Summary

The Spider-Verse movies have raised the bar for multiverse crossovers, making it harder for Avengers: Secret Wars to deliver a groundbreaking story. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse introduced a multitude of Spider-Man variants from different mediums, including live-action cameos, which the MCU cannot replicate easily. Avengers: Secret Wars faces the challenge of shocking audiences and living up to the expectations set by the Spider-Verse franchise, but the inclusion of heroes from other Marvel movies might help it achieve the desired impact.

The biggest challenge that Avengers: Secret Wars faces has been made close to impossible by the animated Spider-Verse movies. While Tom Holland’s Peter Parker protects the Marvel Cinematic Universe as its friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, the animated Spider-Verse trilogy stars Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales as its main Spider-Man. Both the Spider-Verse films and the MCU have in common one very important element: the multiverse. Miles’ adventures, as the name of the franchise reveals, are all about the character interacting with Spider-Man variants and traveling to different universes.

On the other hand, after the Infinity Saga concluded, the MCU’s Phase 4 saw the start of the Multiverse Saga, putting alternate versions of characters and different universes at the forefront of the MCU’s Phases 4 through 6. 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars is set to be the grand finale to the MCU’s Multiverse Saga, bringing back Avengers: Endgame‘s feel of every hero in the MCU coming together to battle Thanos, only this time it will probably take heroes from outside the MCU to be able to stop Kang the Conqueror and his variants. Avengers: Secret Wars faces a tall order, and the Spider-Verse has only made the movie’s task harder.

Spider-Verse’s Multiverse Makes Secret Wars’ Crossover Challenge Way Harder

The scale of the multiverse crossovers in Miles’ latest animated adventure, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, has not only elevated the franchise’s use of the multiverse but has also made Avengers: Secret Wars‘ crossover challenge much harder. While in the original Spider-Verse film, Miles was visited by a few Spider-Man variants in his universe, the sequel saw the character travel to multiple different realities, meeting all different kinds of Spider-Men, which included quite a few surprises that Avengers: Secret Wars is unlikely to match, and that is bad for the movie, as the Avengers film needs to be able to shock audiences to close out the MCU’s Multiverse Saga in style.

Why Spider-Verse’s Multiverse Crossover Is So Hard For The MCU To Beat

By going a step above the first movie’s use of the multiverse, the Spider-Verse team decided to use different mediums and franchises to bring in shocking Spider-Man variants in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Among the several characters brought in from the multiverse for Miles’ second movie were Insomniac’s Spider-Man from the PlayStation games, a LEGO Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man from the homonymous cartoon, holograms of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s versions of Spider-Man with footage from their movies, as well as live-action cameos from Venom‘s Mrs. Chen and Donald Glover’s Prowler presumably from the MCU.

While including hundreds of Spider-Man variants in the Spider Society was already enough to make it very difficult for Avengers: Secret Wars to accomplish the challenge of delivering what fans expect to be the best multiverse story yet, the mixture of different mediums in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, even including live-action characters, is incredibly hard for the MCU to beat. Due to its live-action nature, Avengers: Secret Wars can’t play with as many mediums as the Spider-Verse franchise has.

Instead, the MCU will have to pull off delivering what fans expect in Avengers: Secret Wars with only other live-action Marvel movies. While Avengers: Secret Wars‘ biggest challenge is very hard, especially due to the Spider-Verse’s success, the MCU bringing in heroes from Fox’s X-Men and Fantastic Four movies, as well as Sony’s Spider-Man films, and more live-action Marvel entries might be enough for Avengers: Secret Wars to be as big as fans expect it to be.

Key Release Dates

The Marvels

Deadpool 3

Captain America: Brave New World

Marvel’s Thunderbolts

Blade (2025)

Marvel’s Fantastic Four

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty

Avengers: Secret Wars

 Avengers: Secret Wars promises to be ambitious.  Read More  

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