'Secret Wars' Mega-Theory - Part 3: The Illuminati, Captain America and Cap's Ultimate (Evil) Universe
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| Could Steve Roger's decision to stay in the past be the catalyst to the multiverse's destruction? |
There are a number of clues that suggest Secret Wars is upon us and that Phase Four of Marvel Studios' next big interconnected story will serve as Act One. To see those clues clearly, we have to better understand the larger Secret Wars story. The tale began well before the first issue of that epic 2015 comic book event. In fact, it began 10 years earlier, in 2005, when Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis created The Illuminati.
As he tells it in the comics, after the events of the Kree-Skrull War devastated the Earth, Tony Stark forms the Illuminati, a team of Marvel heroes and thought leaders who meet in secret to identify and eliminate massive, world-ending threats. The team’s early roster includes Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Prince Namor of Atlantis, Black Bolt, Professor X, Black Panther and Doctor Strange.
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| What trouble will The Illuminati cause next? |
In that early comics run, Bendis treated readers to the behind-the-scenes influence the Illuminati had on events like Civil War and Secret Invasion. These adventures took place under the nose of fellow heroes and between the panels during the comic book events’ original run. In short, no one knew the Illuminati existed, save for its members and those it recruited in times of need.
Endgame is the perfect trigger for the MCU’s overthinkers to form the Illuminati. In fact, that worry began with Tony Stark after the Chitauri attack on New York and carried over into Age of Ultron. The Blip, compounded by the deaths of Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov in Endgame, as well as conflicts arising from Phase Four’s film slate, including the Scarlet Witch’s alleged descent into madness in WandaVision, will only push our heroes to create the film version of that secret society.
Endgame is the perfect trigger for the MCU’s overthinkers to form the Illuminati. In fact, that worry began with Tony Stark after the Chitauri attack on New York and carried over into Age of Ultron. The Blip, compounded by the deaths of Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov in Endgame, as well as conflicts arising from Phase Four’s film slate, including the Scarlet Witch’s alleged descent into madness in WandaVision, will only push our heroes to create the film version of that secret society.
More than two dozen films and streaming series comprise Marvel’s Phase Four. Like the acts in the MCU’s first three phases, not every film or series will play a pivotal role - or be a “key issue,” as comic book readers know them - in the bigger story, though all will help move the greater narrative forward by introducing us to new and familiar players alike in this epic series. After all, that’s the purpose of every act one: introduction and inciting incident.
Captain America and his Ultimate Universe
Each key issue in Phase Four will introduce us to - and underscore - a multiverse racing toward collapse. In the comics, the cause of this calamity is a character named Owen Reece, the Molecule Man, whose powers of molecular manipulation make him the most powerful person in the Marvel Universe.
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| Could we see Chris Evans as Hydra Cap? |
In the comic storyline, when the multiverse begins to contract, Molecule Man and Dr. Doom, the iconic antagonist of the Fantastic Four, set off to investigate. In the past, they encounter a doppelganger of the Molecule Man in a parallel universe. It is here that Molecule Man discovers that his very existence, and that of his doppelgangers, is a lynchpin keeping every universe alive. To prove his point, Molecule Man murders the other universe’s version of Molecule Man - and that universe implodes. This event becomes the first incursion and a catalyst that ignites the multiverse’s collapse.
I theorize the MCU’s version of this paradoxical event began when Steve Rogers decided to stay behind in the 1940s after delivering the final Infinity Stone to its rightful place in time in Endgame. That decision does more than create a branch reality different than our own, it disturbs the natural fabric of the multiverse.
In many ways, that timeline is like a foreign substance in a healthy body. It is a multiverse that never should have existed. It is a virus the multiverse has to fight. A virus that weakens the organism as it grows and evolves. I also think this timeline will serve as the MCU’s Ultimate Universe, the one timeline that so closely mimics that of the prime universe, it almost looks and feels the same. It may even be the prime universe’s evil twin.
Key issues and must reads
So what are Phase Four’s key issues? And what’s the inciting incident that pushes us into Phase Five’s Act 2?
Bet the house that key issues in Phase Four’s Secret Wars introduction will include:
WandaVision
Eternals
Loki
Spider-Man 3
What If … ?
Secret Invasion
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Thor: Love and Thunder
Captain Marvel 2
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; and,
Fantastic Four
Nearly three years worth of film and television you won’t want to miss if you plan to stick with the main story.
Every other series will likely make mention of the main plot - growing instability in the multiverse and conflict over how that instability should be managed - but will more likely serve as either character introduction (Shang-Chi, Black Panther II, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, She-Hulk) or side quest (Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Armor Wars).
I won’t go into every detail one could possibly imagine in the posts ahead. Just understand that some stories drive the larger plot, some stories introduce new players and every story expands the individual narratives of its characters and situations. Chapters in a book.
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