Fanboys Anonymous

I, like many others, am convinced the game plan for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is to have a reset coming to the full scope of the franchise with the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars film.

This post will act as sort of a combination of Predicting the Plot, fan theories, fan fiction, a pitch and an editorial all wrapped in one.

My prediction, as well as what I would probably do in this scenario, is that we'll see Avengers: The Kang Dynasty wreck everything with incursions similar to how Avengers: Infinity War ended with the downer snap. Kang will win, irreparably sending the multiverse out of whack. Our heroes will not know what to do. This is way above their pay grade, as the Thanos incident was the most catastrophic thing that has ever happened, and this is even worse.

Whether Secret Wars is split in two movies or not—and I think it will be—we'll see either film #1 or at least the first good portion of the solo film as Battleworld. The Beyonder version of Kang will be the manipulator, playing around with different versions of our heroes. We'll see cameos from people like Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, maybe Ben Affleck's Daredevil and most predominantly, the X-Men actors we've seen before. Probably a mix of the older and younger crew, since I doubt they'd want to single out just one or the other. But if they have to pick, they'll pick the James Marsden side of it, rather than the Tye Sheridan.

The MCU can get a whole film out of Avengers: Secret Wars - Battleworld as its own crazy film. Then, Avengers: Secret Wars - Part 2 (whatever they'd call it; maybe Brave New World or Time Runs Out or something) will focus on as many heroes as possible from across the multiverse coming together to stop The Beyonder Kang and restore some sort of balance.

How they do that, I don't know. We've already had some characters play their big hero moments. Doctor Strange orchestrated the 1 in 14,000,605 plan, Scott Lang spark the time travel, Thor chop off Thanos's head, Natasha Romanoff sacrifice herself for the Soul Stone, Hulk snap to bring people back, and Tony Stark snap to destroy Thanos and his army. I don't think they're going to make this all come out to be that Monica Rambeau or Peter Parker or any one person in particular is going to be the one to save the day. Not even Wanda Maximoff, but I'm sure she'll help.

For now, let's just say Steve Rogers hasn't been confirmed as passing away because the game plan is to have him—the man out of time who went back into the past in a branched timeline to restore the Infinity Stones, and could easily have a story where he's Nomad going through time and all, and was The First Avenger—is the one to save the day.

Somehow, in some fashion, the heroes win, but it comes at a cost. The multiverse is forever changed. There is no way of restoring it exactly the way it was. But in some ways, that's okay. This is the natural order of things, to be reset once in a while, and in doing so, they'll make room for all new stories to be told and blah blah blah.

Here's where we get to the fun fan fiction part. This is how I would showcase that:

Whatever contraption they use to pull this off to hit the reset button, the lever gets pulled or the button gets pushed, etc. Then, we watch as the characters all get distorted, as if they're being erased by a pencil, almost. We should also see at least the most important gods as characters by now. The Living Tribunal is a must, along with Eternity, Infinity, Death/Oblivion/Entropy (I don't know why they are 3 separate things) and so on. We don't need to see Lord Chaos and Master Order, for instance.

Everything goes to black.

Silence.

Now, there are 3 different ideas I have of what you can do following this. All 3 work in my mind, and it would be a matter of preference and what you can do legally.

Idea #1 - The Simplest Option

While the screen is black, Stan Lee's voice says EXCELSIOR. And then BOOM. A new Big Bang happens on screen, swirling different universes around as we see The First Firmament and some cosmic entities and abstracts all being created, along with galaxies, planets, civilizations and so forth until it flashes to the absolute finale (found below).

Idea #2 - The More Complicated, but Still Relatively Easy Option

The black screen slowly but surely fades something into view: a bar. There is a bartender there, glowing in blue. Wiping down the counter, the bartender addresses the camera, breaking the fourth wall, directly talking to the viewer.

This character, aka The Fulcrum is played by Kevin Feige and is representing The One Above All—the true omnipotent god of Marvel. He thanks everyone for their love and support of the MCU over the nearly 20 years this series has gone on. And while this is indeed the end of an era, and these actors are not going to be playing these parts anymore (mostly, I'd assume), that doesn't mean Marvel has run out of stories to tell.

He won't reveal exactly what is coming up next, but it will be...well...marvelous. Stay tuned.

Maybe he snaps his fingers or something, but he does something to indicate the start of a rebirth. We see the same idea of the Big Bang and everything restarting, leading to the absolute finale.

Idea #3 - The Nearly Impossible Option, But My Favorite Idea

The black screen fades into the bar scene. This time, the blue bartender isn't just played by Kevin Feige. Instead, he's a composite. We see a blue glowing figure that can transform between a CGI model of Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and of course, Feige. Maybe we can throw in Steve Ditko, John Romita and the other major contributors to these characters over the years, but that's likely pushing it, as would probably even Louis D'Esposito, but he should get some credit for all his work, too. He's never mentioned.

The point would be that this character, The Fulcrum, would be revealed as the embodiment of the creators of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It isn't just Kevin Feige, but his collaboration with the writers and producers and all that have come before him and worked alongside him and so on.

But he would reveal (in his speech that I mentioned above) that he is merely a portion of The One Above All and not the entirety. I've always liked Jack Kirby being depicted as an aspect of TOAA where he redraws The Thing and Reed Richards with his pencil to fix them up and such. But you see, the true absolute pinnacle zenith indisputable overlord of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in full, is not just the creators, but also the fans. You, watching, are part of The One Above All. It is through this connection between story creators and the ones watching the stories that we have this sandbox to play around in. And by no means is that going to end just because this chapter is coming to a close.

Same deal as the other speech, in a lot of ways. The future of the MCU is about to begin. Stan Lee's version of this says EXCELSIOR and snaps. We get the Big Bang and lead into the absolute finale.

The Absolute Finale and the Start of a New Chapter

All of these ideas all lead to the same place, pretty much. We've watched the multiverse reestablish itself, and we can see that there are variants all over the place, new rules are being written, and we're shown some very specific, but still vague, details about this new version of what we're getting going forward.

By that, I mean we see that the X-Men and mutants have been a part of this universe the entire time. Likely, we're in the present day, which means Captain America has already been unfrozen and we know he's had some history with Wolverine and whatnot. Maybe The Avengers is already established, depending on how far they want to reset things. If they've already cast people for future movies, we can see them show up in some fashion, but if not, we can just see some shadowy figures that we can definitely recognize, like that there is definitely a Hulk, a Thor, etc.

Depending on how you want to proceed going forward dictates which characters can show up and how, but I think no matter what, you need to show New York City. That has always been the heart of the Marvel Universe. It is where a good portion of the heroes reside, where Avengers Tower is, and so on.

In my ideal scenario, Tom Holland is still going to be Peter Parker going forward, Spider-Man will be integral to the MCU and not involved in Sony anymore, etc. That's probably unlikely, but let's just play with that for now. You can play into this in any number of ways.

Ideally, Peter Parker is on the street in New York. He looks at a Daily Bugle paper that has a piece about J. Jonah Jameson calling Spider-Man a menace. Peter sighs. "Oh man. What am I gonna do?"

A bystander next to him puts his hand on Peter's shoulder. There is no spidey sense, of course. The camera pans and it is The Fulcrum, in Stan Lee form (again, I'm convinced they have the CGI to pull this off and the ability to do it legally). He says "Face front, true believer." He smiles and walks away.

The camera pans up and into the sky. The universe is familiar, but anew, with endless possibilities, and we're just getting started.

Cut to black for the title card of Avengers: Secret Wars. But you have to end with the words THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE CONTINUES.

I toyed with the idea of having everything with the whole Fulcrum character be a mid-credit or post-credit scene to allude to how much fun we've had with those, but I think it is too important for people to see this as part of the actual movie's resolution.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know if there is a post-credit scene I can think of that would end the movie on a better note. But I'm certainly down to try thinking of one.

My first idea would be to tease the next big bad already if we're sticking to the phases concept and they have that planned out. Who that could be, I have no idea, as once you've done this multiversal reset, you can't get any bigger. Maybe it could just be some views of some of the characters going forward, like some generic teases of X-Men, new versions of Captain America and Iron Man, etc. Maybe they could get away with having it end with Franklin Richards, since I've always viewed him as the sort of heir-apparent to the Marvel Universe in many ways. Maybe it can just end with someone saying "Avengers, assemble" or maybe you just don't have one this time around.

This acts as a true, definitive end to many of those stories, combines everything together from all the films we've ever seen, and allows Disney the option to continue with characters, actors, and stories in any way they please.

What do you think? Do you have any other ideas or suggestions? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!

Welcome to the first of what I'm hoping will be an ongoing series here at Fanboys Anonymous, dubbed Ending the Marvel Universe, wherein I'll be giving you my ideas of how I feel particular characters from Marvel Comics should wrap up their stories.

Before getting into anything, let's establish some ground rules for this first edition.

What I'm attempting to do here is approach each character from a "grand scheme of things" overall perspective, rather than any particular version of the character. For instance, the version of Peter Parker from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is different from Superior Spider-Man, which is different from the 90s animated series and so on. However, I feel like there are some fundamental tropes that should stay a constant, and I like to keep all of those in mind while thinking of these scenarios.

Also, as much as I like playing around with What If scenarios, I also want to make sure this doesn't feel like a Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe type setup. This isn't "some dystopian world where wouldn't it be interesting if XYZ happened?" Rather, this is my idea of "if I had the ability to script the beginning, middle and end of this character's arc, how would I conclude their story with the very last piece of the puzzle?"

On top of that, since we're dealing with more than one particular character at a time, we need to rope in their supporting cast. If I am doing an Ending the DC Universe story for Batman, I want to tell you how I think Alfred Pennyworth's story ends and so on.

So with all of that out of the way, let's start with someone who is very much at the forefront of this type of idea at the moment, after Avengers: Endgame - Iron Man.


My idea of Tony Stark is very much what we got in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's a playboy, a total jerk with a massive ego, very quick-witted and funny, who happens to have a heart of gold (and some metal fragments) that fundamentally drives him to be a superhero, rather than a supervillain, as he could have very easily gone the opposite direction and become someone like Dr. Doom or Dr. Octopus.

Stark isn't someone I think needs to die a sacrificial death. In the MCU, it made sense, given Robert Downey Jr.'s contract and such, but in the comics and other media, you aren't constricted by that type of environment. Instead, I think Stark's death is a prolonged one.

In my mind, the Marvel Universe works in such a way that the Scientist Supreme idea is pretty neat, but that title should go to Reed Richards. To me, he is THE smartest out of the typical characters (obviously excluding folks like The Living Tribunal), but there are others who are insanely intelligent in their own right. Shuri, Peter Parker, The Tinkerer, Amadeus Cho (maybe my #2 or #3 if you count Doom as #2), etc.

Bruce Banner's specialty is biology and gamma radiation. Hank Pym's is molecular physics and he just so happened to have developed an affinity for ants out of necessity. Beast is brilliant. High Evolutionary is absurdly intelligent. Mr. Sinister is and so on.

Tony Stark is THE guy when it comes to mechanical engineering. That is where his expertise lie and where he presents the biggest contribution to the Marvel Universe. Basically, if you want something to be built, he's your guy. He's responsible for quinjets and the Avengers headquarters in all incarnations. He's the guy to build Ultron or find a way to destroy it, not Pym. Stark's empire is weaponry made out of technology and his legacy should be technology that isn't necessarily all weaponry.

Tony lives a long life. He does everything in his power to keep his vitals going well into advanced age. He's not a biologist, so he's not able to cure death or anything crazy, but he's able to slowly keep replacing body parts of his with mechanical organs to keep himself going longer and longer.

Eventually, Pepper Potts, who is in control of Stark Industries/Enterprises, passes away from natural causes. She isn't driven by the same type of motivations as Tony and doesn't want to become more robotic and all, and she's also more at peace with death. Tony makes sure she's comfortable, and they have a great life together.

They have children. Possibly a boy and a girl, named Anthony Howard Stark and let's say Morgan Pepper Stark. I'm not sold on the names 100%, but that doesn't matter as much. More on them, later.

Happy Hogan retires from any kind of labor and dies a normal death, probably from hypertension or heart failure or whatever due to his weight. That sounds sad, but it's just the way most people go, and of course, he's missed.

Rhodey retires from active service and becomes the head of the weapons division of Stark Industries. After all, they're still going to create weapons, right? They're just more responsible about it all. Eventually, when Rhodes passes away, he is given many honors for his military contributions and his role as an Avenger.

Kenjiro Fujikawa takes over for Pepper Potts as CEO in control of Stark Industries when she leaves. Eventually, the business is divided between Rumiko Fujikawa and Tony Jr and Morgan. Let's even go so far as to say that Rumiko and Tony shack up and have a daughter they eventually name Kiri if we want to tie in that comic or something.

What's Riri Williams doing with all this? Well, she's the person who takes up the mantle of Ironheart when Tony stops being Iron Man and before his kids can get involved in that side of things. Riri is a prodigy and someone who is bankrolled by him. Let's say Harley Keener is, too, if we want to bring him into the mix. He could be Iron Lad. I don't know. The point is, Ironheart is out there as the superhero aspect and she names herself that in honor of Tony's impetus for being Iron Man.

But that's not all, as I love the Iron Legion concept and the Guardsmen, so more than anything, Tony Stark doesn't want one singular Iron Man or Iron Woman, he wants robots to be able to do the work for them so nobody is actually getting hurt. Who controls those, as well as most of the production side of the company? A triumvirate of J.A.R.V.I.S., Friday and H.O.M.E.R.

And that is where we wrap things up. How does Tony Stark's story end?

Eventually, he's basically a brain in a jar, having become more machine than man, and he not only realizes this, but he realizes that his time is up when there is something like an inoperable brain tumor or whatever (possibly a tie-in to Ultimate Iron Man). So he does the one last thing he can do, which is to download his consciousness into an artificial intelligence so he'll always be with his kids.

Tony becomes the new J.A.R.V.I.S. and he may even be silly enough to give himself a name similar to that, like S.T.A.R.K. being Sentient Tactical Autonomous Robotic Kompanion or Synthetic Thought Analysis Resource of Knowledge or whatever.

Tony's consciousness is downloaded into all the computers and he's going to live forever, theoretically speaking, so he can continue to watch over the world and contribute in that way long after his body has given up on him.

And just before he passes away and the uplink is complete, he sees Ho Yinsen giving him peace that he didn't waste his life, as well as his mom and dad who are proud of him, his best friends Rhodey and Happy, and his wife, Pepper, all welcoming him from the great beyond.

That is how I would end Iron Man's story.