Yes, the retro-styled cast announcement was a clue. And so was the poster of Johnny Storm making a big red fiery 4 in the sky—the sky over an unrecognizable city. On the Official Marvel Podcast, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige made it essentially official that The Fantastic Four is set both in the 1960s—and he hinted that observations about the peculiar city in that poster maybe suggest the movie is set in an alternate universe to the main MCU timeline.
“There was a cityscape in the corner of that image,” Feige said (per Polygon), “and there were a lot of smart people who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know, or the New York that existed in the ’60s in our world. Those are some smart, smart observations.”
So … yeah, okay, I got nothing. Presumably by the end of the film they will wind up making contact with the main timeline, or the TVA gets involved, or honestly at this point there are so many universes and timelines that it’s hard to say what this confirmation really means, if much at all? But there you have it.
The Fantastic Four, whatever else it does or doesn’t have going for it (third time’s the charm?), has a very of-the-moment cast: The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal (pictured above) as Reed Richards; Mission: Impossible’s Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm; The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, and Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm—with Ozark’s Julia Garner and Russian Doll’s Natasha Lyonne showing up for the fun too. WandaVision’s Matt Shakman directs the film, which is in theaters July 25, 2025.
