There’s a global crisis. An organism has infected hundreds of thousands, and entire nations are in lockdown. Is this the moment for Marvel’s Avengers to spring into action, defeating the baddies and restoring order? No, this is, alas, reality.
In the grand scheme of things, the damage coronavirus is likely to do to the internal structural credibility of the Marvel Cinematic Universe really isn’t the most worrying aspect of its sudden rise to prominence. But following Disney’s decision to indefinitely delay the box-office debut of Black Widow, that is the subject of much geeky navel-gazing in the Hollywood trades and beyond this week.
The problem is Marvel’s remarkably crowded timetable for new releases, combined with the studio’s propensity for setting up story threads in one episode that are then woven into future instalments. Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, of course, once benefited from such narrative shenanigans when she was introduced as a fairly minor character in Iron Man 2, only to develop into one of the Avengers’ most famous faces in subsequent episodes.
Marvel has slated Chloé Zhao’s The Eternals for November, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings due in February 2021 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness arriving three months later. What if the inter-movie story threads introduced in Black Widow are no longer available for audiences to yank on until they have already seen the episodes these narrative strands have already teased? Remember that bit in Avengers: Endgame where Ant-Man ended up as a baby version of himself as a result of some freaky time-travel paradox? This could set off a chain of events with even more devastating consequences for the MCU.
In a normal Hollywood environment, the sensible decision would be to simply shift every movie back by a few months, to allow for Black Widow to be released before those episodes it needs to predate. But the studio might prove a victim of its own success here, too. Marvel movies are now so popular that the MCU is shifting to the small screen, with new Disney+ shows such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and WandaVision all likely to weave seamlessly into the main narrative. Will these now also be delayed? Or could Marvel spend the next few months deleting all reference to Black Widow from these shows, like that bit in Endgame where the Avengers head out on a time-travel mission to delete all evidence of the infinity stones from the past before Thanos has a chance to get his wicked purple hands on them?
It’s all a bit of a worry, even if there are more pressing concerns right now than whether coronavirus has mucked up the MCU. Moreover, Variety’s own report on the matter quotes an anonymous source declaring that pushing Black Widow “affects nothing on the MCU timeline”. Given that Cate Shortland’s film takes place just after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), when both Romanoff and Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark/Iron Man still walked the Earth, it’s not hard to imagine the episode representing a rare standalone instalment.
We should also remember this is Marvel we are talking about. Over the past 12 years, studio president Kevin Feige has successfully war-gamed almost two dozen highly successful superhero movies without falling victim to any of the narrative inconsistencies or casting disasters that have plagued his competitors. He has ridden out spats with directors, demands from stars for a greater share of the purse and even a rival studio trying to wrench back one of Marvel’s best-known names. Not once has he dropped the Infinity Gauntlet of ultimate power – so why should we expect a little thing like the cancellation of a major box-office bow to stop him in his tracks?
