Right before their big panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022, where they announced a bunch of titles from Phases Five and Six, Marvel Studios filed a bunch of trademarks on several titles. That set a lot of fans on a speculation path on what could be announced at Hall H soon after, and most of that proved to be legitimate.
Titles like Multiverse Saga, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, Avengers: Secret Wars, Thunderbolts, or Captain America: New World Order were leaked to the public via those copyright filings. But that list of titles also included a number of titles that ultimately weren’t announced, leaving to some speculation as to what they might refer to. Here is the complete list of titles that were filed back then:
Avengers: Secret Wars, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts, Hercules: Rise or the Gods, Celestials: End of Time, Captain America: Red, White and Black, Avengers: Eternity Wars, Midnight Sons, Red Guardian: Generations, Runaways: New Era, Nomad, Shang-Chi and the Wreckage of Time, The Black Knight: Origins, Avengers Academy, Avengers Excursion, Avengers Timeless, Timeless Saga, Eternity Saga, and Sam Wilson Captain America. It should be noted that, following the renaming of the film, Marvel filed a trademark for Captain America: Brave New World earlier in 2023.
Now, as it’s been spotted by eagle-eyed fans on social media, Marvel has withdrawn the trademarks on several of those names (via ComicBookMovie.com). They are: Eternity Saga, Timeless Saga, Runaways: New Era, Nomad, and Rise or the Gods (that’s not a typo on our side, but rather on the copyright filing, which may be why it was taken back). So, taking out the titles that have been withdrawn and those that have already been announced, we’re left with the following list of unannounced titles:
RELATED: SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher Defends New 2023 Tentative Agreement And Calls Out “Naysayers”
Celestials: End of Time, Captain America: Red, White and Black, Avengers: Eternity Wars, Midnight Sons, Red Guardian: Generations, Shang-Chi and the Wreckage of Time, The Black Knight: Origins, Avengers Academy, Avengers Excursion, and Avengers Timeless.
What is Marvel Studios planning with these titles?
Obviously, this leaves a lot of room for speculation. Titles like The Black Knight: Origins, Midnight Sons, Shang-Chi and the Wreckage of Time seem to suggest upcoming projects. The first could potentially be a Disney Plus series starring Kit Harington, although at this point one has to wonder if Marvel will ever pay off that post-credits scene in Eternals. (This may also be an issue with the actor, who also committed to a currently-stalled Game of Thrones sequel series.)
Then we have a team-up à la Thunderbolts for the Marvel characters belonging to the supernatural realm (think of Moon Knight, Blade, possibly Ghost Rider, the Black Knight, Werewolf by Night and/or Elsa Bloodstone, etc.). Remember that the video game was actually called Marvel’s Midnight Sons. And finally, we’d seemingly have the already-announced sequel to the 2021 film starring Simu Liu, which Destin Daniel Cretton would be directing.
There are some question marks like Celestials: End of Time and Red Guardian: Generations. The former could be some sort of Eternals tie-in, but Marvel hasn’t really touched on that topic for a while and it seems like a strange move rather than do a direct sequel. And Red Guardian: Generations is definitely not a thing for the MCU. Could these, maybe, be titles for comic runs? Possibly. The company that filed the trademark applications is not Marvel Studios, but rather Marvel Characters, Inc., which also licenses titles for video games.
RELATED: WandaVision Director Reveals If Mephisto Was Originally In Popular Series
The video game realm seems like a place where Captain America: Red, White and Blue could fit in. We know there’s a game in development from Skydance focused on Captain America and Black Panther, so could it be a spin-off for that?
Then we enter into the Avengers titles. We have Avengers Academy, which kind of sounds like a teenage summer camp idea, and Avengers Excursion, which sounds like something theme park-related or even a kid-oriented animated series.
The name Avengers Timeless sounds a bit more in tune with the current state of the MCU. The latest rumors on Deadpool 3 and The Kang Dynasty seem to suggest some sort of multiversal team-up between characters of many different Marvel continuities, from the Fox-era to the Spider-Man universes, to other realities like we saw in Multiverse of Madness. Removing them from their timelines and setting them into a path looking for Kang (or whoever the big bad ends up being). Could “Avengers Timeless” be the name given to that group at some point? Definitely sounds like a possibility.
RELATED: What If…? Season 2 Will Be Marvel Studios Final Awesome Gift of 2023
And finally, we have Avengers: Eternity Wars. This could be anything in between a massive reveal and a really minor thing like a card game. That being said, though, there were some rumblings a few months ago about Secret Wars actually being split up into two parts, so the Multiverse Saga would culminate with three Avengers films.
The reasoning behind it was that there’s way too much story to tell, both before the next Avengers movies and during them. Could Eternity Wars actually be the title of that final film? The moderators of the Reddit forum r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers had posted about this months ago, saying the title for the third and final new Avengers film would be either Avengers: Forever or Avengers: Eternity Wars. At this point, it seems unlikely.
First of all, those rumors about the conclusion to the Saga being three films as opposed to two originated after the Comic-Con panel, once Marvel started to realize they were aiming too high and they actually needed to space out their projects a lot more, and also maybe add some more to beef up the story. (For reference, see that long list of new projects that the Reddit moderators included, though don’t put too much stock into it.) However, the trademark was filed before that panel, meaning that Marvel was already planning something with that title.
Then there’s the more logic-based argument. After The Marvels underperformed at the box office, and also tanked with critics (the top critics’ Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 43%; although it should be noted that the verified audience score is quite high), many have been calling for Marvel to wrap up and move on from the whole storyline they’re now developing. The message being: Just get to X-Men and Fantastic Four. As Marvel tries to release fewer movies and shows every year, it’s inevitable their highly ambitious storyline will stretch further into the future, so adding even more titles to the slate seems like a detriment… Until they turn it around. (Fingers crossed.)
What do you make of these titles? Any specific predictions for any, or even all of them? How wrong do you think we are in our guesses? Let us know on our social media, and stay tuned for more!
KEEP READING: MADAME WEB – Explore A Whole New Level of Crazy on Valentine’s Day 2024
