Ever since Disney opened up its Scrooge McDuck vault and splashed out a bunch of money to buy up 20th Century Fox, Marvel fans have been wondering whether the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises will be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe since everything is finally under one roof.
The answer to that is… maybe?
After a flame was lit following reports that the MCU will reboot the Fantastic Four in 2022, Marvel have poured fuel on the fire after tweeting out this very cryptic image.
This all seems like endless lines of code but it actually links to an article on Marvel’s website, which is all dressed up to look like redacted confidential files. Dig a bit further and it turns out this code and the files allude to the Super Soldier serum used to juice up Steve Rogers (Weapon I), the Weapon Plus program that made Wolverine (Weapon X) and even Fantomex (Weapon 13).
Now what this all means remains up in the air until all the files become unclassified on June 17, but we can hazard a guess at what’s this tweet is all about.
Since it came from the main Marvel account and not the account that handles all the MCU films, it’s likely that this is a viral marketing campaign to plug a bunch of upcoming new comics, such as House of X, Powers of X, Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus, rather than the big X-Men/MCU crossover that we’ve all been clamouring for.
Sorry, folks.
Having said that though, the MCU could still be in play here. There’s speculation that this is all groundwork for the X-Men’s introduction into the MCU. Throw in the fact that we have no idea what’s in store for Phase Four and onwards, perhaps MCU folk have been super busy hashing out just how they were going to introduce the X-Men into their little world.
These things take time (Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame took 11 years and 20 something films) and Marvel wouldn’t want to rush into the X-Men stuff too soon just because they got those toys to play with now.
So with regards to Marvel’s cryptic tweet, don’t hold your breath for that X-Men/MCU crossover you really want. It’ll come eventually – they would be idiots to not do it at some point – but it most likely won’t be for a while.