Disney’s 2025 Marvel Slate Repeats A Worrying MCU Mistake

Key Takeaways

2025 Marvel slate includes diverse shows like Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart, prompting fears of superhero franchise fatigue.
Focus on quality over quantity in upcoming MCU shows is challenged, risking potential backlash among fans.
Despite increased TV output in 2025, the MCU aims to avoid franchise fatigue by delivering unique and fun content while dealing with potential oversaturation.

After a pretty quiet 2024, the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks like it’s kicking things into overdrive once again in 2025. As Phases 5 and 6 of the MCU continues to expand, a full reveal of the upcoming TV slate has fans worried that the world’s highest-grossing franchise is doomed to repeat the mistakes of its past.

While 2024 saw the MCU dial things back to only include Echo, Agatha All Along, and the upcoming What…If? season 3 as Disney+ releases, 2025 is bombarding fans with a supersized crop of TV shows. Despite promises of quality over quantity, there are fears that superhero franchise fatigue will drag the MCU down next year.

The MCU Needs To Go Back To Basics, But Is That Even Possible?

If Marvel Studios wants the Marvel Cinematic Universe to continue to succeed, it’s going to need to return to basics before it’s too late.

What’s on Disney+’s MCU Slate in 2025?

Disney has just locked in its 2025 slate for the MCU, boasting highly anticipated returns like Daredevil: Born Again, animated outings, and even a dip further into horror with the long-awaited Marvel Zombies. There are firsts including the Dominique Thorne-led Ironheart, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II makes his debut as Simon Williams for Wonder Man. In a new MCU sizzle reel, the studio confirmed the following projects and release dates for 2025:

What If…? Season 3: December 22, 2024
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: January 25, 2025
Daredevil: Born Again: March 4, 2025
Ironheart: June 24, 2025
Eyes of Wakanda: August 6, 2025
Marvel Zombies: October 2025
Wonder Man: December 2025

In a time when experimental shows like WandaVision and Moon Knight have proved popular among fans, more out-there projects like Wonder Man have a chance to soar. The problem is that this relatively obscure member of the Avengers is yet to be teased in the MCU, and it’s unclear how he’ll inevitably be introduced ahead of his December 2025 standalone series.

There are also critiques that Ironheart will be another miss, deciding to focus on Riri Williams who was introduced in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Like Ms. Marvel was criticized as being a show aimed at kids, there are already fears that Ironheart is another childish series that doesn’t need to exist. Marvel Zombies can continue the success of Werewolf by Night by giving audiences a darker outing, although the MCU’s first TV-MA animated outing already had its episode count reduced to just four.

It seems the MCU is going hard on animation, and alongside the final season of What If…?, Eyes of Wakanda is an animated anthology charting the history of Black Panther’s technologically advanced stomping ground. Similarly, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is set in an alternate timeline and will give Peter Parker a different origin story to the one that was skipped over in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Following the success of Sony’s Spider-Verse movies and X-Men ’97, it’s hoped that this could be 2025’s breakout series.

At least there’s plenty of hype for Daredevil: Born Again, and after the Netflix series was canceled in 2018, Charlie Cox is finally getting to suit up full-time as a more ‘brutal’ Daredevil in the MCU. The character has popped up in Spider-Man: No Way Home, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Echo, with the latter particularly putting the pieces in place for Born Again. Given the backlash to Netflix axing its Defendersverse, there’s excitement to see how the ashes of this world can be brought into the mainline MCU. There’s a lot going on in 2025, and for many, this hasn’t gone unnoticed.

deadpool & wolverine, loki season 2, guardians of the galaxy 3

MCU: Phase Five, Ranked (So Far)

Despite the MCU’s momentum winding down, Phase Five still has a few tricks up its sleeve to impress those who can’t get enough of Marvel’s heroes.

Kevin Feige Promised Quality Over Quantity

The MCU only had one movie in 2024, with Deadpool & Wolverine being a record-breaking success that made the most of the franchise’s Multiverse potential. This follows 2023’s rough patch where Secret Invasion cost a jaw-dropping $212 million, Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania was critically and commercially butchered, and The Marvels was undeservedly the MCU’s worst-performing movie ever. Couple this with Jonathan Majors being dropped as Kang the Conqueror, and there were rumbles of crisis talks behind the scenes.

2025 is also back on top in terms of its movies, boasting the pulling power of Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and a lot of buzz surrounding Fantastic Four: The First Steps. Curiosity is sure to bring eyes back to the silver screen in a year of action-heavy movies, but in terms of the MCU’s TV output in 2025, there are likely to be some casualties. Agatha All Along was a hit because it made the most of bringing back Kathryn Hahn’s fan-favorite witch, while also relying on the legacy of WandaVision as one of the MCU’s best creations.

This deluge of shows also seems to be the exact opposite of what fans were previously told. A May 2024 report from Variety had Disney CEO Bob Iger confirm that there would be no more than three movies and two shows released every year. 2025 hits its movie quota but is set to flood fans with a slew of shows to try and justify their Disney+ subscription hike. Even though What If…? is technically debuting in 2024, 2025 is still saturated with shows.

Kevin Feige himself has waded into the debate, and in a 2024 interview with Cinemablend, explained:

I think over the past few years, certainly with the amount of projects we’ve had between Disney+ and the features, there was an overabundance of product.

Saying that he’s always ‘believed’ that if the movies are unique and fun, the MCU would be able to avoid franchise fatigue. Feige used this analogy as an explanation for why the Blade movie was taking so long (before it was quietly parked), adding that there are plans to slow down, “Making sure each thing is special, each thing has the time internally to be developed right.”

Unfortunately for Feige, while the release schedule has slowed down, the output of shows hasn’t. Filming on Ironheart wrapped back in November 2022 and plans are already being steamrolled for Daredevil: Born Again season 2. The worry is that after an overload of shows in 2025, things will then dry up again in 2026. Only the Paul Bettany and James Spader-led Vision series is penciled in for 2026, and although all eyes will likely be on Avengers: Doomsday that year, other upcoming shows would’ve usually been announced by now.

Despite arguments that the MCU has ‘lost its way’, there’s renewed hope thanks to the likes of Deadpool & Wolverine and Agatha All Along. If the franchise can keep up with these experimental shows and movies that push the envelope in terms of what audiences have come to expect, there’s a chance that next year could be one of the MCU’s best ever. Here’s hoping 2025 doesn’t repeat the mistakes of 2023, and that the MCU can continue its current winning streak.