MCU: It's NOT All Connected
You’ve heard the slogan “It’s All Connected,” right? It was plastered everywhere in the Marvel universe since Tony Stark appeared in the credits of a pre-Ruffalo The Incredible Hulk. Back then, it was a pretty revitalizing move, connecting the movies into one big conglomeration of The Avengers with all kinds of easter eggs in between the line. Now we have more than a dozen movies and four different TV series that claimed to take place in the same universe. Since Marvel has decades of material and hundreds different characters, one big universe seems like a perfect idea. So how come Marvel’s not even doing it?
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We’re just seen Captain America: Civil War, possibly one of the biggest gatherings of the heroes outside an Avengers movies and one of the largest comic-book stories in the Marvel world. In the comics, the story encompasses the entire world as heroes have to decide whether to register themselves and their public identities to the government or risk becoming fugitives on their own terms. The whole point of Civil War is the ripple effect throughout the planet as heroes from Captain America to the Fantastic Four to the X-Men must take sides. Because of certain movie rights, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men could never come to pass here, but seven years of movie and television material should be enough to compensate. After all, we’d have the agents of SHIELD torn between loyalty towards their organization or their conscience, the street heroes like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or Luke Cage who’d be affected based on abilities alone, and the heroes we love or will love as they’re introduced. It sounds like the universe could write itself.
Except none of that happens. The concept of SHIELD has been rendered moot since its destruction in The Winter Soldier, and New York has been even less significant since The Avengers. The Defenders will likely never cross with the Avengers, and the most we have for connection is the ripple effect of the Sokovia Accords to Agents of SHIELD which, in the scope of things, meant almost nothing. Sure, the Accords were in effect, honestly giving a better reason for their existence than the ones in Civil War, and the whole thing led to SHIELD once again changing its image and Daisy on the run. But what does that mean for the movies?
It’s not like the shows are on different planets from the movies. There are obvious references to the actions of the movies such as the destruction of New York, the recent devastation of Sokovia, and the role of iconic superheroes. All that takes is a newscast report of a helicarrier crashing into a Washington building or a shout-out to the big green guy or the flag-waver. Those are fun at moments since, come on, people are going to talk about those things in the real world. The fact that they don’t talk about these moments more often in Marvel features is one of the problems here.
On the one hand, I do acknowledge the priorities here. The Avengers movies alone earn one billion dollars while some of the shows, I’m looking at you Agent Carter, struggled to get or keep an audience. Plus, those movies cost a good five times as much as any one of those television projects with A-list heroes. I’m not going to pretend like their on the same level even if they sometimes cross the same level of quality. The movies will always be the most important Marvel anything that comes out in a given year while the shows will always be the studio’s creative afterthought. Because of that, it’s probably for the best that the movies keep their own plots for the masses separate from ever-growing arsenal of shows.
But why can’t these things connect? Sure you can’t have Robert Downey Jr. show up in every tiny Marvel project, but you can at least pretend that these other characters can intersect each other. The smaller mentions can be obvious baby steps. Daredevil referencing the Battle of New York and how people are still rebuilding is a decent start which could clearly coincide with Kingpin’s rise to power in the midst of people’s uncertainty. There’s also the cabin that Skye stays in for a couple of episodes being referred to as “the house that Banner built” which could also bear some resemblance to the cabin seen at the end of The Incredible Hulk. Now, none of these things are canon in any way, which is one of the problems here, but these are just the smallest things they can or could have done to connect the properties without spending extra money.
Moving on to the bigger things, the universe could also acknowledge the big things that happened in each other’s stories. This was a little harder for projects like Agent Carter taking place decades before a lot of things, but there were plenty of other problems with that show anyway. For one thing, you have The Winter Soldier ending with the release of every SHIELD document to the public. Why hasn’t the show already talked about this? Why hasn’t any Netflix show mentioned this? Of course, we hear about it later in Civil War for Zemo's plan, but that was two years after the fact! We've gotten notonly three different movies since then but two seasons of SHIELD, two seasons of Agent Carter, two seasons of Daredevil, and one season of Jessica Jones. Imagine the shoutouts to names and groups that could have crossed over both areas to secret organizations within secret organizations or other superpowered beings, not to mention the easily brought up codenames.
Back to Civil War, which is said to be one of the biggest events of the MCU but in reality will mostly encompass the movies. The comic version of the war was felt across every corner of the universe, but on screen, it focuses purely on the rivalry between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. When it comes to a legislation that could potentially limit superhero activities, the story deserves to be set up and felt throughout the MCU. Why should the projects outside the movies be excluded when they've been doing a better job at promoting it themselves with the spread of dangerous Inhumans in Agents of SHIELD or the rise of vigilantes outside the law in the Netflix shows? The powers that be could easily build up one of the largest Marvel stories that would be felt by everyone across different landscapes
Because that’s what it’s all about with the “it’s all connected” slogan. It’s about things connecting to other things. It’s about destroying New York mattering to the people in the city. It’s about people noticing when a decent portion of the population starts sprouting superpowers in the midst of a law trying to regulate superheroes. Most importantly, it’s about giving us a reason to care about every character they have planned for the next ten years. That’s a lot of shows and movies, and we already know which ones are top priorities.
So will Marvel ever make good on their line of “it’s all connected”? Who knows, but prospects are unlikely. If Marvel could look at all of the possibilities or even think to take the advice of a small-time blogger, then they could benefit from some connections. Maybe one day Marvel, or some major company, will consider the connection concept. Then we can really talk about it.
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