We are now six months away from the release of Avengers: Doomsday, the first full-on Avengers movie since April 2019. That film, Avengers: Endgame, is considered the pinnacle of an MCU that began in earnest in 2008, focusing on the core members of the comic team.

Now, Doomsday must work with a mostly disparate group, and try to pull it together after a very unsteady pair of “phases” that often produced more misses than hits.

And there were hits, certainly. Without question, Spider-Man led the charge with the pair of Far From Home, which made $1.1 billion, and No Way Home, $1.9 billion. The last stop before Doomsday is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where a billion seems likely, if not probable, for that film.

Another winner, though technically using non-MCU characters at the time, was Deadpool and Wolverine with $1.3 billion. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3, Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also did well.

The misses were vast, however, with multiple record-low points in box-office earnings. Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Quantumania, The Marvels and Thunderbolts, all earned less than $500 million. The Marvels now holds the record, by far, for the worst-earning MCU movie in history, bringing in only $206 million globally — far, far from an era when the just-okay Captain Marvel made $1.13 billion in 2019.

What needs to happen effectively with Doomsday is a baton-passing.........

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