A very interesting rumor surfaced online this week related to the future of Jeffrey Wright in the MCU as Uatu The Watcher. Wright is expected to return for the second season of Marvel’s What If…?, which after a long delay from its once-planned “early 2023” release, should come out at some point later this year. However, his jump to live-action may be coming sooner than perhaps we anticipated. The Cosmic Circus reports that the actor will be playing the character in a live-action Marvel project in 2023.
WHERE COULD JEFFREY WRIGHT’S THE WATCHER APPEAR NEXT IN THE MCU?
No specific title was given for Jeffrey Wright making his live-action, big-screen MCU debut as The Watcher, but when we break it down, there are really only two options. After all, The Watcher is a cosmic being and his presence in Secret Invasion or Echo seems quite unlikely. Wright first appeared as The Watcher in the animated series What If…? in 2021 with the character playing the narrator of the show and the in-universe record keeper of everything going on throughout the Marvel Multiverse. It was one of the MCU’s first in-depth introductions to the Multiverse concept.
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The two most likely candidates for the Watcher to appear in are definitely Loki Season 2 and The Marvels. The former kicked off the entire plot of the Multiverse Saga when Loki and Sylvie killed He Who Remains and the entire Multiverse branched off, which later led to Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This was followed by plenty of Kang variants emerging from the Multiverse.
Loki already has a multiversal police force with the TVA, an organization in charge of keeping track that different timelines don’t mess with the path they are supposed to follow. And yet, the Watcher feels like someone who would perfectly fit into that narrative, especially as the series is set to further advance the story of the Saga with the introduction of Victor Timely, as we saw in the post-credits sequence of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Meanwhile, The Marvels also seems like a plausible inclusion, both because it is a theatrical feature, and thus would be an excellent way to introduce the character to the larger MCU audience, and also because we suspect it will play an important role in building up the Saga’s narrative. However, we still don’t know how the Multiverse will fit into it. Not that they need Jeffrey Wright The Watcher to do that, but it would feel like a novel element to introduce into the film.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE MCU?
After Secret Invasion is done, Marvel is back on hiatus mode until October 6, when Loki season 2 makes its debut. Coincidentally, as we learned today, it will be two days after Disney Plus airs the Ahsoka finale. We should get the official trailer for the series within the next few weeks, as it’s believed Marvel originally planned for it to drop during San Diego Comic-Con (which they eventually decided to skip).
The Marvels will debut in theaters just a few weeks after that, on November 10; a second trailer for that movie, which stars Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Teyonah Parris as Photon, and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, should also come out before Labor Day. Finally, to cap off the year in live-action, Echo will drop all of its episodes on November 29.
As far as animation is concerned, Marvel announced during Comic-Con 2022 that they were planning to debut two animated series on Disney Plus in 2023. First, as we mentioned earlier, there is What If…? Season 2, of which we know very little.
It was initially announced as an “early 2023” show, but we’re now past the midpoint of the year and still haven’t heard an update on the show. We also suspect we’ll get a fall release date announcement, perhaps along with a first-look teaser, before the end of the summer.
It was also announced that X-Men ’97, the revival of the animated series from the 1990s, would debut during the fall. However, the delay of What If…? might have pushed that back. Hopefully, we’ll have more details on that soon. As we head into 2024, the future is also looking bright, with three new feature films set for release (Deadpool 3, Captain America: Brave New World, and Thunderbolts), as well as several new shows like Ironheart, Agatha: Coven of Chaos, Wonder Man, and Daredevil: Born Again.
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However, and we cannot stress this enough, all of this will depend on whether the studios can reach an agreement with SAG-AFTRA and avoid an actors’ strike, which given the recent news about the AMPTP bringing in federal negotiators, seems all but inevitable.
What do you make of Jeffrey Wright potentially coming as The Watcher in live-action? Did you enjoy Jeffrey Wright’s performance as The Watcher? Which project would you like to see him in, and which one do you think is more likely? Let us know your thoughts on our social media, and stay tuned for more!
SOURCE: The Cosmic Circus
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