In the MCU, we think it’s 2026 at this point. Pretty sure anyway. And the Avengers…do they even still exist? We know that there’s some connection between Bruce Banner, Carol Danvers, Wong and Shang-Chi now, but Steve’s gone, Tony and Nat are dead, Thor is on the other side of the galaxy, who knows where Wanda and Vision are, everyone’s forgotten Peter Parker, Rocket and Nebula are back with the Guardians…who’s left at this point?
So, people who were members of the Avengers (i.e. on the team at the end of an Avengers movie or part of the Time Heist) who still exist and are active and on Earth: Sam “Captain America” Wilson, Scott Lang (and we’ll throw Hope Van Dyne in there fo historical purposes, you can’t have the Wasp and not have her an Avenger), Bruce Banner, Colonel James Rhodes (with the enhanced Iron Patriot armor), and…that’s it and that’s all. As far as other super-people on Earth go, you’ve got Shuri, Wong, Stephen Strange, Shang-Chi, Jennifer “She-Hulk” Walters, Cassie Lang and Kamala Khan who are known to at least one other active Avenger. There’s also a smattering of others – Riri Williams, Matt Murdoch, Moon Knight, King Valkyrie – and the handful of folks who are going to be in Thunderbolts, almost none of whom are “good guys”.
Basically, the Avengers as previously constituted are dead. It’s a similar situation to the end of Civil War when all you had available on the official roster was Tony, Rhodes and Vision. When Tony said “the Avengers broke up, we’re toast” he wasn’t kidding, given that there were more of them tooling around with Steve than actually in the lineup.
So you’ve got Nick Fury in orbit doing whatever he does to try to stave off another interstellar threat, Wong (and presumably Strange) fending off mystical threats, a couple of random menaces completely unaccounted for in Namor and the Super-Skrull (and doesn’t the MCU need to completely punt and disavow that Secret Invasion ever happened, what a load of shite), the beginnings of the Young Avengers…we’re three years since the Battle of Earth and there’s not really anything in place to substitute for what the Avengers were 2012-2018. And that appears to be the main driver for the first two MCU movies this year – what is going to be done about the fact that we don’t have that any more?
It’s still kind of weird that we don’t really have a good look at the world on the other side of the Blip. The only movies that have taken place primarily on Earth in the post-Blip era are Shang-Chi, Eternals, the third Spider-Man, and the second Black Panther, and the events of those movies have not been revisited since in any case. That’s the weirdness of the Multiverse Saga: whereas Phase 2 was all about building on top of Phase 1, Phase 5 has seemingly no connection whatsoever to anything in Phase 4. To this point, everything since Endgame has been a firehose of new stuff with occasional involvement from existing characters in ways that don’t really engage with where the world is now. And that lack of focus, more than the amount of homework, is to me what undercuts the MCU.
It’s time to get back on track. Soon. We’re going to need all the escape we can get. Of which.