With the MCU potentially on the verge of a reboot — the extent of which is currently unclear — the superhero multimedia franchise appears poised to be stripped down to a core storyline. If so, the bold creative decision could fix an ongoing problem that has been hanging over the beloved saga since 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige revealed earlier in 2025 that the MCU as we currently know it is drawing to a close. Feige and his team are aiming to use 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars as a key opportunity to “reset” the MCU to a “singular timeline,” coyly explaining that Secret Wars is about “beginnings” rather than endings.
Marvel’s Multiverse Saga has been the franchise’s primary storyline since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, with various new and familiar alternate realities showing up onscreen. When the current arc ends, it sounds very much like Marvel Studios intends to leave many of these parallel worlds behind as it moves ahead with a more streamlined blueprint for the future. Given the mixed response to the Multiverse Saga so far, it’s not all that surprising that the MCU wants to reassert itself as a more even blend of character-driven drama and original worldbuilding, rather than relying quite so heavily on gimmicks and nostalgia. There are a few ways Marvel could pull this off, but one project in particular provides the clearest path forward.
Earth-828 Should Be the MCU’s Primary Focus After ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’
The World From ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ Is the Ideal Way Forward
Once referred to as Earth-199999, the MCU’s main setting was confusingly renamed as Earth-616 in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The universe most prominently shown on screen so far is home to countless familiar iterations of iconic characters, such as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Evans’ Captain America, and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. However, the Multiverse Saga has gradually removed the walls keeping Earth-616 separated from its multiversal counterparts, allowing it to interact with Marvel movies that predate the MCU era and introducing corners of the multiverse never seen before.
Just as 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War started a once-in-a-lifetime Marvel crossover event that brought every Earth-616 superhero together, Secret Wars will do something similar — but on a much grander scale. The 2027 Avengers movie will serve as the sequel to 2026’s Doomsday, with both movies providing the mechanism for Marvel stars past and present to share a screen for the first time. Think Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), but even bigger than that. Of the new universes that have been introduced, the setting for 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps has been among the most prolific.
|
Other Key Marvel Universes |
||
|
Universe |
Appears In |
|
|
96283 |
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007) |
|
|
10005 |
Fox’s X-Men movies (2000-2017) |
|
|
688 |
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe — AKA “The Villain-Verse” (2018-2024) |
|
Like previous attempts to make a live-action Fantastic Four movie, First Steps exists within its own reality, separate from Universe-616. Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards and company call Earth-828 home, although First Steps does not refer to Marvel’s multiverse until Robert Downey Jr. makes his debut as Dr. Doom after the credits roll. The movie’s titular team is confirmed for Doomsday, and it’d be surprising if they didn’t also show up in Secret Wars. What’s next for the Fantastic Four after Secret Wars, which presumably concludes the Multiverse Saga, hasn’t yet been announced.
When looking for a new “single timeline” to follow in the wake of Secret Wars, the MCU needs to look no further than Earth-828. Returning to business as usual on Earth-616 is certainly a possibility, but a hard switch to Earth-828 would be far more refreshing. There was a time when Earth-616 was the crown jewel of the MCU, but in recent years, it’s become harder and harder to push the various stories forward and generate the same level of interest it once commanded. While it can continue to quietly exist off-screen and even be revisited from time to time, the thought of spending more time on Earth-828 is far more appealing.
Why Earth-828 Is the Perfect Choice for the MCU
Earth-828 runs parallel to Earth-616 and so many of its multiversal counterparts. Despite this, it’s also a few decades behind, and so First Steps is technically a present-day story that just so happens to take place in Earth-828’s version of the 1960s. In other words, traveling from Earth-828 to Earth-616 isn’t traveling through time; it only seems that way because of how the two universes are lined up. Regardless, First Steps is a more faithful adaptation of the Fantastic Four comics than many previous efforts. It allows the story to unfold on a version of Earth with a ’60s aesthetic, mirroring when its characters made their comic book debuts.
The retrofuturistic tech and intentionally dated superhero outfits all combine to form an accurate translation from the page to the big screen. Now that Disney owns the movie rights to the Fantastic Four, the team could have debuted on present-day Earth-616, but then this tribute to the characters’ origin would have been lost. Creating a new universe for this iteration of Mr. Fantastic and his team was another vital step to making the movie work, as placing them in Earth-616’s past would have raised questions of why they’d never been mentioned before. Plus, in a move that seems wildly surprising in the modern age of superhero movies, Earth-828 has no other superheroes other than the Fantastic Four.
Pair a 1960s-inspired universe with a shortage of heroes, and the blueprint for something really exciting starts to emerge. Just as the Fantastic Four did, many other Marvel characters made their comic book debuts in the 1960s. It would also make sense to gradually introduce versions of these figures on Earth-828, allowing them to appear within a setting aesthetic far closer to what was originally intended for them. While certain heroes, like Spider-Man, would look largely the same, others, like Iron Man, would have an awesome retrofuturistic look that would set them apart from their Earth-616 counterparts.
Earth-828 Avoids a Tony Stark Problem That Started With ‘Age Of Ultron’
The Avengers on Earth-616 started as a ragtag group of incredible individuals who were forced to work out how to work together on the fly. After the Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie in 2012, they became more of an official group. In 2015’s Age of Ultron, Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is bankrolling the Avengers and constantly coming up with ideas and technological developments to increase their chances of success when riding to the rescue. It made sense, but it also started to become a little predictable. If a super-specific problem arose, then there was a pretty good chance that Iron Man either had a tool/weapon to solve it or he could develop one within a short span.
As far as has been confirmed so far, there is no Tony Stark on Earth-828. If there is, then he isn’t Iron Man yet. Instead, Reed Richards is the planet’s foremost inventor, and he’s already made some impressive inventions in First Steps. If the plan is to eventually introduce more heroes on Earth-828, then another Avengers arc would surely be tempting. However, if that happened, it would surely result in Reed becoming the new Tony Stark and supplying his allies with everything they need. It would be more rewarding for the next phase of the MCU to avoid reuniting the Avengers and let all the Earth-828 heroes operate more independently, only occasionally crossing paths in meaningful ways.