11 Avengers: Endgame Moments That Will Mean Something In MCU Phase 4

7. The Creation Of The Marvel Cinematic Multiverse

Whenever you introduce time travel into a franchise, things are sure to get messy, and while Endgame (mostly) manages to tie things up in a neat bow, it also unambiguously introduces the notion of the Multiverse.

After all, the Avengers' time travel shenanigans generate a timeline where Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has escaped with the Tesseract, and it also seems likely that the Disney+ series WandaVision will transpire in an alternate timeline where Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) has managed to resurrect Vision (Paul Bettany).

Introducing a potentially infinite number of universes opens up the possibility for more wacky and ambitious storytelling not necessarily tethered to one distinct continuity, and this seems to be backed up by the most recent trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) mentions that Mysterio has arrived from another version of Earth, facilitated by Thanos' snap causing a tear in the MCU's primary dimension. Peter Parker even name-drops the word Multiverse, seeming to imply that things are about to get weirder and more out-there than ever.

This certainly presents a risky creative trade-off for the franchise, because for every neat "what if?" scenario it offers up, it also has the potential to invalidate death entirely and exacerbate the MCU's already substantial stakes problem.

Fingers crossed we won't see Tony Stark returning from the grave any time soon, basically.