i like to imagine that every universe's mysterio lies about knowing there's a multiverse, but each universe's mysterio happens to choose the correct number for the earth they're on

Somebody FINALLY talked about how weird it is to make the Salem witch trials about actual mischievous witches!

You just did the marvel writers and producers a huge favour here. They’re all like, “Oh, yeah, that’s totally what we were going for. Ahem”

can't believe you didn't even mention eating food at a table as one of phase four's main themes.

Sharon Carter is the one person I can think of who I really want to be a Skrull because I think her Power Broker villain turn just did not make sense. If she was replaced by a Skrull during the Snap, it suddenly totally makes sense.

The action figure portion reminds me of Logan not liking the comics that Laura had and loved, saying that “maybe a quarter of it happened and not like this” signifying that someone wrote and drew fabricated stories to make themselves feel better about the disappearance of mutants (also him saying some of it happened while looking at him save a friend from falling in the comic he’s wearing the accurate suit, maybe he wore the suit before he retired)

The retcon phase you’ve discussed made think how the MCU really does work like comics; kingdoms, deities, organizations randomly pop outta nowhere and we’re expected to believe they’ve existed for a loooong time

Phase 4 was about legacy, for sure. Shang chi and his father’s rings, the Hawkeyes, black widow’s family being introduced, Falcon becoming Captain America, the thors, Spider-Man meeting two versions of himself and fighting their villains, she hulk ignoring her cousin’s advice and learning from it to be a hero like him and a lawyer like her

The more we go on the more the MCU is gonna become like the comics. You don't need to watch or be "caught up" on everything because it'll become less and less feasible to binge all of them at once Just roll with what's interesting to you, if the movies are well made than anything you missed that's important will be explained just like any other backstory in a movie.

Two months ago Jonathan Majors said he just had a chat with Kang Dynasty director Destin Cretton. When asked what can he say about it, he responded with "We are dealing with myths. What is a Kang? What is a movie? What is a MCU movie? What does that mean, what does that look like? Those are the questions we are asking." The fact that he said Kang Dynasty will explore "what is a MCU" movie really makes me think you are onto something here.

Something I find myself continually coming back to as far as the retcons, is specifically that Eternals tells us that life-bearing planets are created by Celestials as eggs for incubating new Celestials... But cut back to GotGv2, where Ego calls himself a Celestial, says he believed himself alone, and embarks on his whole Expansion plan by which he seeded a bit of himself on a bunch of life-bearing planets with the intent of turning them all into extensions of himself. He even gets to start doing some of it, with a big glowing blob of Ego-ness erupting out from behind the Dairy Queen and also on Xandar! What would've happened if he'd fully succeeded, as far as Arishem and the Eternals and all that? That seems like something they should've maybe gotten a bit involved with, if they'd always existed all that time.

I saw Druig's stopping but not stopping the conquistadors as his dereliction of duty from the role of being an Eternal. He decided mankind was too destructive and no amount of intervening would stop their atrocities against one another so he carved out a mini civilization that he could manage and basically retired there with it. He was done with worldly matters and decided to spend all his time and energy on the people he knew he could save. He didn't save a civilization, but he saved a town and grew that

I’ve always argued that Phase 4’s big shared theme was “Self-Identity” Almost every story is about someone grappling with what it is that makes them *themselves,* and how that’s informed by their background, their biology, their “destiny,” or perspective/philosophy.

53:36 was an absolutely perfect analogy for phase 4. After three-peating with its first few phases, this dynasty is rebuilding and developing its draft picks. And just like in sports, some of the lifelong fans are looking at these new faces and wondering if they can reach the same heights.

The "rebuild season " idea is exactly what I thought this phase would be the whole time. I love the way you explained it.

The theme was Legacy. Everything was about passing the torch. [edit]32:27 heh, then we get to him talking about this…

35:21 I would say the most significant retcon in Sam & Bucky was all the super soldier serum stuff. Bradley’s whole existence.

i like to call it the wattpad phase because this is definitely disney just letting writers do way more of whatever they want because they're only doing it for the money now

Phase 4 felt like a "consequence/reality" phase. A lot of the shows specifically show a new side of the MCU where you see how "the real world" is handling heroes and stuff.

My favorite films from phase 4 were the standalone projects, like Shang chi or moon knight. They’re focused on one main character throughout and tells their story. As fun as the rest of phase 4 was, not many of the projects stuck with me.

I always thought the underlying theme of phase 4 was Legacies. It feels like almost every major character is worrying about their legacy, trying to live up to a legacy they've been given, dealing with how the legacy (or lack there of) left in the world by another effects them, or making a legacy they are now a part of, either by happenstance or design, their own.

The action figure phase is the most thematically relevant because it foreshadows how the franchise would continue to devolve into self-insert fanfiction.

Gorr is definintly an A tier dad. Didn't do great things after his daugther died, but when presented to give her a second chance at life he did.

A musical about the attack on NY is beyond weird, it’s like making a musical about 9/11

Didn’t watch the whole vid yet, but imo Phase 4 was a few things: Loss and Legacy, Moving Past the Snap, and Fresh Faces. Love you Nando.

Giving the Shang-Chi dad B Tier after everything he put his kids through as children is very generous. 😆

Great minds think alike :D Kidding aside, fantastic video as always, and huge thanks for that shoutout! I probably wouldn't be making videos at all if it weren't for your channel - I had my first successful video blow up thanks to the One Villainous Scene playlist - so I was beaming from ear to ear at 55:05!

The Mandarin was shown to be real ever since that one DVD short with Trevor in prison, which I am 100% certain you know about because you've talked about it before

THANK YOU for the part about the Salem witches! Seeing it in movies so much always felt weird to me

I’m not going to pretend that phase 4 was some meticulously crafted master plan that was perfectly executed. It had some high highs but really low lows. And it’s to be expected after their big conclusion in Endgame and all the chaos IRL. So there were bound to be some missteps and growing pain when trying to introduce new characters and concepts. But themes of loss, grief, legacy, and expansion of the multiverse are present throughout. Hopefully now that phase 4 is over we can learn from our mistakes and successes and move forward together.

"everything but Fan-four-stic is in play." Lol, that was truly fantastic.

First off - EXCELLENT take on Phase 4; I felt like my sheer frustration and anger was somewhat brought down a notch thanks to this perspective. I think the "rebuilding year/sports team" analogy is very apt and warranted - I think any reasonable comic fan would assume this (I think you mentioned in a previous vid/some comment mentioned that the only reasonable thing to do after a blockbuster event like Endgame is to focus on smaller stories to lower the scale). Going back to the sports analogy - I don't think people are mad at Disney for being in a rebuilding year, they're mad because Disney is the Mets. They have a TON of money to spend, and are a professional baseball team. Therefore you assume that at the very least they focus on the fundamentals to a professional degree, and have enough capital to make it to the playoffs every year. tl;dr In movie terms - people are frustrated that despite the amount of money Disney has access to, they should have competent CGI and writing as a bare minimum. We don't care if they are testing different characters to see what sticks - that's perfectly fine. Losing the fundamentals that made MCU great is a cardinal sin.

If Phase 4 had a theme, I think it was probably something to do with the heroes' relationship with the world, probably best demonstrated by Hawkeye, TFATWS, Ms Marvel, She Hulk and Black Panther 2, with nods in Thor 4 and Guardians Hoiliday special. But my read was that Phase 4 was intended to expand the MCU from one franchise to many franchises; it feels more like Marvel Comics to me now, where the reader knows everything is happening in the same universe, but not every book is about the same theme or subject, or told in the same style or genre, but which can cross over when the story demands it.

Phase 4 was about legacy, handing off titles, gripping with the past, and expanding the world. Feels pretty obvious to me.

Legacy. The new generation. Also Marvel trying hundred different things to see what sticks. The Phase One 2.0 if you will. I personally liked it. Very comic booky in a sense of having so many completely different runs of stories and letting people pick and choose which to follow. But that's just me.

The theme was "Boy It really got away from them at the end".

Needs T'Chaka as an S tier dad from that What If episode... started his own space program just to find T'challa

I think the theme was legacy and this was sort of a building phase with phase 1, with fury assembling the avengers, who knows maybe Kant will assemble the time avengers or something

Nando made me realize a weird thing There is an eternal named Thena There is also confirmed a Greek pantheon which includes Athena...so....are there just 2? And which one came first?

Really wish Marvel gave us a “The Leftovers” style Disney+ series in Phase 4 that took place during the 5 year time skip of the snap, and showed us how not only the remaining heroes are dealing with things, but regular civilians as well. I’d watch a multiple hour long series about that any day over a show about She-Hulk or Echo, or whatever random character they’re trying to make a project centered around

Super enjoyable video. Nice job nando and I agree this phase does feel like they're finding out what might and might not work in later phases while also establishing new elements and playing on the grief from older phases

Nando I really enjoy when you put out a nearly hour long video. 😊

I’m a philosophy professor. Metaphysics is the study of things insofar a they exist and asks questions like following: “why is there something rather than nothing?” “What is causality?” Etc. What you have been talking about is not a “metaphysical crisis.” What you have been talking about is an “existential crisis.” Existentialism asks questions like “what is the meaning of life?” And “what is it like to live a human life?”

i love how optimistic you always are. thank you.

To me it kinda always felt like “living in grief/ aftermath”

Phase 4 is about growing pains to me. I feel like this universe is still reeling after the snap and a lot of them are snapshots of the aftermath of the snap. Yeah COVID really held back this phase into just bunch of movies but again it's a reaction towards the tragedy whether it's in the MCU or in the real world. Hopefully phase 5 it will be more streamlined.

Come to think of it Tchallas son had to have been conceived between BP1 and infinity war because 5 years before BP2 tchalla was dust

Phase 4 is a segue phase. It’s a transition in which foundational characters are replaced with newer, younger counterparts. It’s a fulcrum.

I don’t particularly like this idea of people thinking each phase needs to be about something. I don’t think the other phases were about stuff particularly either, not obviously at least. I think after the Thanos events, fans have become too concerned that each individual movie must lead up to something in the grand scheme. I think it’s perfectly fine for a movie to be self contained and just be a fun joy ride.

The worst retcon is from Eternals... Now I watch Iron Man 1 and the whole time I think, at this moment... THE EARTH IS AN EGG!!

I genuinely can't tell if this is serious, or the most straight faced joke video that Nando's ever done, but either way I'm here for it.

Nando is the glue, the gel, the spin-master we need to justify the patchiness of the MCU.

There were a lot of mirrors and reflections in Phase 4, along with people that drowned (Strange's sister, Marc's brother, Queen Ramonda). Also, lots of Ultron references (What If, Ultron helmet in Bruce's hideout, Ultron bots in Earth 838, the AI takeover mention in Wakanda Forever) Wouldn't be surprised if Ultron shows up from another universe in Secret Wars...

I definitely think Legacy/Destiny is the best way to describe it. Not everything fits perfectly, but most of them do.

11:10 - I would say that the identity crisis is multiple in Falcon & the Winter soldier: Who is Captain America is the obvious one (Sam? Steve? or Walker?) Bucky has a crisis of who he is (Bucky or the Winter Soldier?) and how his lives with the consequences of his former identity (The old man' boy he killed) Plus the Identity Crisis of Black People in America (Their place, challenges and whether they can be accepted as heroes amongst the ranks of Captain America?) Same thing with Hawkeye: Clint has the crisis of identity as to who he is (Ronin or Clint Barton?) and how he can live with what the Ronin did. On top of whether he can still be Hawkeye (Clearly feels too old and damage to be the hero he was, wants to hang the mantle but gets pulled back in) questioning his usefulness and the Identity crisis of who is the real Hawkeye (Clint Barton or Kate Bishop); and lets not forget the identity crisis of Echo and Kingpin.

Wait Phase Four is over?

phase four was about money. duh

To be fair on the Deviants thing I feel like it’s pretty believable that the Celestials would just shrug and be satisfied that the Eternals solve that problem and not bother fixing the root issue

People reacted this phase as they did to Antman and the Wasp. They expected something big between Avengers 3 and 4, and then felt let down in the end as we got a little friendly movie that put the final figure on the board.

I'm really enjoying your content. Thanks Nando!

Nando admitted that this phase doesn’t have a solid chain holding the movies together, but it has a few semi transparent strings delaying the inevitable.

Phase 4 was definitely about grief and coming to terms with loss, be it a person or identity

WOW, I just wrote about this, how amazing. Can't wait to see where this video goes!

Really interesting video; my one point is that Hulk’s son is likely so old because he’s been living on Sakaar, which Ragnarok establishes has weird time dilation - it’s how Loki stayed there for three weeks iirc despite being separated from Thor for like ten minutes from his perspective and potentially how the setting goes from 2017 to 2018 depending on how long you think Asgard was on the spaceship for

The dad tier list is every thing I needed

I will be very disappointed if the X-Men turn out to have been there the whole time. I'm cool with the Eternals or Wen Wu or Black Widow's family staying out of things, but the X-Men couldn't possibly do that. I really thought that they would introduce mutants by folding two universes together (not necessarily the Fox X-Men universe) in NWH (most likely) or WandaVision or MoM, but not having done that, it could still happen in Kang Dynasty or even Quantumania.

What a well researched and presented video....well done.

It's kind of hilarious that I can't tell if this is serious or more in line with your Dark Knight Kite Man video

Falcon and Winter Soldier definitely had identity issues. Sam figuring who he should be as a brother and as a hero post Endgame. Bucky figuring out If he truly is redeemable and if he can be a hero.

I was watching/listening to this video while I was trying to organize some thoughts about a writing project I want to take on. But the thoughts were scrambled and chaotic. Then you got to the World Anvil ad, and this is the first ad that came at just the right time in my life and was an instant click for me. Well done.

Bruh no one was like why did we even do Phase 1, we were resetting, laying a new foundation for a new story how is that not obvious lol

This video needs more attention, great great video

Love the longer format. Kevin's going to call you one of these days!

Screencrush had great video explaining how phase 4 is about identity crisis and understanding who we are

GREAT catch I didn't realize all the action figures!!

Bruh the "dear Kevin Feige" is one of the absolute best running jokes on KZfaq rn

This is probably something you should include in your morning wake up routine because it is quite the stretch.

Not sure, but I'm pretty confident that they're going to do Young Avengers. 24:56 yeah, we got more dad's. Also, more parents in general. Then again, this is becoming a thing so I'm surprised that no one over at DC is letting Bruce start adopting again.

Now this, puts a smile on my face! 😌 Love this! 🙏🏽💪

Incredible work! 👍

Yes. It is the Recon phase. Kevin Explained in an interview that this is what it feels like when your reality is being twisted changed and invaded by other universes. They have impact... in their own timeline, but now the timelines are collapsing. And that's the problem that Strange talked about. Collapsing timelines feels like recon whip lash.

Phase 4 had some high highs and some low lows, but overall it was just too much and too unfocused. Even if there is a theme or arc, it isn’t as compelling as the previous 3 phases, such as creating the avengers, introducing the infinity stones, or the destruction and reassembling of the avengers. So what was the purpose of this phase?

When you started the video talking about the themes, I immediately thought "this is the fase of the things that we haven't know about but were always there apparently" and later you said "retcon" and my comic reading brain lighten

The “tva using infinity stones as paperweights” thing left a real bitter taste in my mouth, it trivialised ten years of storytelling felt like the final form of undercutting tension and not letting emotional moments be series and carry weight. I didn’t even realise how much retconning happened in this phase. The only thing I’ve actually seen is Wakanda Forever and the more I learn about the other projects, the less I want to watch them. And it’s such a shame bc I’ve loved marvel since I was 13, I hate that it’s become something I don’t even want to watch

Action Figures and Loki.. Isn't Selvy playing with (action) figures when she's taken by the time Authorly as a kid?

To me, phase 4 was all about reflecting on the past and the things this universe has gone through.

Nando always surprised me with his knowledge on random things im interested in, superhero’s and comics obviously, then overwatch, now sports and what sounds like the nba? so cool love him

I really want Agents of Shield to work into this seamlessly as well. Nicely done!

About your scale rating, I think it's interesting that you put Norman above Zemo for being a better dad, even though Norman is never actually a dad throughout the film. Norman if anything is a villain in part in spite of his relationship with his loved ones, whereas Zemo's quest for vengeance is because of his relationship with his loved ones. I would've flipped the two, but I see why you ranked them as you did

Funny. I thoroughly loved Phase 4. It got me into many of the KZfaq channels I watch regularly now and theory-craft with my friends more than just passively watching (and also enjoying) the previous phases.

Love the opening (how superheroes are represented in their world, etc..) because I’ve been wanting to talk about this but didn’t know how to go about it

Also: parenting. Wandavision, Shang Chi, Black Widow, Werewolf by Night, Wakanda Forever, Dr Strange mom, Thor love and thunder and Ms Marvel are all pretty obviously connected to that theme. Eternals is all about the eternals Vs the celestials, who are sort of their parents. Loki episode one has him watch the recording of his mother's death. The reason that Steven Grant first clashes with Harrow is because he talks about killing kids. Also, Marc is tortured by his abusive mother. Spider-Man nwh has the death of Aunt May, who was his surrogate mother.

Love how Phase 4 sets up a lot of great things in the MCU. It feels a lot like Phase 1, but a lot better and unique too, got me excited for more.

Idk what she was about, but she was ambitious in terms of style

What a great video!

Loved the rebuilding comparison!

well phase 4 clearly was about killing the mcu.

Yeah just heard about the Ms. Marvel Dad ACTOR... he and Flash could probably get their own movie together.

Lol when he said “action figure phase” I had not remembered at all that there were multiple literal action figure scenes

The retcon part of the video genuinely started giving me a headache. The MCU no longer feels like a connected universe, but rather self contained stories that reference similar events