Marvel just keeps bringing Michael Waldron back. The writer came into the MCU with Loki, stuck around for the turgid Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and now will continue his turn in the multiverse with Avengers: Secret Wars, which will close out Marvel’s Phase Six.
Yes, sure, it’s very tidy that the man who brought Kang (Jonathan Majors, above) into the Marvel world will presumably see him out again. But this is not, shall we say, an inspired choice.
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Inexplicably, the powers that be at Disney love Waldron, who is also reportedly writing the Kevin Feige Star Wars movie that may still happen someday. The practical reason he’s getting all these high-profile gigs is that he has an overall deal with Disney.
But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Loki barely knew what to do with its main character, let alone what to do with Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), who gets saddled with the no-fun stick-in-the-mud role that so often falls to women in superhero stories. It also absolutely wasted Gugu Mbatha-Raw, which is a considerable crime. (For more on what’s wrong with Loki, do read Emmet Asher-Perrin on the show.) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had some good ideas with little follow-through, and did a very similar thing to Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda, shoving her into the no-fun villain box and then having the temerity to have her call out the hypocrisy of the story without actually doing anything to address said hypocrisy.
Secret Wars currently has a release date of November 7, 2025, and to be fair, we don’t even know which Avengers will be in it yet.
