Why Is Marvel Dumping All Of Its Most Exciting TV Shows At Once?
The MCU is officially back — for better and worse.
The past year has been relatively quiet at Marvel Studios. After a string of box office disappointments, critical flops, and unpreventable delays, the franchise has been at a standstill. Marvel took time to focus on quality rather than quantity, pulling projects that weren’t up to its typical standard. That attitude was certainly admirable, but it caused even more of a jam in its release schedule. Now that the studio finally seems to have its act together, the floodgates are open again, and some of Marvel’s most anticipated projects are now getting the platform they deserve.
Marvel recently unveiled its upcoming slate of TV projects, and it’s an MCU fanatic’s dream. A whopping six shows are slated to premiere on Disney+ in 2025, from highly-anticipated revivals like Daredevil: Born Again to dark horses like Wonder Man. Paired with the three films scheduled for a 2025 premiere, Marvel has nearly enough content to sustain audiences for each month of the year.
On paper, it seems like the MCU is officially back in action: Marvel hasn’t released this many projects since 2021. That was a year bustling with content... but it was also the beginning of a dark period for the franchise. That Marvel is running right back to its old release strategy is definitely cause for alarm. If the studio was truly concerned with course correction, then why is it repeating the same mistakes?
From Ironheart to Thunderbolts*, Marvel has a busy year ahead.
Marvel’s retooling wasn’t necessarily part of the plan, but it suggested that the studio had learned a crucial lesson after four years of tumult. Marvel strived to come back stronger after 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic, unleashing four films and five TV shows in 2021. But it was a lesson in diminishing returns: though Marvel’s Disney+ shows were generally well received, only Spider-Man: No Way Home made a true impact on the big screen. That downward spiral continued in 2022, and Marvel hit a new low the following year. It was clear that the studio’s go-for-broke release schedule just wasn’t sustainable, but Marvel showed no signs of slowing down until 2023.
It wasn’t until the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes forced an industry-wide shutdown that the studio actually had time to reappraise its upcoming slate. Only four Marvel projects bowed in 2024, a welcome relief after years of non-stop output. Disney CEO Bob Iger even laid out Marvel’s new plan on an earnings call this year. Iger promised to reduce the volume of Marvel projects dramatically: instead of four shows a year, the studio planned to release two to three, with the same limit for the films. It seemed like the perfect way to combat the superhero fatigue that’d been plaguing the franchise for years... but with Marvel set to unleash more projects than ever, we’re still a ways off from seeing that strategy in action.
With nine projects on the 2025 slate, it feels like Marvel has yet to learn its most crucial lesson.
The sheer volume of Marvel projects debuting in 2025 isn’t entirely damning. Several of the shows premiering on Disney+ have been in purgatory for years; that Ironheart and Wonder Man have secured release dates is a relief after rumors of cancellation. The jam-packed 2025 line-up could be an outlier, a result of inevitable delays and Marvel’s own restructuring. Ideally, though, this will be the last major push from Marvel for a while. We’ve already seen the limits of the “more is more” approach, and Marvel would do well to learn from past mistakes.
The studio’s hiatus, however brief, was long overdue, and it proved to be a strong strategy for future releases. Deadpool & Wolverine proved that Marvel can get by with just one film a year, and the three shows that premiered in 2024 were more than enough to satisfy fans. Marvel needs to give audiences time to actually miss the franchise: It can’t cultivate demand if there’s always something new around the corner.
