Note: For the sake of clarity, this blog is solely referencing the canon as established thus far by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The canon as established by the comics will not be addressed.
Do you remember when the biggest threat to our world was a small terrorist organization attempting to replicate Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit? Those were the days.
Well, they’re long gone, even though they aren’t that far away historically. It’s been less than 15 years since the release of Iron Man (and the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). And in that time, the world of Marvel has gone from simply watching a billionaire fly around in a metal suit to being halfway wiped out by purple alien wielding a pile of shiny gemstones, knowing that unlimited other universes and time travel exist, and discovering that there are literal lowercase gods out there hoping to explode the planet for personal reasons.
Yeesh. What a time to be alive.
For our part, we, the viewers, have been subjected to the same progression with each new release in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sure, the MCU’s origins have always had a bit of otherworldly powers at hand, but even these are growing into greater and greater threats. Spider-Man (the Tom Holland version) may have had to deal with baddies using alien tech in his first movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming, but in his third movie, (Spider-Man: No Way Home), he’s got to stop the very fabric of reality from collapsing in on itself.
Perhaps Vision said it best during the Sokovia Accords debate in Captain America: Civil War:
“In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man, the number of known enhanced persons has grown exponentially. And during the same period, the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate … Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict breeds catastrophe.”
“Strength inviting challenge” is exactly how we get to where we are today—because for every time Thor does a few more sit-ups to counter the next disaster, there must come a bigger baddy to fight, lest we spend two hours watching our heroes arrive, explode the threat with ease and head home before their shawarma is done cooking. So, as our superheroes grow stronger, so too must our supervillains.
This, in turn, necessarily implies that the stakes must grow, too. At one point, Marvel’s greatest threat was that Tony’s business partner was supplying weapons to terrorist groups. Soon, it became an alien invasion above New York City, then a homicidal sentient robot wanting to explode the planet, then Thanos wanting to snap out half of all life in the universe. But soon, the universe itself was no longer enough: the universe became the multiverse, and unless Doctor Strange, Loki and Ant-Man have anything to say about it, every universe in the multiverse may be at stake.
If you’ve been following Marvel’s movies and television shows, you may have noticed this trend, too—the trend of power creep. In gaming, power creep describes when new, more powerful characters, weapons or other features are added to a game, subsequently making previously powerful characters, weapons and features worthless and obsolete. It’s also prominent in shonen anime, where the main characters continuously grow stronger and stronger to deal with greater and greater threats (think Hunter x Hunter, whose weaponry began with a fishing pole and ended with a nuke).
Perhaps the greatest example of this is a singular throwaway scene in Disney+’s Loki. At one point, the titular character stumbles upon an office space at the show’s Time Variance Authority (TVA). It’s here that he finds a plethora of Infinity Stones (the central powers for Thanos’ gauntlet) in a desk drawer, which, as Loki is informed, are simply used as paperweights around there. Yes, the central fighting point of extreme power in Infinity War and Endgame, capable of literally snapping life away—mere paperweights just two years later.
Perhaps this is why Marvel has taken a couple breaks in order to allow its “weaker-by-comparison” heroes to shine. Hawkeye’s modern-day story pits him against enemies more appropriate for his power level: a group of nearly no-name vigilantes. Falcon and Bucky Barnes likewise fight another group of nearly no-name vigilantes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And the bad guy in Black Widow was certainly bad—but far weaker than many of the other villains we’ve seen.
But these instances are exceptions—not the rule.
Power creep can lead to a plethora of issues—the least of which being that past characters become all-but-irrelevant on the power scale. In Marvel’s case, the stakes have become so high and powers become so great that they call into question whether anything matters.
And power creep has pushed Marvel towards a sharp increase into the spiritual—something that should always be a concern for Christians. We’ll discuss all of these issues below.
Hawkeye Kinda Stinks Now
Let’s start with the most minor of problems—one that centers almost purely around storytelling. Even when the MCU was just beginning, Hawkeye and Black Widow were the often recipients of jokes regarding their relative efficacy in battles. Compared to Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Hulk, well, a man with the power of bow-and-arrow and a woman with the power of gun simply don’t sound as impressive. And as other, stronger heroes joined the Avengers, Hawkeye and Black Widow were all but booted to the junior-varsity hero squad.
When the heroes and villains got tougher, it was much harder to explain how heroes like these two were able to keep up. Sure, Hawkeye got some fancy new arrows, but he’s still limited by the number of arrows he’s got in his quill. It’s just hard to justify sending Hawkeye on the big mission when you’ve got plenty of superheroes who can literally bend the fabric of reality when the moment calls for it.
And plenty of other older heroes got outshined, too. In Endgame, Spider-Man wonders how Captain Marvel is going to blast through a horde of enemies, and a plethora of female superheroes tells him to not worry—they’ll back her up. But did Captain Marvel need backup? She arrived to the battlefield by smashing her face through a massive metal spaceship, and she likewise plowed through the bad guys like a semi-truck does to bugs on a highway. So did Gamora’s ability to stab things menacingly really provide that much support?
Such is the story throughout: Bucky could once take on the entire cast of Avengers by himself (Civil War), and now he’s reduced to shooting enemies with a gun. Falcon, at the end of the day, is just a smart dude with a pair of Stark-manufactured wings (and now Captain America’s shield). And even Captain America’s superstrength (literally, as strong as a person could be) paled in comparison to many of the newer cast members arriving on the scene.
Storytelling that slowly “nerfs” its characters out of the limelight to replace them with stronger heroes isn’t an effective way to keep people invested. For instance, if a movie’s villain is only difficult to defeat because the weak hero sent on the solo mission only barely surpasses them in strength, I don’t feel invested in the struggle. Instead, I sit there wondering why the Avengers couldn’t have just sent Captain Marvel or Doctor Strange to deal with the problem in, like, 10 seconds—rather than risking the life a hero who’s obviously way out of his or her weight class.
Doctor Strange and the Midlife Crisis
And as power creep takes over Marvel, the stakes become simultaneously higher—and lower. That’s confusing, I know, but bear with me, and it’ll make sense.
Let’s discuss the direction Marvel has headed with its core movies: that, generally, the consequences of our heroes losing their battle have become much graver as time has gone on. On various occasions, we’ve seen the Earth, the universe and even reality itself be threatened by some villain or cosmic event or puny god or otherwise. And compared to some adopted Norse god threatening to become the tyrant ruler of Earth half a decade ago, the destruction of the universe seems to take higher priority on the totem pole of cosmic disasters—at least, in my opinion.
But while these consequential stakes have grown, we’ve reached a point where things begin to feel like they no longer matter as much—primarily due to the inclusion of the multiverse. At its core, the idea of a multiverse teaches that people are not special nor important, as there’s infinite versions of you out there that will keep on going should your universe ever be snuffed out.
Sure, we may be sad because the universe we’ve been invested in is gone, but fear not, because the idea of Marvel’s canonically infinite multiverse necessarily implies that there must be infinite other universes out there that imitate our lost universe almost exactly. Someone might argue that it isn’t the same, but I’d ask, well, why not? If this multiverse is infinite, then we should surely find more universes where everything is the exact same. If we run out, then it wouldn’t be infinite. Thus, with infinite universes out there that are perfectly like ours, the stakes have, likewise, become infinitely small. Marvel could simply zap on over to that perfectly similar universe and continue as if nothing had happened.
After all, when your multiverse has infinite possibilities, everything is canon.
The One Where Spider-Man Confronts His Total Depravity
The MCU power creep has furthermore brought in a plethora of gods into its universe. The Norse gods have been on our screens nearly since the beginning, and though they’re described as gods, they’re explained in the original Thor as just a highly advanced alien race who humans mistakenly believed to be gods.
But is there any group who could be considered gods? Yes—plenty. Let’s start with the easy ones, found in Omnipotence City in Thor: Love and Thunder, which includes various Greek, Aztec and Roman gods sitting in a pantheon (surrounded by other gods made up for the movie). And, to top it off, the film’s Valkyrie mentions a “god of carpentry” when introducing various gods, which director Taika Waititi said “was supposed to be a cutaway to you-know-who, or ‘Big J.’”
Furthermore, Black Panther, Moon Knightand Eternals introduce us to other gods, too. In Black Panther and Moon Knight, we’re introduced to Egyptian gods, like Bast, Khonshu and Osiris. The Eternals’ Celestials also take on the qualities of god, creating the universe. And Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 introduces us to Peter Quill’s father, Ego, who is also called a god (making Peter a half-god). But all of the gods mentioned in these movies are apparently lesser than some greater gods (arguably invalidating these “gods” from holding such a title) who are referenced in Love and Thunder (and one of whom, Eternity, is met later on).
Lesser spiritual beings are also referenced. The existence of demons was canonically confirmed in both Thor: Ragnarok and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And though the Scarlet Witch was initially explained as a science experiment, Doctor Strange and WandaVisionbrought us a tradition of actual sorcerers and witches who draw their powers from other dimensions and entities (not to mention excusing the use of evil, forbidden powers for good).
And as the MCU expands into the spiritual realm in all of their inconsistent travels, they’ve also added various afterlife and otherwise spiritual landscapes to the mix, too—the general vibe being that believers in all religions are sent to whatever their religion believes in (I wonder if atheists are just sent to cosmic nothingness). So far, we’ve seen the Duat and the Field of Reeds, Valhalla, Djalia and even a brief She-Hulk: Attorney at Lawreference to what looks like a Limbo or Hell-like landscape.
Marvel’s push into the spiritual arguably began in Phase Two, with Guardians of the Galaxy’s brief mention of a Celestial. It continued in Phase Three with the release of Doctor Strange and a few other spiritual contenders, including the second Guardians film and Black Panther. But neither phase manages to match the heavier and more direct push found in Phase Four, of which the great majority of our referenced films and TV shows above find their home. As Marvel’s unrelenting power creep forces them to look for stronger opponents, it’s inevitable that they’ve pushed into the spiritual realm full of all the magic and gods they could ever need. But it also muddles the storyline with contradictory beliefs and difficult-to-consolidate plotlines. And that doesn’t even mention the discomfort Christians will feel as the MCU continues in this universalist way.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
The MCU’s introduction of television shows has helped to stagger the increasingly common galactic threats to which we’ve been introduced, helping to ground the universe with a few well-defined adventures. But as for the general pace of the MCU, I’m not sure how much higher the stakes can get past a multiverse and a spiritual realm. With the confirmation of an upcoming 2026 Avengers: Secret Wars, however, it seems the MCU just might destroy the multiverse once and for all, leaving us with only a single (reborn) Earth to think about.
But for all the negatives that come with Marvel’s power creep, it’s almost inevitable. People will want realistic heroes who upgrade their armor and fighting styles to combat greater threats. And, if we’re being honest, power creep isn’t always a bad thing! The aforementioned Hunter x Hunter, in my (and the general community’s) opinion, became significantly more interesting when it introduced its superpowered Nen abilities. So it isn’t as if power alone is inherently negative.
In fact, Christians know what great power looks like. It’s a God who holds all things together in Him (Col. 1:17) and yet loves us deeply enough to die on the cross in our place. His power is unfathomable, but He still relates to us—and even if we don’t always understand His plan, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
The true God greatly contrasts the spiritual ideas brought forth in the MCU. Pervading the multiverse is the idea that nothing truly matters and humanity isn’t inherently special (as the multiverse implies, humanity can be wiped out in one universe and continue on indefinitely in another, implying a uncontrolled and chaotic universe). And Marvel’s introduction into various (conflicting) spiritual realms causes more confusion on who actually runs the joint than answers. Furthermore, the introduction of various afterlife dependent on which belief system someone adheres to provides the dangerously false idea that all religions are true and God doesn’t care if you actually obey Him or not.
As these spiritual ideas are presented for millions to see, it might be time to have a familial discussion about what you believe. Because while the most minor of issues with Marvel’s power creep is that Hawkeye doesn’t get to play on the battlefield much anymore, the most major just might force you to push the pause button to explain why the MCU’s implicit theology is wrong.
11 Responses
-I agree—it’s hard to enjoy some of these movies even for entertainment level when the destruction of multiple universes feels like a cliche instead of like a genuine threat. I didn’t like Endgame as a movie, but the decade-long buildup to it is one of the biggest marketing success stories I’ve ever seen in the entertainment industry and is probably something Marvel-Disney will never be able to replicate.
A bigger issue I’m having with so many of these movies is that they deal with subjects of grief and loss, sometimes by using cancer (one of man’s few remaining natural predators), which feels unconvincing in a setting with so many examples of magic and even multiple universes. Can characters not just live out their days in an alternate timelines or places where they don’t have to say good-bye to their loved ones, similar to Endgame’s ending (even as I felt like that undercut the marketing’s message of “learn to move on”) ? It’s getting to the point where these stories remain their most compelling when they don’t have access to Tony Stark’s technology or Thor’s unrelenting power or Doctor Strange’s dimensional travel, even as that kind of undermines the whole point of a shared universe.
-An alternate means of addressing the concept of escalating crises (as well as addressing the question of whether and to what extent our heroes and their writers are allowing crime to flourish so they’ll continue to have jobs) is to be more imaginative about what the central conflict is really all about. As some heroes become more convincingly (sometimes alienatingly) flawed and villains become more well-intended, the central conflict at the heart of a lot of these movies is almost never purely about “man versus man” anymore, so much as some sort of ideological struggle.
I adored A24’s “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” and while yes, certain novelty-as-weapon scenes in that movie will drive some viewers away, I loved how the central point of the premise wasn’t just destroying another would-be villain, but understanding that villain as a person and even learning to humanize them. And I think that’s definitely a valid way of not having to come up with an increasingly threatening villain.
-I think that’s what made Civil War such a compelling film. It wasn’t about hoardes of interdimensional nasties descending from the sky and obliterating cities or demi-god brutes able to destroy entire planets.
It was literally about one ordinary guy who was so devastated by his own loss that he decided to turn the supers on one another with politics and personal grudges. The conflict was one of ideas, not muscles or magic. With the exception of the Spider-Man films, Civil War was the last really compelling MCU film that didn’t drive me mad with plot holes, contrivances, woke agendas, and broken power scales.
-That’s interesting because the Spider-man films are still putting an effort into Peter dealing with many real life problems in addition to the superhero ones. But Sony is also under an agreement that if they stop making Spider-man movies that the rights will go back to Marvel and thus, Disney. When Sony had bought the rights, Marvel had also imposed certain moral restrictions on how Peter Parker could be portrayed, so as long as Sony is still in charge, maybe we’ll keep seeing Spider-man movies that are more family friendly.
-Well-done articulating much of what’s bothered me about MCU 4 for awhile. Ironically, despite Morbius being one of the most maligned releases of Phase 4, I was very impressed with how it set aside all the multiverse messiness and muddy spirituality and boiled the plot down to a simple struggle between two mortally flawed men who had once been friends. One of them wrestled to overcome his depraved nature (the vampire identity) while the other embraced it, thus falling into deeper darkness and evil. It was one of the most impressive ruminations on the human condition that I’ve ever come across in a Marvel movie.
-Fantastic article encapsulating much of what I’ve been concerned about in the MCU for a while!
-I’m pretty much done with CGI-driven comic book hero extravaganzas. I liked the first Spider Man movie and LOVED the second one. But when I saw “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” (with friends who wanted to see it), none of it made a lick of sense to me. After about an hour I started looking at my watch …. which is NEVER a good sign. That’s the last MCU or DCU movie I ever see. “The Banshees of Inisherin” is more my speed, and if Plugged In can give a movie like that a glowing review, so much the better.
-Exactly. Even people who are critical of Marvel movies tend to take them too seriously. Any formula will become bland and predictable if you keep pumping it up over and over out of obligation to be bigger and badder than the last franchise entry. Marvel is no different. I saw Tar yesterday and thought it was 10 times as smart, funny, unpredictable and exciting as watching a bunch of dudes in capes save another CGI multiverse. I can’t wait to see The Banshees of Inisherin too.
-This is an excellent article and I agree that having multiverses changes the tone of the movie. If the comics are any indication, they will later progress to universes being destroyed… I mean, unless they’ve changed it, Marvel Ultimate Comics 1610 was destroyed after being connected to the main comics continuity and I believe this is a waste of characters and keeps readers from emotionally attaching to the characters when there are these big changes without a true emotional response.
Miles Morales was a success in the Marvel Comics, but the comics also spent some pages mourning his predecessor and this worked. Spiderverse and Spider-Man:No Way Home had multiverses, but they treated the people in the other universes as equally valuable as themselves.
But Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness did not. We barely met some alternative versions of the characters before seeing them killed. It felt like the other universes were simply a means to an end.
-The only way to add stakes back to the MCU is to reduce it all to one universe again, and no one seems to disagree.
A big problem, though, that no one seems to be talking about is the very existence of these universes in the first place.
This problem stems from the galaxy full of inhabitable planets. With such otherworldly cultures and environments, what more can an alternate dimension bring?
What the MCU has done would be better termed alternate timelines, which (logically) is the only direction they can go.
But the problems with THESE alternate timelines are much more apparent. No action actually has weight, because a timeline is created whenever someone makes the smallest change in choice, not only erasing stakes, but making two worse flaws more apparent.
1. If the plot of a film stems from a mistake, then it now becomes even more unforgivable. Any mistake or choice means that in a different timeline, that event did not happen. And when these incidents form the crux of a film, the whole thing becomes inconsequential.
2. It also erases the free will of the characters. Now, any hard choice you admire a character for (Captain America’s sacrifice, for example) means nothing because there’s also not only one universe where that didn’t happen, but INFINITE.
I really hope the storytelling gets better, and goodness knows I’ll enjoy it if it does, but at this point I’ve severed all emotional connection to this franchise.
-I don’t really get why some people are saying the multiverse makes everything meaningless. A few people mentioned “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” (best movie of the year BTW), but wasn’t the entire point of that movie the characters working out how there IS still meaning even with the multiverse? Why would other universes existing make your life less meaningful? Even if there are other worlds, other yous, out there, the experience you are having in your life right now is meaningful to you. And we know as Christians that God loves us, individually, and if he can love and care for each and every one of the billions of us that exist on this planet now, in our universe, why would that be different even if there was a mulitverse? And I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the multiverse does NOT subvert the idea of free will, quite the opposite. Seems like it would demonstrate that free will is real, because it implies that the choices you make are NOT inevitable and set in stone. The choices the characters make are not inevitable, there is always the possibility they could have chosen differently. What REALLY subverts free will is the idea that the choices we make are set in stone, that even if it “seems” like we made a choice, that the choice we made was the only choice we were going to make, and there was no chance that we could have made any other choice than what we did. That’s really what contradicts free will.
The idea of the multiverse is just a story telling tool, like any other. It can be done well or done poorly, and it has been around for longer than just the MCU ^^. C.S. Lewis implied a multiverse in his Narnia series; remember the Woods between in the Magician’s Nephew, with all the pools of water? Each pool a different world. Personally I like the idea of exploring alternate realities, seeing how things are similar and different in different worlds. Lots of story telling potential. Remember that show Sliders? It was pretty cool. I actually thought “What If…” was one of the best of the new Disney+ marvel shows, in part because of the creativity they had to invent new stories with familiar heroes. And the original comics themselves have had many compelling alternate universe storylines that became famous. DC had stories like The Dark Knight Returns, Superman Red Son, and Gotham by Gaslight, that became classics. And films themselves have had multiple successful iterations of heroes, like different versions of Batman and Superman, including the new “The Batman” film with James Patterson. Multiverse and alternate universe stories can be very compelling and interesting, when done right, and I do not think at all that they inevitably “make everything meaningless”.
The problems described in this article I think are more inherent just to the story telling model of Marvel and DC comics than really being a major problem of stories in general. The first issue is that American comics are written by hundreds of different people, with wildly different viewpoints and styles and abilities, and then kind of “welded together” into a shared universe that isn’t always 100% consistent. You look at something like DC; Superman is more sci-fi based, and then Wonder Woman has Greek Gods as part of her backstory, and Green Lantern has his own sort of “creation myth” backstory with the guardians and the lanterns, and then all these other super heroes with sort of conflicting contradictory origins and backstories, and then you try to reconcile them all into one universe and it doesn’t really fit 100%, and brings up lots of unanswered questions, that the writers just sort of ignore or leave for the audience to think about. Marvel is the same way, and it’s been like that in the comics for decades. As the MCU has expanded and introduced more and more new characters and concepts, its inevitable that they are going to “butt heads” in a sense and not really make total sense. How does the cosmology of the Eternals fit with the “gods” of Thor and Moon Knight, or with the more sci-fi TVA organization from Loki? How do “the dark Dimension” of Doctor Strange and “Noor dimension” of Ms. Marvel fit with the multiverse concept? The reality is they kind of don’t, at least without more extensive explanation and hoop jumping that Marvel probably won’t bother to do, but the comics have pretty much always been this way. Every corner of the universe is just making things up as it goes along, and then saying that its all in the same universe and leaving us to wrap our heads around how it could really logically all fit ^_^
The other issue is that DC and Marvel comics are written to always keep going on. Spider-man, Batman, Superman, the X-men, the Avengers, they will never end, they will always keep going, on and on, as new writers and producers come in, to crank out more issues. Power Creep and the like are just an issue you run into when you have a story that you just have to keep going on and on with, coming up with new stories and new threats and new trials for the hero to face, until the day the end comes and Jesus returns ^^. If Disney or Marvel allowed themselves to approach the MCU (or star wars, or any other property they own) as a series with a finite ending, they could write a story that truly was impactful and well crafted and effective, a story where characters truly grow and change and move towards an inevitable planned conclusion. But they won’t or can’t do that, they always have to leave open the future for more stories to be told. I think what in a sense really robs the series of having meaning is that it can never truly end, that it will always just keep going on and on, with new stories and sequels, and no proper ultimate grand finale. Or it will eventually lose popularity, stop printing money for Disney and marvel, and be abandoned. Either way, seems its likely we will always have a universe and a story that’s only partly told, never whole, never complete.