MCU Phase 4

MCU Phase 4 is the phase of the MCU starting in 2021 following Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and is run by Kevin Feige. It is the phase of the MCU which PCWs are most worried about for a number of different reasons including general disinterest, lack of creativity, Phase 1-3 being a hard act to follow, but most importantly wokeness.

While the MCU had stayed away from wokeness for the most part, mainly being blockbuster popcorn flicks that featured lots of mindless action and explosions as opposed to political messaging, there were signs of wokeness increasing towards the end of Phase 3, and this trend is unfortunately expected to continue into Phase 4. This has even started some PCWs to call this phase the M-She-U implying a greater focus on feminism.

## History

### Precursor (Captain Marvel)

While the MCU had stayed away from wokeness for the most part before Phase 4, it did release the character Captain Marvel, who was played by feminist SJW Brie Larson. She appeared in both her own standalone movie and also showed up in Avengers: Endgame during the fight against Thanos.

### Disney+ Shows

#### Wandavision

The Phase 4 kicked off with Wandavision, which was a strange but interesting TV show. It kept its quirk until around the end when it became standard MCU fair, but that was ok. There was some entitledness in the show but other than that it wasn't too woke.

#### Falcon and Winter Soldier

The Falcon and Winter Soldier included a black character so PCWs were worried it would have woke themes. Indeed, in the second episode, there was a scene featuring a police officer and this was notable because this scene corresponded to a mass turn-off of the show. Based on sources inside Disney who can report on these numbers, large percentages of the audience turned off the show at this point. The show would go on to introduce further social justice concepts with even the villains being related to wokeness and social justice, culminating in a scene featuring the black character telling politicians (who are likely stand-ins for real politicians) to "do better"- no elaborations on what this means of course.

#### Loki

Loki was a show many thought would be a fun show following the mischievous god as he goes on all sorts of misadventures. Perhaps every episode would feature Loki using the Tesseract to get to a new location where he would then proceed to absolutely terrorize (in a comedic way of course) all the inhabitants with his tricks and evil cunning. Instead, it looked like this would happen, but then right before it started this organization called the TVA arrived and instantly caught Loki and from then on the show was usually just a whole bunch of exposition dumps after another (culminating in a very talky finale). Apparently Loki is a threat to the timeline and he is removed, so he can go and hunt down another Loki variant threatening the timeline, namely FEMALE LOKI (Sylvie to be precise). Along the way they encounter strong females, one who is even a strong diverse female character, who are able to "show" Loki since he is a straight white male and then eventually we are introduced to a possible next threat to the MCU in the form of Kang the Conqueror.

#### What If?

What If? Is an animated MCU show that takes place in alternate timelines where various things are switched from how they are in the original MCU timeline. The first two episodes were very woke since they featured both genderbending and raceswapping. In Episode 1, Captain America was genderbent with Peggy Carter becoming the titular hero rather than Steve Rogers, and of course she is a better Captain America than Rogers ever was or could be. In addition many PCWs were not happy by the fact her character design was basically her head on a man's body. The next episode featured T'Challa becoming Starlord instead of Peter Quill (who was reduced to working a menial job as seen at the end of the episode) who is also the bestest ever since he managed the save the universe by TALKING THANOS OUT OF HIS PLANS! Also, everybody always tells him how great he is and many PCWs suspect that this is because he white writer of that episode was scared to add any flaws to this black character. After this until the finale the wokeness is tuned down and some actually interesting and deep episodes (and the obligatory crazy zombie episode) aired.

#### Hawkeye

The next show is Hawkeye, which is really the Kate Bishop show guest starring Hawkeye. Kate Bishop is The Bestest Evar who can somehow beat up people much larger than her.

There are a number of other projects upcoming. One is expected to be Ironheart, a story of a girl named Riri Williams (more like REEE REEE Williams) who is somehow a 15 year old diverse female that gets Iron Man's suit to become Ironheart. She is expected to be The Bestest Evar!

### Movies

#### Black Widow

The first movie released was Black Widow, which was a holdover standalone film for Black Widow from Phase 3. Of course, the movie didn't really matter since Black Widow had already died in Endgame but whatever. While the first bit of the movie was interesting it became sillier as it went on, relying on overused MCU tropes as well. In addition many PCWs disliked the "reveal" of Taskmaster which was once again another instance of a woman character being deepfaked onto a male body. The movie did not do so well which is the first sign that the MCU Phase 4 will not be as successful as the previous phases for the reasons covered above, and another reason is because the movie is pointless since, as stated, we already followed Black Widow for a long time in the MCU and she had already died, her arc seemingly completed.

#### Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

After this was Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (also known as Shaun-Chi or Shang-Chi's Sister and the Legend of the Ten Rings by those in the PCW community). The movie did even worse than Black Widow at the box office in spite of media praise at its release time. The movie had many woke moments since Shang-Chi's sister was often highlighted more than Shang-Chi himself. The movie was also criticized for non-woke problems like the fact that it ended with a classic Marvel CGI battle when it wasn't necessary and in fact would have been better for the story if it ended in a single battle between Shang-Chi and his father.

#### The Eternals

The next movie was The Eternals, the movie that all PCWs predicted, months before its release, would seriously underperform at the box office. They were proven right when reviews calling it "boring" began to come in and it became the lowest rated Marvel movie by critics, even earning a certified rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, the first Marvel movie to do so.

#### Spider-Man: No Way Home

However, Phase 4 took a positive turn when Spider Man: No Way Home premiered. It was a massive smash hit, made over a billion dollars. And the best part was that it was NOT WOKE! It was just pure, entertainment. In addition, it referenced the past in a way that glorified it rather than rewrite it or cause people to be mad at invoking nostalgia. In fact, bringing back Andrew Garfield's character gave him the development and closure he never got when his own films were cut short. The film was seen by PCWs as being a major blow to the woke narrative, and as a possible turning point back away from wokeness in Hollywood.