The Marvel Cinematic Universe is careening toward two new Avengers crossover movies, The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. We recently learned that Jeff Loveness, who penned Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, would write The Kang Dynasty and now it has been revealed that Disney has tapped another Marvel vet to script Secret Wars. Michael Waldron has been tapped, after having written for Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Both projects juggled multiple characters and realities, which will likely play into Secret Wars. Michael Waldron also served as executive producer and showrunner of Loki. In addition to his Marvel work, Waldron wrote and executive produced the series Heels. He is also attached to pen Kevin Feige’s Star Wars flick.
While Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ Destin Daniel Cretton has been announced as helming The Kang Dynasty, Marvel has not yet announced who will lens Secret Wars. The Kang Dynasty already has a release date of May 2, 2025. Secret Wars will drop just months later, on November 7, 2025.
Feige has already confessed that at this point, there is no team of Avengers. Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff, played by Scarlett Johansson) and Iron Man (Tony Stark/Robert Downey, Jr.) are dead. Captain America (Steve Rogers/Chris Evans) is elderly and retired and it appears that Hawkeye (Clint Barton/Jeremy Renner) has gone into semi-retirement and passed the mantle on to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). Of the originals, both The Hulk (Bruce Banner/Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) are still swinging.
Feige has also stated that the Thunderbolts will fill the void left by The Avengers at least for a while.
While the Marvel movies tend to borrow the names of comic book storylines, the films are wildly different from them. There have been two major comic miniseries called “Secret Wars.” The first pitted the most popular Marvel superheroes against an army of villains on the alien “Battle World.” This maxiseries was created as a tie-in to a line of Mattel toys (right).
That series was published in 1984-85, was written by Marvel’s then-publisher Jim Shooter, and mostly drawn by Mike Zeck. This is the best known of the Secret Wars stories. But a more recent series, also called Secret Wars, was published in 2015 and might actually have a bigger impact on the film’s plot.
That series, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Esad Ribić, dealt with incursions, a concept that was introduced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In the comic, an incursion resulted in Miles Morales and other characters from the Ultimate Universe being shifted to the main/616 Marvel Universe.
While that will almost certainly not happen in the Secret Wars movie, this could be the opportunity that Marvel Studios needs to introduce mutants, with the explanation being that they existed in a parallel universe which is why they haven’t been seen yet in the MCU. (Not counting Professor X, who popped up in Multiverse of Madness in… yep, a parallel universe.)
But I guess we’ll see in a few years when Avengers: Secret Wars hit theaters!
