s heroic emergence instead of as Thor’s diminishment, but the framing requires the film to reduce Thor himself to a comedic figure unworthy of his own weapon’s continued exclusive use. Foster can’t become Mighty Thor without Thor first becoming someone the hammer can leave.
Iron Man’s technological legacy passes considerably to Riri Williams, introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) as a teenage MIT prodigy whose Stark-derived armor capability sets up her standalone Ironheart Disney+ series. Stark’s specific innovations are positioned as foundation for Williams’s later development instead of as continuing Stark legacy property.
Hawkeye’s identity passes to Kate Bishop in the Hawkeye Disney+ series (2021). Clint Barton spends the series functioning as Bishop’s mentor and eventual partner instead of as the primary action figure. The series ends with Bishop established as the franchise’s Hawkeye going forward, with Barton’s narrative role complete.
Black Panther passes from T’Challa to Shuri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) following Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020. This case involves real-world circumstances that other replacements didn’t. T’Challa’s death wasn’t a creative choice but a necessary response to the actor’s death. The transfer to Shuri was reasonable given the circumstances. The case is structurally distinct from the wider replacement pattern even though it fits the surface pattern of male title transferred to female successor.
The Shuri handoff is the one I don’t hold against anybody. Losing Chadwick Boseman left the studio with no good options, and I think it handled a terrible situation with more grace than anything else on this list.
The franchise hasn’t technically replaced The Hulk but has progressively diminished him while introducing She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters) as parallel character whose specific narrative function is to lecture Bruce Banner about her superior emotional control. The Hulk pattern is the most explicit single example of the wider emasculation structure and warrants extended analysis below.
The Hulk Progression
The Hulk character’s trajectory across MCU appearances is the franchise’s clearest single example of progressive diminishment. The character has been systematically defanged across each major appearance from 2008 to the present:
The Incredible Hulk (2008): Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner is psychologically tormented, physically dangerous, and a real threat to anyone around him during transformation. The film’s horror-influenced tone treats the Hulk as a monster Banner becomes instead of as a heroic identity Banner inhabits. The 2008 Hulk is something the audience legitimately fears. As discussed in the Incredible Hulk review, later franchise positioning has systematically undervalued this version of the character.
The Avengers (2012): Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner replaces Norton through contract dispute. The Avengers Hulk is more controlled but retains rage as the source of his power. “I’m always angry” becomes the character’s defining line. The Hulk in the Battle of New York is the team’s heavy hitter through specific combat capability driven by emotional state. The character remains threatening even when serving heroic ends.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015): Banner is given a romantic subplot with Natasha Romanoff that introduces the “lullaby” sequence in which Romanoff calms the Hulk back into Banner form through specific physical contact and verbal cues. The lullaby effectively domesticates the character. The Hulk now works through female emotional management instead of through his own psychology. The romantic subplot was largely abandoned in later films but the lullaby concept remained.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017): The film reduces the Hulk to comic relief on Sakaar. The character has been trapped in Hulk form for two years, which the script treats as comedy premise instead of as the body-horror tragedy it describes. The film plays Banner’s return for laughs and replaces the Hulk’s physical menace with childlike behavior. The character has become a Saturday morning cartoon version of himself. The Ragnarok approach to the Hulk paralleled the Ragnarok approach to Thor and damaged both characters comparably, as discussed in the Thor: Ragnarok review.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018): The Hulk refuses to emerge from Banner during the climactic battles. Later films have offered various explanations, with the dominant framing being that the Hulk has gotten tired of being summoned only when Banner needs combat assistance. The character has developed what the franchise treats as labor grievances against his own host. The film removes the Hulk’s specific physical capability from the most consequential battles of the saga.
Avengers: Endgame (2019): The film introduces the “Professor Hulk” concept. Banner and the Hulk have merged into a permanent hybrid who possesses the Hulk’s physical capability and Banner’s scientific intelligence at once. The character now wears glasses, has groomed hair, takes selfies with children, and engages in PR appearances. The film has entirely eliminated the Hulk’s specific menace. The character is now a smiling green professor who lifts heavy objects when asked politely.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022): The completion of the diminishment arc. Bruce Banner appears in the series so his cousin Jennifer Walters can lecture him about her superior emotional control. Walters explains that as a woman who has experienced workplace harassment, sexism, and threats throughout her life, she’s developed emotional regulation skills that Banner lacks despite his years of meditation and Quantum World training. The series explicitly frames the Hulk’s rage as masculine emotional dysregulation that the female successor has resolved through her lived experience of patriarchal oppression.
The character whose entire identity was built around the dangerous power of male rage is now positioned as inferior to a female version of himself who claims to have solved the rage problem through being a woman.
The She-Hulk lecture is the moment this character dies for me. I liked Ruffalo’s Banner in The Avengers, a man holding a lid on something that could kill everyone in the room. Sitting him down to be told his whole struggle was a failure of attitude throws away the most interesting thing the franchise had going for him, and it’s the scene I’d cut first if anybody handed me the scissors.
The progression across these appearances is documented and intentional. The franchise has steadily reduced the Hulk character from physical and psychological threat to comedic figure to lecture recipient. Each appearance has subtracted from what the previous appearance had established. The cumulative effect is the most complete character emasculation in modern franchise filmmaking.
For Writers
The Hulk progression shows what happens when a franchise treats established character identity as raw material for ideological reframing instead of as accumulated capital to respect. The 2008 Hulk had a defined psychology: trauma, fear of his own power, isolation, commitment to control. The 2022 She-Hulk Hulk is a smiling professor who learns from his female cousin that her emotional dysregulation is structurally superior to his. The two characters share a name and a green color. They’re not the same character.
The lesson for writers in serialized fiction is that character continuity requires sustained respect across appearances. If your sequel can reframe what the original character was, your sequel has broken faith with the audience that invested in the original. The Hulk’s diminishment wasn’t gradual character development. The Hulk’s diminishment was deliberate subtraction across multiple installments. Each installment removed specific traits the previous installment had established. The audience read the pattern.
The audience response has been documented in the commercial and critical underperformance of the late-MCU productions that depend on the diminished version of the character.
The Thor Progression
The Thor character has followed a comparable diminishment arc with different specific mechanisms:
Thor (2011): Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean prince of Asgard. A character with classical dignity, dynastic responsibility, and operatic family drama. The character is allowed to be earnest about royal heritage and moral obligation without comedic undercutting. As discussed in the Thor (2011) review, this version of the character established the MCU’s mythological foundation.
Thor: The Dark World (2013): The film maintains the character in much the same tone with reduced creative ambition. The 6 it gets in this review series reflects industrial routine instead of diminishment.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017): The deliberate pivot to comedy. Thor’s hammer is destroyed. His hair is cut off. The film replaces his Shakespearean tone with comedic deflection and reduces his relationship with Loki to buddy comedy. Asgard itself is destroyed. Ragnarok reframes the character from prince to comic figure across a single film.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018): Thor receives some of his strongest material in the franchise (the Stormbreaker forge sequence, the arrival at Wakanda) but is positioned increasingly as comic relief in his interactions with the Guardians of the Galaxy. The character’s seriousness works inconsistently across the runtime.
Avengers: Endgame (2019): “Fat Thor.” The film depicts the character as severely depressed after his failure to prevent the Snap. It depicts the depression through weight gain, alcohol abuse, and depressive behavior at his Norway hideout. The film repeatedly invites the audience to laugh at the character’s physical and emotional state. The “Fat Thor” sequences are comedy primarily instead of as serious examination of trauma response. The character who had been Asgardian prince in 2011 is now a depressed alcoholic the film mocks for laughs.
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): The completion of the character’s degradation. The film depicts Thor throughout as a buffoon. His former girlfriend Jane Foster has become Mighty Thor in his absence. The Mjolnir hammer that had been destroyed in Ragnarok has been reassembled and now responds to Foster instead of to Thor. Thor himself spends real portions of the film grieving the hammer’s choice while Foster wields it. The film has reduced the character who established the MCU’s mythological foundation in 2011 to comedic accessory to the female successor who now possesses his weapon.
Of the two films, Love and Thunder makes me angrier.
I’d put the 2011 Thor, earnest and a little ridiculous in his cape, up against any hero Marvel has put on screen, and this film turns him into a man pining after his own hammer. Endgame had already asked me to laugh at him drinking himself into the couch in Norway. I didn’t find it funny then, and the hammer jokes don’t land for me either.
The Thor progression and the Hulk progression work through different specific mechanisms (Thor through tonal degradation, Hulk through psychological domestication) but produce equivalent results. Both characters end their Phase Four arcs as diminished versions of themselves whose specific masculine qualities have been systematically removed in service of comedic or thematic priorities.
Captain America Through She-Hulk
She-Hulk, the 2022 Disney+ series, included a sequence in which Jennifer Walters and Bruce Banner discuss Steve Rogers’s romantic history. Walters speculates that Rogers must have died a virgin given his pre-war social isolation and his post-thaw situation. The speculation is comedic deflation of the franchise’s established moral anchor character. Rogers had been the franchise’s most respected protagonist across nine films from 2011 through 2019.
A later post-credits sequence has Banner confirming to Walters that Rogers did lose his virginity during a USO tour in 1943. The continuity addition is presented as comedic correction. The character whose dignity had been the franchise’s moral foundation is now subject to virginity speculation as entertainment material.
The sequences are minor within the wider She-Hulk runtime but also indicative of the wider pattern. Steve Rogers is no longer the character whose moral seriousness grounded the franchise. He’s now the character whose presumed virginity is comedic material for the female successor’s casual conversation. The diminishment is small in any single scene and serious in aggregate.
The same pattern extends across multiple male MCU characters that the franchise has subjected to similar reduction.
The franchise references Tony Stark’s legacy as foundation for Riri Williams’s development instead of as continuing achievement. It has transferred Hawkeye’s identity to Kate Bishop with Barton functioning as mentor instead of as protagonist. The cumulative effect is that the franchise has diminished nearly every major Phase One through Phase Three male protagonist in later appearances or references to make room for female successors who inherit their narrative positions.
The She-Hulk Episode 3 Mocking
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Episode 3 included an explicit sequence in which the series mocked the audience criticism of the wider replacement pattern. The sequence featured fictional social media posts and video clips of critics complaining about “the M-She-U” and saying things like “they took the Hulk’s manhood away and gave it to a woman” and “so we have a #MeToo movement and now all the male heroes are gone?” The fictional clips were presented as obviously absurd reactionary positions worthy of dismissal.
The mocking sequence was widely covered as evidence that Marvel Studios was aware of the criticism and intended to dismiss it instead of engage with it. The framing positioned audience critics as misogynists whose complaints didn’t warrant serious response. The sequence functioned as preemptive defense against the criticism by characterizing the critics as bigots.
The framing requires examination. The criticism of the MCU’s emasculation pattern isn’t exclusively or even primarily misogynistic. It includes audience members who actively support diverse representation but who recognize the difference between additive female protagonist development and subtractive male character diminishment. Ripley in Alien works because she’s added to a previously male-dominated genre. Sarah Connor in Terminator works because she develops from initially vulnerable to capable across her appearances. Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road works because the film establishes her capability without diminishing previous Max characters.
The MCU pattern is structurally different. The franchise introduces female protagonists through subtractive replacement of established male characters instead of through additive parallel development. Jane Foster becomes Mighty Thor because the franchise has reduced Thor. Jennifer Walters lectures Bruce Banner because the franchise has domesticated Banner. Kate Bishop replaces Clint Barton because the franchise has functionally retired Barton. The pattern of subtraction is the criticism, and mocking the critics as misogynists doesn’t address it.
That Episode 3 mocking sequence is itself evidence of the pattern.
The series chose to spend screen time dismissing audience concerns instead of developing its protagonist on her own merits. The mocking required the protagonist to be defined partly through her critics instead of through her independent characterization. The framing prioritized political point-scoring over craft achievement.
A studio that thinks its critics are wrong can prove it by making a better show. Writing fake angry posts into the script and letting the heroine roll her eyes at them is a cheap shot, and it annoys me more than anything else in the series. It tells me the people in charge cared more about winning an argument online than about the character they were supposed to be building.
For Writers
In She-Hulk, the Episode 3 sequence shows the cost of using fictional characters to score points against real audience criticism. The sequence required Jennifer Walters to engage with audience complaints about her character instead of with the in-fiction situations the character should have been dealing with. The screen time spent mocking critics was screen time not spent developing the protagonist. The lesson for writers is that fiction should function within its own world instead of within meta-commentary about its audience reception.
If your fictional characters must defend themselves against real-world criticism, your fictional world has been compromised. Strong characters don’t need to argue with their critics through the screen. Strong characters work within their own narratives and let the narrative quality answer the criticism implicitly. The She-Hulk approach was the opposite: explicit engagement with criticism instead of implicit refutation through quality. The approach generated continued audience resistance instead of overcoming it.
The Statistical Pattern
The Direct documented the statistical shift across MCU phases.
The Infinity Saga consisted of twenty-three films, of which twenty-one (91 percent) featured white male leads. Phase Four consisted of fourteen films, of which only five (36 percent) featured white male leads. The shift was deliberate, and Marvel Studios promoted it as evidence of the franchise’s diversity progress.
The statistical shift isn’t itself the problem. A franchise that had been overwhelmingly white-male-led for a decade could reasonably address that imbalance through later productions. The problem is how the shift was implemented. Marvel Studios chose subtractive replacement (diminishing established male characters to make room for female successors) instead of additive expansion (introducing new female characters whose stories work independently of previously established male characters).
The additive approach has produced some of the franchise’s most successful Phase Four-Five elements.
Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel and The Marvels is a new character whose story doesn’t depend on diminishing established figures. Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop is positioned as Hawkeye’s successor but works with her own specific character development. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova works as her own character instead of as Natasha Romanoff’s replacement. These additive introductions have generally fared better with audiences than the subtractive replacement patterns have.
Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan is a delight, and Florence Pugh’s Yelena is a character I’d follow into any film. Neither of them needed anybody knocked down to make room, and I think that’s exactly why audiences took to them.
The subtractive approach has produced the franchise’s clearest commercial and critical failures.
The Marvels lost approximately two hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. Thor: Love and Thunder generated audience resistance that confirmed the Thor character’s commercial decline. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law received negative audience response disproportionate to the show’s actual craft quality. The pattern of audience rejection correlates with the pattern of subtractive replacement instead of with the pattern of additive expansion. Audiences appear to distinguish between the two approaches and to respond to them differently.
The Comics Defense
Defenders of the MCU’s replacement pattern frequently point to comic source material as justification. Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk has existed in Marvel Comics since 1979. Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor was introduced in comics in 2014.
Riri Williams / Ironheart was introduced in 2016. Kate Bishop / Hawkeye was introduced in 2005. The comics defense argues that the MCU is faithfully adapting established characters instead of inventing replacements for ideological reasons.
The defense has surface validity and underlying problems. The surface validity is that these characters do exist in comics with considerable publication histories. The MCU is adapting established source material instead of fabricating characters from scratch.
The comics introduced these characters through additive expansion instead of through subtractive replacement. Comic Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk works alongside Bruce Banner / Hulk instead of as his lecturer or replacement. Comic Jane Foster / Mighty Thor works alongside Thor Odinson instead of because Thor has been reduced to comic relief. Comic Riri Williams / Ironheart works alongside Tony Stark in storylines that respect both characters. Comic Kate Bishop / Hawkeye works alongside Clint Barton in partnerships that develop both characters.
The MCU adapted the characters while changing the relationship between them. Comics gave these female successors space to develop alongside the established male characters. The MCU positioned them as replacements who emerge as the franchise diminishes the established male characters. The structural difference is significant. Audiences who would have accepted additive parallel development rejected the subtractive replacement structure. The comics defense addresses character existence but doesn’t address the structural change in how the MCU positions those characters within the wider franchise.
The Distinction That Matters
The craft criticism of the MCU’s emasculation pattern rests on a distinction that defenders of the pattern have consistently conflated. The criticism isn’t that female protagonists exist but that female protagonists were introduced through diminishing male characters instead of through developing female characters on their own terms.
Strong female-led storytelling is a real category. Wonder Woman (2017) works because the character is given space to develop within her own story without requiring previous DC characters to be diminished. The Hunger Games trilogy works because Katniss Everdeen works inside her own narrative structure instead of as a replacement for a previously male protagonist. Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy works because she’s fully developed character alongside Luke Skywalker and Han Solo instead of at their expense.
The MCU’s specific pattern is structurally different. Mighty Thor can’t exist as Mighty Thor without the franchise first reducing Thor. She-Hulk can’t lecture Bruce Banner about her superior emotional control without the franchise first domesticating Banner. Ironheart can’t inherit Stark’s technological legacy without the franchise first eliminating Stark. The MCU pattern explicitly defines the female successors through what the male characters have lost instead of through what they themselves have gained.
This pattern isn’t necessary for diverse representation, and it was one choice Marvel Studios made among multiple available options. The alternative options would have produced different results. Marvel could have introduced Riri Williams as an independent inventor whose own genius works parallel to Stark’s legacy. Jane Foster could have become Mighty Thor through her own scientific achievement without the franchise reducing Thor. Jennifer Walters could have worked as Bruce Banner’s accomplished cousin without lecturing him about her superior emotional control.
The choices Marvel Studios made were specific and weren’t the only choices available.
Why This Matters
The emasculation pattern matters for three specific reasons:
Craft cost: Established characters that audiences have invested in across multiple films represent accumulated capital that the franchise has built and that later productions can either spend or preserve. The MCU spent the capital of Thor, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and Clint Barton across Phase Four-Five productions. The expenditure was major. The replacements haven’t generated equivalent audience investment. The franchise traded sturdy established characters for new characters that the audience hasn’t yet learned to invest in. The trade has been measured in commercial underperformance and audience confidence erosion across multiple productions.
Ideological signaling cost: The pattern of subtractive replacement reads as ideological signaling instead of as craft development. Audiences detect when characters are being manipulated to serve external priorities. The detection generates resistance that the franchise has consistently underestimated. The She-Hulk Episode 3 mocking sequence is evidence that Marvel Studios is aware of the resistance and has chosen to dismiss it instead of engage with it. The dismissal feeds the resistance instead of overcoming it.
Long-term audience damage: The accumulated effect of the emasculation pattern across multiple productions has generated audience withdrawal from the franchise. The Marvels’ catastrophic commercial failure in 2023 was partly the consequence of audiences having lost confidence in the franchise’s broader trajectory. The pattern that produced The Marvels’ commercial failure was the same pattern that produced Thor: Love and Thunder’s audience resistance and She-Hulk’s negative reception. The franchise has trained its audience to expect certain patterns and the audience has responded by reducing its engagement.
This pattern, which the franchise prioritized for ideological reasons, has produced the commercial decline that the franchise is now dealing with without clear path forward.
The Pattern And The Future
The MCU’s response to the audience withdrawal has been mixed.
Marvel Studios has reduced production schedule for upcoming Phase Five and Six productions, indicating recognition that the previous pace wasn’t sustainable. The casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom for Avengers: Doomsday is an attempt to recover male-protagonist anchor character function after the Jonathan Majors situation eliminated Kang as the planned anchor. The framing of later productions has reduced the decorative-empowerment marketing emphasis that defined earlier Phase Four releases.
Whether these adjustments will produce sustained audience recovery remains an open question through the time of this essay.
The accumulated emasculation pattern has affected audience trust in ways that may not be reversible through marketing adjustments alone. The franchise can’t simply restore the characters it diminished to their previous tone without acknowledging that the diminishment was a mistake. It hasn’t acknowledged this directly through any public statements. The reverse acknowledgment (the She-Hulk mocking sequence) remains the franchise’s most explicit engagement with the audience criticism.
Whether later productions will engage more constructively with the underlying craft criticism instead of dismissing it as misogyny is a question that future releases will answer.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe built its commercial dominance across Phase One through Phase Three through specific creative investments in male protagonist development that gave the franchise its central characters. The franchise has spent the later five years systematically dismantling those investments in service of replacement patterns that have generated commercial decline instead of the audience expansion the patterns were supposed to produce. The decline is the consequence. The pattern is the cause.
I want these characters back, and I want new heroes who win their own place beside them. Marvel could have had both. I think it threw away a decade of goodwill by insisting that every new hero had to be paid for by shrinking an old one, and the franchise’s future depends on whether the next films stop doing that and start building alongside the characters it already has.
For related analysis, see The Snap, The Blip, And The Catastrophe The MCU Refused To Show and How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU.
