they're going to have to work overtime in setting this shit up in these movies, and I heard they're super confident in Deadpool 3 which I agree is probably guaranteed to be a hit. the fact it seems to be the BIGGEST set up movie going forward though, following Loki's second season (which I haven't seen yet, bc I'm too busy watching pornography or rewatching the wire) I think is not a good look because they promised over and over it will be rated R but I think setting up everything in a movie less people will watch with their kids is probably not really a very good place to do that. I personally think it will be how I've felt about most of this multiverse saga shit where at the end of the day in the movie itself it will probably end up feeling inconsequential and like nothing was actually set up (see Dr Strange 2, Spiderman NWH, AntMan Quantamania) where there will be multiverse shit but by the end I'll go, and what exactly did that lead into? Those movies all feel like by the end we aren't exactly having a specific throughline into where this is going (because they have/had no idea). and from an optics place I don't think I would keep going with the narrative R rated DP3 is THE movie to see to prepare for what's coming although that's likely only because it's the only movie coming out this next year. it just seems weird to me that when this saga's all said and done if you were to make a list of must see multiverse saga things and cut out "filler" movies/shows DP3 will probably be on it when it should probably be in the latter category.
Something I think that has kind of fucked them beyond just shitty movies is that at least in the first phases of the MCU it was pretty easy to build to the infinity gauntlet because even if the movies didn't have particularly good set up for Thanos before IW, at least there was a throughline of the infinity gems being the macguffin throughout a bunch of them. this has been weird because we had Kang in a TV show & movie already but our throughline has been nothing beyond just there IS a multiverse and variant characters. that's like it. granted, maybe Loki 2 has more of an actual set up thing going on than has came before and obviously I wouldn't know yet, but in general everything has seemed more disconnected and they're going to have to work overtime in the next few movies for it to make any sense what the fuck Moon Knight, Shang Chi, She Hulk, the Marvels, etc will have to do with when Tobey Maguire, Hugh Jackman, & Robert Downey Jr are in a crumbling universe fighting Kang and Dr Doom or whatever.
As a side tangent, and a Tobeyman1&2 fanboy thing, they could have made this a hell of a lot easier if they had done something I kind of wanted in NWH. when Holland is telling the other Spideys about Thanos and the avengers, they should have had Tobey say something like "oh that chump? yeah the fantastic four, x-men, hulk, daredevil & I kicked his ass". thereby establishing Earth-2000s as a thing where all those movies were one universe and in the years since went on to crossover (despite any continuity issues there, who actually cares? this multiverse shit is all retcon anyways) and have holland say yeah he took out half of the universe for resources and have tobey say his thanos did it for some other reason establishing some variant of infinity war happened there. this would ride with the multiverse thing but also easily set up Secret Wars as a simple conflict between the MCU and the 2000s movies. then you they could go on doing whatever where there's whatever variants but by the time we get to SW it's mainly just kang trying to merge those 2 or whatever and then end it ripping of crisis on infinite earths where them along with all of other minor multiverses more resembling the main mcu merge and we end up with a new world where none of the 2000s guys are around we can recast the big avengers but shit like the x men exist or whatever. I just think they've muddied it so much when it could literally just boil down to 2 universes fighting and streamline the 2000s movies worlds, but still have characters like Andrew Garfield, Tom Hardy and other variants of main MCU people played by whoever. open it with Fan4stic's world exploding, in the end it basically comes down to the MCU (and variants of them from now dead worlds to bring back RDJ & Chris Evans, Neftlix or AOS characters for cameos, whatever) vs Xmen featuring Tobey & Andrew, all heroes team up beat up Kang, new world, soft reboot we did it fellas go home.
