Over the past 12 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has pioneered a whole new type of movie franchise by interweaving dozens of concurrent plot threads across a few movies a year. Since this kind of thing had never been attempted before, it was impossible for Kevin Feige and co. to have a clear roadmap for a decade’s worth of storytelling from the very beginning.
As a result, a few of those plot threads ended up getting scrapped along the way. But it’s never too late to give those storylines a second chance. So, here are 10 Abandoned Storylines That The MCU Should Revive.
The Leader
Samuel Sterns was played by the great Tim Blake Nelson in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, and the movie’s final moments teased his transformation into the Leader, a classic comic book villain. Nelson is an incredible actor, exemplified by strong performances in such wide-ranging projects as the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and HBO’s new Watchmen series.
With a substantial role in a future MCU movie as a supervillain, Nelson could deliver a powerhouse performance to match other memorable MCU villains like Josh Brolin’s Thanos and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki.
Who hired Crossbones?
After being badly burned in the final battle of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Brock Rumlow returned in the opening scene of Captain America: Civil War as the supervillain Crossbones. He didn’t survive the sequence, but he did come back in Avengers: Endgame for a cameo appearance when Earth’s mightiest heroes traveled back to 2012.
It was never explained who hired Crossbones for the Civil War job. There’s a nefarious organization out there somewhere, and Marvel should dig it back up for a future movie.
Justin Hammer’s attempts to replicate Tony Stark’s technology
In Iron Man 2, when the U.S. government took Tony Stark to court over the use of his technology, the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist said that all of his imitators were a decade away from creating a workable prototype.
That movie was released and set in 2010, and after the events of Avengers: Endgame, it’s 2023 in the MCU. Assuming that Justin Hammer is out of prison, he must be pretty close to replicating Stark’s technology by now.
The Warriors Three
When he was promoting DC’s Shazam! last year, Zachary Levi said that he would’ve loved to make a Warriors Three trilogy in the MCU. An entire trilogy might be a tad ambitious — in the MCU, trilogies are reserved for major players like Iron Man and Captain America — but these characters have been seriously underserved in the MCU so far.
Now that Asgard is destroyed, the rest of the Nine Realms will be unprotected. The Warriors Three could set out to keep them safe, which could make for a cool one-off movie.
Bruce Banner and Betty Ross’ relationship
Back in The Incredible Hulk, when Edward Norton was playing Bruce Banner, the character developed a relationship with his traditional love interest from the comics, Betty Ross, played by Liv Tyler.
Betty’s father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross, has appeared in a few subsequent MCU movies — sometimes alongside Banner himself (albeit the version played by Mark Ruffalo) — and the link to Betty has never come up. With Jane Foster returning in Thor: Love and Thunder to get the role she deserves, the same could be done for Betty.
Ultron is still out there
Although the titular cyborg was defeated in Avengers: Age of Ultron’s final battle, there have been suggestions that Ultron is still out there. There’s a popular fan theory that Vision trapped Ultron inside the Mind Stone. On a more concrete front, Ultron’s head was spotted in a Damage Control warehouse in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
It’s clear that Ultron could return in the MCU’s future, and after being underserved in Age of Ultron, he deserves a second chance at being a sinister on-screen menace to match James Spader’s chilling performance.
The Nova Corps
Guardians of the Galaxy introduced us to the Nova Corps as the police force keeping Xandar safe. The ending of the movie seemed to establish close relations between the two organizations. However, in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos decimated Xandar off-screen, and it’s assumed that most of the Nova Corps are dead.
This could pave the way for the introduction of Nova — a Nova Corps officer who became the superhero Nova after all the other Nova Corps officers were killed — which is certainly a tantalizing prospect.
The mystery behind Wanda Maximoff’s powers
Wanda Maximoff’s powers have been vaguely brushed off as having been caused by the Mind Stone, but the mystery of her powers has sort of been forgotten about, even after Kevin Feige declared her to be the most powerful character in this universe.
With her own series on Disney+ and a co-starring role alongside Doctor Strange in his next solo movie, Wanda will become one of the focal points of Phase Four. With Marvel reacquiring the rights to the mutants, Wanda could be retconned as a mutant herself, as she is in the comics.
Damage Control
Marvel brought in Tyne Daly as Anne Marie Hoag for the opening scene of Spider-Man: Homecoming. After the Battle of New York, Adrian Toomes and his crew have scored the city contract to clean up the debris. However, Hoag waltzes in with her bureaucratic red tape and tells Toomes that the site is in Damage Control’s hands now.
This seemed to set up Damage Control for wider ramifications on the MCU, but the idea seems to have been dropped, and remains nothing more than Toomes’ motivation to become the Vulture.
The Sokovia Accords
The debate that raged at the center of Captain America: Civil War was shoved into the background and made insignificant when it was revealed that Bucky Barnes murdered Tony Stark’s parents. But a lot of interesting philosophical and sociopolitical issues were raised by the Sokovia Accords discussion.
Now, the Avengers are disbanded, Nick Fury is off-world, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is all but dissolved, so it makes sense that the world government would drag the Accords back up and take over superheroics. The introduction of U.S. Agent in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier might actually be setting up something like this.
