Marvel's Future Plans Post-Endgame May Have Just Leaked

Contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame

Marvel keeps many secrets hidden behind the Iron Curtain, and does just about anything it can to keep them from leaking. Duping actors with fake scripts so they don't know what's true and what's completely made-up? Been there, done that. Filming multiple different endings to obscure the real conclusion? Yep, Marvel filmmakers have done that, too. These tactics may have worked to stop actors from spilling the beans, but they apparently weren't aggressive enough to prevent others from sharing sensitive information about Marvel's projects. 

It appears that a good portion of Marvel's plans post-Avengers: Endgame — both for Phase 4 of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and for a number of television shows coming to the Disney+ streaming service — have leaked on Twitter. And not just a few days ago or a week ahead of Avengers: Endgame launching in theaters — these purported leaks hit the web back in December of 2018. 

The details come from a semi-anonymous Twitter user who goes by the name of Roger Wardell, who began sharing what he described as "leaks" for Avengers: Endgame at the end of last year. At the time, Wardell's tweets gained virtually no traction, given that his profile offers virtually no identifying information about who he is other than his name (which could be fake) and because there was no way to confirm his tweets as factual. Anyone who did spot his posts in December probably passed them off as intentionally fabricated. Looking at them now in retrospect, though, the things he said about Endgame turned out to be completely on-the-money — like, scarily accurate.

Wardell predicted that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) would lose his chiseled physique and "look a bit like his old friend Volstagg," that Agent Carter actor James D'Arcy would make the jump from Marvel TV to the MCU as Edwin Jarvis, that Robert Redford would return as Secretary Alexander Pierce, that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) would mess up "big time," and that Chris Evans would "play a completely different Steve Rogers" in the film, seemingly referencing the choice Steve made to stay in the past and live a normal life with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) before catching up to the present as an old man. He even nailed the "hail HYDRA" line, Thor decapitating Thanos (Josh Brolin), Stan Lee making a cameo in the 1970s, and Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo) and Jack Rollins (Callan Mulvey) returning to recreate the elevator scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. 

By all accounts, Wardell was totally right about what went down in Avengers: Endgame — save for the minute detail about Lee's cameo taking place during a car show, when it really happened in a car driving past a military base. This makes it far easier to believe what he tweeted about Marvel's future is just as precise. 

Wardell claimed in one tweet that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige "has talked about films based on Power Pack and Ms. Marvel," and that the characters may also get their own series on Disney+, the forthcoming streaming service home to a number of Marvel superhero series including Loki, WandaVision, and Falcon and Winter Soldier. He tweeted that it's being "heavily discussed" to create multi-season shows based around Power Pack, the group of four young superhero siblings who joined the Marvel Comics universe in 1984, and Ms. Marvel, presumably the Kamala Khan iteration of the hero who succeeded Carol Danvers in the comics lore. 

Additionally, Wardell alleged that the Black Knight has been a hot topic of conversation at Marvel Studios. Executives purportedly view the character — who has flip-flopped between being a superhero and a supervillain as several different people have brandished the moniker, a recent one being a member of the Avengers — as having potential to become a New Avenger and "capable of holding his own solo film." Marvel is purportedly looking at giving the Black Knight is own trilogy as well.

Wardell lastly proclaimed that Marvel has "big plans for Zemo, Ghost, Justin Hammer, General Ross, and the Abomimation" — all of whom have been, at one point in time, members of the Marvel Comics supervillain coalition known as the Thunderbolts. According to Wardell, Marvel Studios is mapping out plans for a Thunderbolts trilogy, and is thinking of making the Leader, a genius genetic engineer and enemy of the Hulk, the central villain of the film series. 

The Leader, whose real name is Dr. Samuel Sterns, has already appeared in the MCU: Tim Blake Nelson portrayed Sterns in 2008's The Incredible Hulk. In that flick, Sterns transformed Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) into the Abomination using super-soldier serum and some of Bruce Banner's blood. When the Abomination attacks Sterns, he drips some of Banner's blood into an open cut on Sterns' forehead, thus triggering his metamorphosis into the Leader. Considering his past foundations in the MCU, it seems plausible that the villain could rise to lead (no pun intended) an ensemble trilogy down the line. 

Given how spot-on Wardell's tweets about Avengers: Endgame were, it's tempting to take everything he's said about the future of Marvel as 100-percent factual. Certain elements, like Marvel planning something major for Black Knight and the studio developing a Thunderbolts movie, seem more plausible than others, like the details about the Disney+ series. This is because we have already picked up on back-channel chatter and heard talk from MCU actors themselves about things Wardell discussed on Twitter. 

Actress Hannah John-Kamen, who played Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp, once noted that she'd love to reprise her villainous role for a movie about the Thunderbolts. She told ScreenRant in June 2018, "That would be fun! That would be fun ... With any Marvel character whatever happens to them, you always go the possibility is endless. And with me it would be an honor to work with any of the heroes, and any of the antagonist[s], and any of the things in the Marvel Universe. I mean, yeah, that would be amazing!" 

Years before that, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn shared that he told Feige he really wanted to make a Thunderbolts movie. "He said, 'James, if Guardians does well you'll be able to do whatever you want so we'll see what happens," Gunn stated. Maybe after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 gets out in theaters, Gunn will take on Thunderbolts as his next feature.

Regarding the possibility of a Black Knight movie, MCU Cosmic founder and editor-in-chief Jeremy Conrad relayed in December 2018, not long after Wardell shared his tweets, that Marvel knows what it wants to do with the character. Conrad, a reliable source for Marvel movie news, tweeted at the time, "There's been some hinting and talk about Black Knight recently. Apparently Marvel does have a plan for him in the MCU, and they already know how he'll be introduced."

There hasn't been much talk by the way of Marvel's Disney+ series, aside from the shows the company has already confirmed plans for. It would certainly be cool to see Power Pack and Ms. Marvel get their own shows on the new streaming platform, as well as their own films within the MCU. The characters are younger than the heroes fans are used to seeing — but if the rumors about Marvel getting to work on a Young Avengers movie are true, perhaps the studio is looking to appeal to a wider audience by bringing more pre-teen and teenage heroes into the mix. 

As fun as it would be to believe Wardell's tweets as truthful and based on insider information he obtained from Marvel brass, it's best to take these "leaks" for what they are: unfounded details posted by someone whose real identity is a mystery. Feige already confirmed that Marvel will announce the first few years of its five-year, post-Endgame plan sometime after the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home this July, so fans won't have too much longer to wait to find out the real truth about the studio's future.