In addition to interacting with the multiverse, the MCU has many characters interacting with each other — in barely-recalled storylines that are at best still operating with the jury out, at worst hollow fan service. 

As the films entered Phase 5, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has been gathering up heroes and villains for a Thunderbolts team, Spider-Man and Sam Wilson (the new Captain America) are trying to figure out their evolving roles as heroes, and Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye have young kids or successors to mentor. The Eternals seemingly complicated everything, but few acknowledge their supremely powerful existence. There are tons of new characters (Clea, Eros, White Vision, Hercules, Black Knight) who you have to wonder whether fans will even care about if and when they ever get more than a scene, then there’s all the folks introduced in various Disney+ shows that have yet to pierce the awareness of your average moviegoer: Scarlet Scarab, the Power Broker, Echo, Kamran.

There’s  so much going on in the MCU, in fact, that lingering details have caused plot holes and confusion for fans. 

It’s pretty wild how no one has acknowledged that the Celestial Tiamut is just chilling in the ocean, or that thousands of people saw Arishem in the sky when he came for the Eternals. Plot threads surrounding Shang-Chi looking for the origins of his rings, Doctor Strange working with Clea in the Dark Dimension, and whatever Moon Knight is up to have made the MCU’s narrative overcrowded — and far-fetched in that all of these heroes seem to be siloed and unaware of each other’s (often world-threatening) struggles. 

Got a headache yet? Just wait, because the field is about to get a lot more crowded with Blade, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Deadpool and all their peripheral characters about to force themselves into the room.