Insider Says Dead MCU Heroes and Villains Return After the Avengers: Secret Wars Reset

Marvel had confirmed it would soft reboot the MCU after Avengers: Secret Wars, and a new report from industry insider Alex Perez claimed the reset would bring back multiple dead heroes and villains by causing past events to happen differently. I think that approach is risky, because it means rewriting the Infinity Saga, some of the best canon Marvel has, rather than only moving forward.

Years of speculation about a reboot turned out to be somewhat correct. The MCU would not look the same as it did before Avengers: Secret Wars. There would be recasts, original characters and a whole new continuity, which Kevin Feige described as singular timelines, plural. None of us speculated it would go down the way Perez indicated, though, and that's where the real risk for Marvel Studios lies.

Alex Perez says dead heroes and villains will return after Avengers: Secret Wars

Alex Perez is a writer and editor at The Cosmic Circus, an outlet that has been a mainstay in the Marvel conversation and the source of many scoops over the past two or three years. In one of his updates, he said: "Multiple dead heroes and villains will be brought back after Avengers Secret Wars due to the reset causing past events to happen differently."

The implications are big on many levels, but the obvious one is this. If Perez is right, Marvel would be changing the past events of not only the Multiverse Saga but also the Infinity Saga. That's where the MCU lost many heroes and villains, Thanos among them. Because things would have happened differently after Avengers: Secret Wars, there would be a new continuity in which some of those dead characters are still part of the story.

Why rewriting the Infinity Saga is a risk for the MCU

From a fan's point of view, I think it's risky to take the Infinity Saga, some of the most sacred and best canon Marvel has, and change it because of new consequences from Avengers: Secret Wars. We knew the MCU was going to be rewritten into something new after Secret Wars, probably with the help of Franklin Richards. But I never guessed Marvel would want to involve the Infinity Saga's events and rewrite them as past history, or make it so some of that story didn't happen.

Those two things aren't mutually inclusive. You can have one without the other. Avengers: Secret Wars could carry huge consequences going forward without undoing the Infinity Saga. Of course, people will argue the Infinity Saga is the reason the MCU is where it is now. During Avengers: Endgame, Loki gets the Tesseract and runs into the TVA, and it's that exact variant who sits at the center of the multiverse in place of the Loom. So major consequences have already tied the two sagas together.

But it's exactly that kind of nuance and causality that makes a story worth telling. The Russos showed it skillfully in Avengers: Endgame, where the callbacks and Easter eggs to the rest of the Infinity Saga meant something for the narrative instead of being there as callbacks alone. If you undo that and say it didn't happen that way, then suddenly there's a Thanos, a Scarlet Witch, everyone remembers Peter Parker, and the list goes on. Saying it out loud makes it seem even stranger to undo the consequences of 20 years of movies in service of how you want to go forward.

The X-Men are why Marvel wants Thanos, Scarlet Witch and Iron Man back

The reason Marvel Studios would do this is very clear to me. The studio was about to enter Phase 7, and really a whole new era that includes recast, brand new X-Men in the MCU. Killing off major characters like Thanos, Scarlet Witch or Tony Stark would leave the X-Men in the same place at Marvel and Disney that they were at Fox: isolated, in an MCU that has moved past many of the characters fans dreamed of seeing them team up with.

For Marvel Studios to cash in on buying the X-Men IP, having the full host of characters only works when they use the full host of characters. That's why Kevin Feige alluded to recasts for Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. But you don't need to recast all of these characters, and I keep coming back to Thanos as a prime example. Of course you want him in the MCU now that everybody is here.

Marvel also killed off Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and Scarlet Witch has so many stories that intersect with the X-Men. It killed off Tony Stark too, and while Robert Downey Jr. may be back as Doctor Doom, of course we want an Iron Man in the MCU alongside the X-Men. Seeing all of these characters in the same place has been the ultimate dream.

How singular timelines could explain Thanos and Scarlet Witch coming back

One way Marvel could make this work, and explain why Josh Brolin's Thanos is back or why Scarlet Witch never died in the first place, is to have Avengers: Secret Wars undo that continuity as if those events never happened. That's how the MCU would move forward with singular timelines, plural.

There would still be a multiverse in the MCU, but its timelines would be self contained, so audiences wouldn't have to worry about the many variants. When a brand new saga begins with the X-Men, it would pertain only to that plane of existence, Earth 616, and not to all the other timelines as well.

Marvel should plan the Secret Wars reset now instead of rushing it

As for what this means for every other character, I don't think we'd see the ramifications for quite some time after Avengers: Secret Wars. When the film ends, I don't expect Marvel to show the whole MCU from a bird's eye view. It will have to play out over the next saga. Could a Tony Stark be lurking somewhere in the new continuity, without being introduced for several years? Of course.

Still, I charge Marvel to figure it out now instead of leaving it for down the road. Don't try to work it out after the fact, the way most of the Multiverse Saga felt. If the studio has to take a year or two off, it should. That's what Marvel probably should have done after Avengers: Endgame.

The machine is too big, and Disney and Marvel need to keep it turning. There were reports that Bob Iger was disappointed there was only Deadpool in one year, and that the following year might only have Avengers: Doomsday outside of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Disney wants at least two Marvel movies a year, if not more. Even so, Marvel should take the time it needs instead of rushing, especially since this is the big reset.

Marvel Studios might not get another one of these. Going another 20 years to an Avengers: Secret Wars 2 is very ambitious thinking for the superhero genre. This is a huge opportunity to get everything back in order, so don't wing it. Take as much time as needed, but know what comes next, because if Marvel gets this wrong, it won't get this chance back for a long, long time.