9 Ways The Marvel Cinematic Universe Could End

4. A Gradual Return To Stand-Alone Movies

The biggest influence of the MCU by a country-sized-asteroid mile is the popularisation of continuity-driven franchises. Having movies that all link together makes building hype for subsequent movies and introducing otherwise risky characters a lot easier, leading to ever-increasing returns. But when DC have their Extended Universe in full swing, X-Men finally crack the solo films and every other studio is trying to apply the shared universe model to whatever property they have the rights to, that market share is going to drop and the novelty in connecting the dots of increasingly-obvious easter eggs will wear thin.

And with their continuity increasingly complicated, maybe Marvel will do what every franchise does eventually and loop back to an earlier time and get into the stand-alone game. The likes of James Bond and Mad Max show that a loose approach to overarching continuity isn't necessarily a bad thing, so once their unique selling point becomes mainstream this wouldn't be a bad step for Marvel.

All the A-, B- and C-list heroes will be established in popular culture by the time this becomes an issue, so this is a viable production model. It could be a gradual change, with a big epic finale tying up the universe side of things before putting the focus back on the heroes, which is something it's quite hard to object to. A key part of the criticisms of both Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Ant-Man were how the interesting main stories were repeatedly side-lined by set up for subsequent films, so there's certainly a desire from some corners for something like this to happen.