Marvel Studios has delayed five upcoming MCU blockbusters, and that decision will likely impact their slate of upcoming Disney+ TV shows as well. Marvel Studios has earned a reputation for its long-term planning, but in truth the studio is a lot more flexible than most people believe. That's recently been demonstrated in a wave of setbacks, with Marvel delaying the release of Phase 4 movies because of production issues.
All attention is naturally focused on how this affects the box office, but it also has an impact on Disney+. Marvel may have dropped their hybrid release strategy after Black Widow, but the latest movies still inevitably come to Disney+ some time after theatrical release, meaning Disney probably need to reschedule their content plans a little. That's likely to only be a minor issue, though, compared to the problems faced by the MCU's Disney+ TV shows.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has evolved into a transmedia multiverse, with a range of tie-in TV shows streaming exclusively on Disney+. Crucially, the sales pitch for these shows is that—unlike previous TV series by Marvel Television—they are an essential part of the MCU. WandaVision and Loki have served as explicit setup for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and The Falcon & the Winter Soldier took Anthony Mackie's Falcon on an essential character journey ahead of Captain America 4. Future Disney+ TV shows will introduce Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, who's set to play a major role down the line in The Marvels. But the interconnectedness that is the MCU's greatest strength is also its greatest vulnerability, because adjusting film release dates also risks affecting the overarching narrative running through all the different Marvel films and television shows.
This is far from a hypothetical problem, and it is one Marvel Studios has already begun to subtly wrestle with. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was introduced as the Contessa in The Falcon & the Winter Soldier, a Nick Fury figure who seems to be establishing her own pseudo-Avengers; although she may have a far more sinister agenda. She was actually supposed to make her debut in Black Widow's post-credits scene, but that film's delays meant things landed out of sequence. That was only a minor issue, because neither appearance served as much more than foreshadowing, and there wasn't a character arc to navigate, but the very fact these issues are already beginning to emerge signifies just how vulnerable the MCU is to disruption right now. Careful planning is the key to a successful transmedia initiative, and any disruption has major ripple effects. Indeed, there have been recent rumors the Ms. Marvel Disney+ TV series has been pushed back to July, which may partly be because of Captain Marvel 2's delays.
Fortunately, right now the impact of the delays should be relatively controlled. Marvel's upcoming Disney+ TV shows are mostly positioned as setup for the next wave of films, rather than as spinoffs, and the decision-makers at Marvel don't seem to mind a large gap between setup and payoff—as proven by the wait between WandaVision and Doctor Strange 2, which was significant even before these latest delays. But MCU spinoffs and second seasons are surely in the works, with the public simply unaware of them, meaning Phase 4's delays may potentially have an impact that's unseen. The logistical challenge of managing the MCU just got a little bit trickier.
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