Marvel Fans Roast the MCU's Biggest Blunders, From Secret Invasion to Black Widow's Post-Endgame Release
Everyone keeps asking if it’s just a phase. The evidence points to a lasting shift—and the stakes are rising.
Every time it feels like Marvel has steadied the ship, another wobbly release knocks the whole thing sideways again. Fans are nervous about where the MCU is headed, and honestly, it is hard to blame them. We are supposedly getting Spider-Man: Brand New Day and then Avengers: Doomsday, and we still do not even know who is on the actual Avengers roster. So Reddit did what Reddit does: picked apart where the machine started grinding its gears.
The turning points fans keep circling
- Black Widow finally got a solo movie, just not when it mattered. Fans point to Marvel waiting until after Natasha dies in Endgame to release it, which they link to behind-the-scenes tug-of-war over creative control between Kevin Feige and then–Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter. That is some real inside-baseball messiness.
- Hulk got smaller as the movies got bigger. The claim: once the Russo brothers took over Avengers, the character lost juice. One person even gave Joss Whedon credit for knowing exactly how to use Hulk in his two films.
- No real crossover energy in Phase 4. A popular take was that a lot of characters and ideas people actually liked never got followed up, and that Thunderbolts felt like the first project since Endgame to even try to use the shared universe properly.
- Phase confusion. Another thread argued Phase 4 did not feel like it ended at all. Instead of a finale, it just blurred into what Marvel now calls Phase 6, and to some viewers it is all one long phase with no clear handoff.
- TV took over the main story. Moving major hero arcs to the Disney+ shows (especially Captain America, and to a degree Captain Marvel) turned into a homework problem. Plenty of casual fans skipped the shows, then felt lost in the movies. The suggestion: keep series for side-corner stuff that fits the format, like the magical weirdness of Agatha or the tech-focused Ironheart, or more Defenders-style storytelling.
- Secret Invasion got torched. One commenter called the show a low point for the MCU, specifically blasting Maria Hill’s death and the finale. Bonus sting: a crack about Emilia Clarke once again being stuck in a franchise with a rough ending.
- The multiverse is killing stakes. If there are infinite universes, the argument goes, there is not much suspense because there is always another timeline waiting in the wings.
About that multiverse point...
"I feel that the whole multiverse thing was a misstep. Having infinite realities just means that there’s no suspense since if it all goes wrong in one universe then you have an infinity of other universe, so win or lose it doesn’t matter."
Whether you agree or not, that is the core anxiety: it is hard to care about consequences when every decision has a backup universe. Sure, it is not like there is a multiverse-hopping villain out there ready to tear the MCU a new one or anything. Absolutely not. No way.
Where this leaves the Avengers
The short version: fans feel like the connective tissue is frayed, the homework load got heavier, and the payoff has not been worth it. Meanwhile, the calendar keeps moving. The chatter right now says Spider-Man: Brand New Day is up before Avengers: Doomsday, which lands on December 18, 2026. And yet we still do not know who is actually on the core Avengers lineup. That is a strange place to be for a franchise built on the big team-up moment.