It is easy to assume that this week’s The Avengers: Endgame is the final film in the third phase of Marvel Studios’s interconnected superhero franchise films. After all, it certainly seems as if the story that has slowly built over eleven years and over twenty films is finally coming to a head as the superheroes who survived last year’s tumultuous ending of The Avengers: Infinity War regroup to strike back at intergalactic despot Thanos.
But Marvel honcho Kevin Feige is saying not so fast, July’s Spider-Man: Far From Home is actually the end of Phase Three and not the beginning of Phase Four.
Newsweek reports that Feige made the distinction while speaking to fans this weekend in Shanghai while on the Endgame press tour.
when Feige was asked this weekend about Far From Home during an interview at a Shanghai-based fan event for Endgame, the Marvel Studios president bluntly stated, “It’s the end of the third phase” He then added that this was the first time he had said this publicly.
And honestly, that makes sense. Marvel’s Phase Two didn’t end with The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, it had the first Ant-Man film released several weeks later as a bit of a light epilogue to close out that cycle of films. It was a light sorbet to cleanse the cinematic pallet after the heavy drama of the previous films. And one can certainly see Far From Home, with its light-hearted hero Spider-Man, certainly functioning in a similar fashion.
Furthermore, we can probably expect some big changes to the status quo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward from the end of Endgame. Far From Home could be the perfect vehicle to feature and examine some of those changes before Phase Four begins rolling out in theaters presumably next year.
