Thus time and again (including, to be honest, in Deadpool & Wolverine) characters have come back for no other reason than to boost sales. Writers twist narratives into knots to justify a character’s return, sacrificing tension, surprise, and pathos in exchange for fan service.
Furthermore, it’s hard to believe that the trick will continue to work. Already we’re seeing diminishing returns in rewatches of hits such as Spider-Man: No Way Home. After the cheers that greeted Maguire and Garfield fade, the movie’s fans think more about the sorrow that Holland’s Peter felt when Aunt May died, and the detractors think more about the clunky plot mechanics.
Conversely, after you’ve brought back C-list interpretations that are anything but beloved, say Jennifer Garner’s Elektra or Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm, how many more surprises do you have left? The gimmick starts to wear thin.
In fact, we’re already seeing the desire for fresh takes on those familiar faces. Sure, Johnny’s cameo will get a lot of laughs this weekend, but that fleeting excitement will be nothing like what’s building around next year’s The Fantastic Four. There is a level of anticipation there unlike anything the three Fox films ever garnered. Add in the jokes that Deadpool made about the MCU’s recent struggles and its obvious desperation, and the general exhaustion everyone feels about multiverse stories, in and outside of the MCU, it’s hard to see any further visits to the Fox Universe as anything other than tired desperation.
Hope They Had the Time of Their Lives
As likely as a Fox Universe reprise might seem, there is one big red flag waving against such speculation, and his name is Jonathan Majors. At the outset of Phase Four, Majors’s Kang the Conqueror was announced as the big bad of the Multiverse Saga.
After all, the Marvel Multiverse, which includes the Sony and Fox movie universes, officially came into being when Sylvie killed Kang’s Variant He Who Remains in the first season finale of Loki. Marvel transformed the low-stakes Ant-Man series into the launch of the next major storyline by including Kang, and Avengers 5 was first titled The Kang Dynasty, with the conventional understanding being that Kang’s shenanigans would lead to the incursions of Secret Wars.