A real treat for comics fans was the confirmation that actress Xochitl Gomez will appear in the new Doctor Strange film as superheroine America Chavez. This feels like confirmation of the suspicion that Marvel is building towards a possible Young Avengers franchise with Chavez only the latest teenaged superhero to join the MCU.
Feige described Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will premiere on Disney+ on March 19, as a Marvel movie played out over six episodes.
And despite rumors that Black Widow would be headed to Disney+ next year, Feige confirmed that the long-delayed Avengers prequel would be coming to theaters on May 7, 2021.
Feige also debuted a first look at Loki, a show he described as a “crime thriller.” The show follows the Tom Hiddleston character as he’s popped out of the timeline we’ve been following in the MCU and into something else entirely thanks to a shadowy organization known as the Time Variance Authority or TVA. Loki will co-star Owen Wilson, Richard E. Grant, and Gugu Mbatha Raw and will premiere May 2021.
Feige already peeled back most of the What If…? curtain at Comic-Con and D23 in 2019. In the summer next year, a bunch of MCU actors will lend their voices to alternative takes on familiar stories hosted by Jeffrey Wright’s character of the Watcher—the Marvel team rolled some footage of these alternative takes including a zombie Captain America, Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, not Star-Lord, in the familiar opening heist from Guardians of the Galaxy, and Hayley Atwell’s Agent Carter as the recipient of the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. This mix of realities and timelines fits in perfectly with the MCU’s bold new experimentation with the multiverse.
Feige also previewed Ms. Marvel, a Disney+ series focused on Kamala Khan (played by Iman Vellani) a teen Muslim-American superhero, whose story will also connect to the theatrical films. You can see the footage below.
Other Disney+ shows highlighted included Hawkeye, with Jeremy Renner’s archer guiding fellow sharpshooter Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld); Moonknight, the story of a hero granted mystical abilities from an ancient god, which conflicts with the dissociative disorder that causes him to manifest multiple personalities, and She-Hulk, with Tatiana Maslany playing, as Feige described her, a woman and lawyer fighting to be taken seriously — in part because she is gigantic and bright green. Since the comic book character’s legal practice is based around superhero cases, Feige hinted that other heroes from the MCU could turn up on the show as she helps them with their various troubles.
In addition to Ironheart, other never-before-revealed shows include Secret Invasion, based on a classic comic book arc about shapeshifting alien Skrulls who masquerade and infiltrate the power elite on Earth, starring Samuel L. Jackson as spy chief Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as the nice-guy alien Talos from Captain Marvel (who later disguised himself as Fury in Spider-Man: Far From Home.)
Don Cheadle‘s War Machine will be the focus of another Disney+ series, Armor Wars, which Feige said would explore “Tony Stark’s worst fear,” which was that his technology might someday fall into the hands of evildoers.
There will also be a kid-friendly show called I Am Groot about the Baby Groot character from Guardians of the Galaxy, and his colleagues from that film series will be reprising their roles not just for a third film, but also in a one-off Holiday Special, written and directed by James Gunn (in an obvious play on the not-so-beloved Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978.)