The Marvel Cinematic Universe Plot Threads That Fizzled Out

Part of the novelty of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been the franchise’s ability to throw out new developments and hooks, only to pick up on them again in a sequel, spinoff, or some other project. Whether it’s something as grand as name-dropping the Avengers as a concept or something more subtle, like questioning the cosmic reason for why Bruce Banner is still alive, seeing things through and paying things off has been the MCU’s strength.

Now, not every storytelling baton pass can be a winner. Plot concepts and post-credits teasers can fall completely flat. I’m not talking about ones that are not followed up on in any way. Yes, you could easily make a list of plot threads that have yet to go anywhere, like the stuff with Pip the Troll, Hercules, the Ten Rings’ signal to space, or that time that one Hydra businessman ran off with Darren Cross’ Pym Particles. You don’t even remember that last one, do you? It happened and they never referenced it again!

This list is more about the ideas that were at least continued in some narrative fashion, even if inadvertent. Each entry here has to have at least been introduced in an earlier project before Marvel crapped the bed.

Tony Stark Meets with General Ross

Nick Fury confronting Tony Stark about the Avengers Initiative at the end of Iron Man was a huge deal, but Tony Stark popping up at the end of The Incredible Hulk to schmooze with Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) was the big moment that proved that this was all one big, shared universe. Not only that, but they were building towards an Avengers team! It wasn’t the flashiest scene, but it felt important.

Then, in time, it was apparent that the scene didn’t make sense. Why, exactly, was Stark seeking out Ross to begin with? Even though Hulk did eventually get roped into the Avengers, he wasn’t recruited for his brute strength, but because Bruce Banner’s understanding of gamma radiation made him a problem solver for the issue at hand. In a short film The Consultant (originally part of the Thor Blu-ray), Agents Coulson and Sitwell reframed the meeting as a sabotage that they set up in order to prevent the possibility of the Abomination being considered part of the Avengers Initiative. It’s not the worst retcon, but it feels like it throws an unnecessary spotlight on a scene that could have easily been ignored.

Thanos’ Forgotten Sidekick

The Other sure was a character who existed. In the first Avengers movie, this ghoulish alien acted as Loki’s ominous benefactor. There to give just enough exposition and put the fear of capital-G God into Loki without giving away the mid-credits’ big secret. The Other was Thanos’ lieutenant, and as far as we knew early on, his second-in-command. After being so threatening in his first appearance, The Other had less than a minute of screentime in Guardians of the Galaxy before being casually murdered by Ronan the Accuser. According to James Gunn, it was a necessary step to give Ronan some kind of win over Thanos to prevent him from seeming too meek.

Regardless, that guy sure didn’t get to do anything, did he? Hell, he was so swept under the rug that the Russos forgot his existence when making Avengers: Endgame. Think about it. He absolutely should have existed in the Thanos variant’s timeline, but by that point was so overshadowed by the Black Order that he didn’t even get a cameo in the final battle. He would have been like that tiny yakuza guy from The Simpsons.

Karl Mordo’s War Against Magic

Doctor Strange ended with a heel turn you expected if you read the comics to the point that Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) seemed almost too nice throughout the movie. Disillusioned by the Ancient One’s hypocrisy in the name of the greater good, Mordo walked away from his life in Kamar-Taj and made it his mission to depower every single sorcerer. This is one of those threats that would mean a lot in comics or a TV show when you could jump to the next chapter with quickness, but not so much when it’s going to be years until the next movie. Strange himself made appearances in various movies since then, and Mordo was never brought up.

While a variant of Mordo has a supporting role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there has yet to be any sign of the mainstream one. That is, except for Strange casually mentioning having run-ins with his former ally. It really downplays the importance of that post-credits scene when Strange sees him as more of a nuisance that he’s had to deal with off-screen. At least he’s presumably still out there, thanks to the original plan of Scarlet Witch beheading him ending up on the cutting room floor.

Asgardians of the Galaxy

From the moment we got our first Avengers: Infinity War trailer, that stinger of Thor meeting the Guardians of the Galaxy had people excited. Then the movie came out and moviegoers really seemed to enjoy the chemistry between Thor and the ragtag space mercenaries. Once Thanos was dealt with in Avengers: Endgame, Thor would leave Earth and continue his newfound relationship with the talking rabbit and the other idiots. It was a welcome direction that offered many possibilities.

Unfortunately, there were two people who really hated that idea: Taika Waititi and James Gunn. Neither one wanted to have their projects marred with this new status quo. In Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi couldn’t write the Guardians out of the movie fast enough. He flipped the idea that Star-Lord was the odd man out of the team and made it so that everyone hated Thor and wanted him gone. The way Thor initially came together with the team felt so natural and exciting, but undoing it was rushed, forced, and felt in no way satisfying.

Man, this was the perfect avenue towards giving us Beta Ray Bill.

Venom Wants a Piece of Spider-Man

Sony’s hustle of making their own live-action spider-adjacent superhero movies stumbled upon an intriguing post-credits scene for Venom: Let There Be Carnage. After defeating their iconic red nemesis, Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote went off on a vacation. With discussion of a multiversal hivemind, the symbiote was ready to show off its abilities, only for reality to shift. Venom was now in the MCU, just in time for the big Spider-Man mega-crossover No Way Home. This was a development that had promise.

Granted, No Way Home was a busy movie already, but Venom was relegated to a mid-credits joke scene, playing up the fact that he never got to cross paths with Spider-Man and he was never going to. Instead, he magically and anticlimactically returned to his home universe. Even the stinger of Eddie leaving a little piece of the symbiote in the MCU is left with a continuity question mark as Venom: The Last Dance recreated the sequence and seemingly retconned it so that the symbiote offspring took the trip with him. The Venom symbiote noted, “I’m so done with this multiverse shit!” which washes its hands of this entire waste of time and expectation.

At least it’s better than whatever the hell happened with Vulture and Morbius. Has something to do with Spider-Man, I think…

The Sokovia Accords

This one is a situation where it makes sense, but it really should have been handled better. The Sokovia Accords was a plot device that really played into the building downfall of superheroes as a completely beloved in-universe concept. At the end of the day, Tony Stark’s shortsighted stubbornness led to the creation of a genocidal robot that blew up a country. The dominos started falling as the government decided that the Avengers and those like them needed to be held accountable for their actions. The debates increased, superheroes fought superheroes, and it fractured the community in a time when Thanos was nearing his invasion.

After Avengers: Endgame, it was only a matter of time before the Accords were repealed, though Agent Woo (Randall Park) at least referenced them when arresting Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg) in WandaVision. The whole thing was handwaved away in an episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, as Matt Murdock noted that the Sokovia Accords were no longer a factor. There are a lot of reasons for the Accords to be done away with, but taking the big conflict from one of the most important MCU movies and just shrugging it off felt wrong.

All Out of Kang

After Thanos was such a hit, the second trilogy of Marvel phases needed a big villain to fill the void. Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains debuted in Loki, promising a multiversal threat and the horrors of countless variants of Kang the Conqueror. Around the release of his antagonistic appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – which left a lot to be desired – Majors was wrapped up in a scandal and trial that put the character’s future in question.

In the end, it was decided to scrap plans for Kang, replacing Avengers: The Kang Dynasty with Avengers: Doomsday. While the Council of Kangs may possibly play a minor role in Doomsday in some fashion, as it is right now, the mad scientist fraternity is a loose end being plucked out of existence by the TVA they ultimately created. A letdown if there ever was one, it also put a damper on one of Quantumania’s high points, where a confused Scott Lang did his best to shake the fear that his heroics in stopping his specific Kang somehow made things worse for all of reality.

The Anti-Skrull Agenda

This one isn’t so much the result of a bad creative follow-up, as it is the result of bad communication and lack of creative synergy. Secret Invasion finished up with a rather dark ending, where President Ritson went full-on bloodthirsty when it came to races of aliens living among humans. His anger stoked the fires of the public’s distrust in government officials being human beings and the whole thing was turning into a mess. In a different time, in more competent hands, this would have been a dramatic new status quo for the MCU. Being that it was Secret Invasion, considered by many to be the worst MCU project, the events of this show were all but ignored by everything that followed.

This was especially awkward when The Marvels was released soon after. Not only did it have a much easier solution to the Skrulls’ displacement problem (just throw them in New Asgard!), but Nick Fury had a very different disposition. As for Ritson’s declaration of war against all off-world aliens, time showed it must have been incredibly unpopular to the public. He was replaced by Thaddeus Ross (now Harrison Ford), showing that the American people would rather vote for the guy who tried to hunt down the Hulk and Captain America than the guy who claims Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy are enemies of the state.

Monica’s Disdain for Captain Marvel

An interesting moment in WandaVision came when Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo, and Darcy Lewis discussed Wanda Maximoff’s power level and success in fighting Thanos. Woo noted that Captain Marvel also held her own in the Endgame finale, to which Monica shut him down, as she did not want to talk about Carol Danvers in any capacity. Once a little girl who looked up to her Aunt Carol, Monica came off as bitter. It set up a unique dynamic for The Marvels, as Captain Marvel would be working alongside a young hero who idolized her and a hero who felt let down by her actions.

Considering Dar-Benn was the worst villain in the MCU’s rolodex, The Marvels needed all the conflict it could muster. The Carol/Monica situation, born from Monica’s feelings of betrayal from Captain Marvel being off-world during a time when Monica’s mother was dying of cancer, was given a little bit of lip service, but only a little bit. Something that could have been a critical part of an uneven movie was breezed through way faster than it really should have been.

Return of the Leader

One of the earliest teaser moments in the MCU came from Tim Blake Nelson’s role as Samuel Sterns, otherwise known as “Mr. Blue.” In The Incredible Hulk, Sterns suffered a nasty head injury while gamma-irradiated blood spilled into the wound, causing it to throb. Sterns seemed pretty jazzed about the whole situation. Other than a comic tie-in, Sterns was completely forgotten about for years. At most, he felt like a possible mastermind in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

It took 17 years for Sterns to show up again, popping up as the villain in Captain America: Brave New World, the movie that felt like it could have been an email. With his gamma brain being more bubbly than bulbous, The Leader failed to make the impact that he should have with this kind of long-delayed payoff. It didn’t help that this was a movie about bringing in loose ends from the MCU’s past instead of focusing on the new Captain America. They could have made it work in some way, like linking Sterns’ experiences with that of Isaiah Bradley, or talking up how the gamma-related characters are just as much part of Steve Rogers’ legacy as Sam Wilson is, but thanks to the many reshoots, it just never flowed or held together the way it should have.

Not Up to Taskmaster

I’m not going to say that Black Widow ruined or wasted Taskmaster. If anything, that movie introduced the idea of Taskmaster and gave her a solid origin story. Once the mind control was washed away and she knew that her monster of a father was dead and gone, the sky was the limit for Antonia. Throw in how Black Widow was a prequel and there being a five-year jump in Avengers: Endgame, and there was so much time in-between that moment and her next appearance that they could have done practically anything with her. She could have been running her own assassin/henchman school like in the comics or finding unique ways to use her powers to make money and try to move on from her tragic life.

Instead, she got wasted immediately. Everyone could tell from the trailers that she wasn’t long for the world in Thunderbolts*, but she was expected to at least reach the end of the first act. Nope. She didn’t even get to meet Bob. Her role was a swerve where her appearances in promotional images and certain commercial shots (i.e. the team at Avengers Tower) were tacked on for the sake of shock value. Even her connections with Yelena and status as her foil felt glazed over. She could have been the Agent Coulson of the New Avengers, but instead ended up more of a Pete Best.