The Russo Brothers Will Reportedly Oversee Marvel's Next Saga After Avengers: Secret Wars

According to The Cosmic Circus, the Russo brothers will stay on at Marvel Studios after Avengers: Secret Wars and oversee the entirety of the next saga, which I think we can comfortably still refer to, for now, as the Mutant Saga. If true, this detail is going to go a long way in fixing what was wrong with the Multiverse Saga.

This goes beyond picking which titles and which characters to focus on. It is about choosing which storyline they want to go with from the beginning and making sure there is a very clear voice overseeing the projects so they are all cohesive. That is something the Multiverse Saga lacked.

Kevin Feige confirmed a plan through 2032 without revealing the details

Long before this report, Marvel Studios held a big sit down at its Burbank headquarters around the time Thunderbolts came out. Kevin Feige fielded a ton of questions there and answered candidly to the media about everything Marvel Studios. Leading up to it, we were hearing plenty of reports about the studio changing its game plan for which projects it would release and how it would release them, in an effort to right the ship at a box office where numbers had started to slip considerably during the Multiverse Saga.

During that meeting, Feige confirmed the studio had a plan that takes it through 2032. He did not reveal which projects it would revolve around, what the next major saga would be, or any of the details we would hope to ask about. My expectation at the time was that those answers were for a future presentation far down the road, probably during the summer of 2029.

The Cosmic Circus reports the Russos will oversee the Mutant Saga

The report comes from The Cosmic Circus, an industry insider outlet I have been confidently re reporting on for years. Its contributors and editor in chief both provide great information, and they are saying the Russos will stay on after Avengers: Secret Wars and basically oversee the whole of the next saga.

Presumably, even if the Russos do not direct any of the individual films in the Mutant Saga, they would also take over the one or two concluding event films that we would expect to arrive in 2031 and 2032, as Marvel reaches the end of its plan. I see this as really important for two reasons.

The Multiverse Saga had no cohesive idea of where it was going

The first reason is that it was obvious from the beginning of the Multiverse Saga that there was no cohesive idea of where things were heading. There were countless introductions during post credits scenes for characters we never saw again, and storylines that ended up going nowhere or were never revisited at any point. Because of that, interest started to drop, especially with the overproduction and the number of projects they were putting on Disney Plus.

As part of its plan, Marvel is going to attack that by releasing fewer movies and fewer TV shows: "quality over quantity." In doing so, the studio gives itself a much easier job of making each project matter and actually building on storylines, so we do not end up with what we just had in the Multiverse Saga again. The characters Marvel chooses to focus on, point of view characters like Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were during the Infinity Saga, need to be established, and we need to see them multiple times.

The Russos will not have to play cleanup the way they did on Doomsday

More importantly, the Russos will not have to play cleanup the way they were at the time of this report. For Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, they basically had to take every character as introduced, with the storylines and baggage from projects that were either good or were not, and put it all together. I can imagine that is a bit of a trick. It also means consulting people like Michael Waldron, who wrote some of the important canon material around the multiverse for the two seasons of Loki, and working with them to get everything right.

How much easier would it be if they were steering the ship from the beginning? Throughout the process they would be hiring the writers, overseeing the stories, and making sure the details they need are in place as they move everything across the metaphorical chessboard. That way, when we reach whatever ends up being the next saga, maybe Judgment Day or Age of Apocalypse, which has been indicated, they will have been there the whole time. First, to control the way things went. Second, to line things up the way they want. And third, to avoid whatever mess they have had to undo.

I imagine Doomsday and Secret Wars would have been hard regardless, but it is even harder walking into a situation with so many creatives and projects that do not seemingly tie together, then having to bring this ensemble together to make meaningful movies. The Russos at least had some lead up with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War to give them practice and move some chess pieces. They did not get to do that during the Multiverse Saga. I bet they wish they had, and I bet they are thinking about that now. I think that is what leads not only to them agreeing to stay on for the next saga, but also to Kevin Feige wanting that, to have at least some cohesive idea of what is going on.

Kevin Feige is not a director or a writer, and that is why the Russos matter

You may be quick to ask, just as I was, why Kevin Feige could not have done this himself. But he is not the same type of creative that a director is, or that the Russos are. He is definitely part of plussing these films, as he says, and he is a producer who spends a lot of time on set and does a lot of creative work. But he is not a director the way the Russos are, and he is not a writer.

So while he could have overseen everything and kept it together, it would not be the same as having artists like the Russos saying, in effect, this is how we see the final movies happening, so now we can set it all up. Feige is part of the process, but those two jobs, director and writer, are super important to all of this. That is how you get a singular voice.

Do I think Marvel Studios is ever going to give up movie making by committee? No, that is just part of its process at this point. But the Russos are well versed in that process. Having them there from the very beginning of the Mutant Saga, or whatever it ends up being called, is going to be quintessential in making it far more cohesive, a story that feels like it is going somewhere, as the Infinity Saga did.

For Doomsday, I think the only way forward is to hit the ground running

What we had in the Multiverse Saga at the time was the Russos showing up, bringing back Robert Downey Jr., introducing a new villain in Doctor Doom, and trying to tie together all of the characters. Incidentally, I think that was their only way forward. I do not think they should spend any time trying to clean up or catch up with anything. "Just hit the ground running with the characters you got, and let the story tell itself."

We do not need an explainer. Even if you show up for the Avengers film without having watched any of the Multiverse Saga and wonder who characters like John Walker and Yelena Belova are, you still do not need one. You get it. They are superheroes. There is Doctor Doom. You will know the X-Men.

As I have been saying the whole time, "you got to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove they can't." If Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars turn out to be a disaster, maybe we will think differently.

Do you think putting the Russos in charge of the next saga is a good idea, and are they the ones to do it?