9 Theories On How The MCU Could End

Steven Spielberg has gone on record to say that the superhero genre will eventually go the way of the Western in Hollywood, and does anyone really have the authority to tell him he's wrong on any matter concerning movies?

Between the MCU, its DC competitor and Fox's X-Men universe, between five and seven major comic book adaptations are landing each year, and when the Western was churning out this many during its heyday, over-saturation quickly set in.

It's important to point out the differences between the two genres, and chief among them is the flexibility of comic book adaptations. The MCU alone spans space operas, superhero comedies and spy thrillers, while the Western struggled to find diversity.

But shared universe fatigue is a reality Marvel must face, given that most blockbuster properties are trying to cash in on this trend, and not all of them successfully.

No doubt comic book movies would have a future if shared universes became unfashionable, but critics have been talking about the superhero bubble bursting since the third entries in the original Spider-Man and X-Men series went down like a pair of adamantium balloons, and such talk never seems to die out entirely.

If Spielberg ends up being right and Hollywood does fall completely out of love with superheroism, there's a chance Marvel won't get to end the MCU on its own terms and is simply forced to wind it up with stories left untold and character arcs incomplete.