Fans Create a Hilarious Theory Making Marvel Movies’ “Bad” Quality Canon to the MCU After Iron Man’s Death

This year’s SDCC brought several exciting new revelations for the MCU. Fans enjoyed exclusive previews of Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four: First Steps, and it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the MCU, this time as Doctor Doom.

Additionally, the recent release of Deadpool & Wolverine represents a significant turnaround for Disney, which has faced financial losses in recent years. As you may know, Phase 4 and Phase 5 have been particularly challenging, with notable losses from last year’s releases, The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

The losses went beyond just financial; fans also began to lose interest due to a perceived decline in quality. Phase 4 of the MCU, in particular, did not resonate well with audiences and remains the lowest-rated phase, with most of its projects receiving only “mixed” reviews.

However, Deadpool & Wolverine introduced a significant new concept for the MCU: the “anchor.” An anchor is a crucial entity for the survival of a reality, and its death triggers the deterioration of that reality. This process of timeline destruction can occur over a period ranging from a single day to thousands of years. In Deadpool’s reality, the anchor was Logan (Wolverine), whose death occurred in the 2017 film Logan.

Mr. Paradox sought to accelerate the timeline destruction by using Timeripper, which drives the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine as Deadpool tries to restore his timeline after the Anchor’s death.

Fans have since crafted an intriguing and humorous theory suggesting that the variant of Iron Man who died in Endgame was actually Earth-616’s anchor being. According to this theory, Iron Man’s death led to the rapid deterioration of the timeline, resulting in the lackluster quality of Phase 4 and Phase 5 projects.

This would imply that the poor quality of these projects is, in fact, canon to the MCU and was always intended to be part of the storyline.

Although amusing, this theory does have some merit. Robert Downey Jr.’s “same task, different mask” comment could suggest that he might return to save the MCU once more.

On the other hand, some rumors suggest that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man might be the anchor for Earth-616’s timeline, so the situation could go either way.

What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below!