The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in tough waters as its performance went unstable over the past year with a fair share of successes and failures in both the movies and the shows on Disney Plus. The last movie to release for the franchise in 2023 was The Marvels which went off with a bad start and the end point of it did not go well either as it concluded with the most unfortunate box office in recent times for the franchise. It officially ended its global run ranking as the worst-grossing MCU movie, and it did not even make it back its budget, making the film a loss and a huge gut punch to the franchise.
The Marvels was released in November 2023 with the team up of three Marvel heroes: Brie Larson as Carol Danvers/ Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/ Ms. Marvel, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau/ Photon. The film landed the lowest opening box office weekend of all time in the MCU, only having $47 million over its 3-day opening weekend as per a report from The Numbers data site. Things did not fare well until the end as Box Office Mojo reported that it is finally official: The Marvels is the lowest-earning MCU movie of all time.
The report revealed that The Marvels took home only $205.8 million which was composed of $84.5 million from North American cinemas and $121.3 million from its global release. The Marvels had officially beaten the record of The Incredible Hulk released in 2008 which had $264.8 million and the previous lowest-earning MCU film. Moreover, what hurts Marvel Studios most on the commercial failure of The Marvels is that the film is considered as a loss because it did not even reach past its budget of $275 million.
When are Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Photon expected to return in the MCU?
The ending of The Marvels showed where the three superheroes are headed next in the MCU. First, there is Captain Marvel who was seen helping the people of Hala as she reignites their sun. Then, there is the exciting new adventure of Kamala Khan as she meets with a familiar face: Kate Bishop! Kamala surprised Kate with the same thing that Nick Fury did when Fury recruited Tony Star in the end of Iron Man to form an Avengers team. Kamala proposed to Kate to create a super group, even mentioned Cassie Lang, and this, of course, is headed to the Young Avengers.
As for Monica Rambeau, she closed the portal between the universes but was trapped on the other side. There, she met a version of her mother, Maria Rambeau, in a universe where Maria never had a daughter and was called as the hero, Binary. Monica was in a clad white hospital room where a familiar face entered: X-Men's Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast! Beast told Monica that someone with the name "Charles" wanted to see her. There's a huge possibility that he mean Professor X. This teases the upcoming arrival of the X-Men in the MCU.
The three heroes could return and could even reunite in the upcoming Avengers movies such as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. The two films are expected to bring in almost all the heroes into one movie, similar to that in Infinity War and Endgame. Secret Wars will reportedly do a soft reboot of the MCU but given that Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau are fairly new to the franchise, they are most likely to return even after Secret Wars. As for Captain Marvel, rumors surround the recast of the character but that remains a speculation.
The Marvels will likely be available for streaming soon Disney Plus but there is still no release date yet.
