Marvel StudiosIf, after the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, you started to feel like there was even more Marvel content than ever before, you’re not wrong. As President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige just admitted in a very big press conference on July 19 — as reported by Variety and other outlets — Marvel “produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019,” but “had well over 100 hours of stories” between 2019 and today. Feige’s message to the press, and to viewers everywhere, was clear: “That’s too much.” As the MCU prepares to stage a massive comeback with The Fantastic Four: First Steps this year, and then, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Avengers: Doomsday in 2026, it’s clear that the brand put out too much stuff after Endgame, and, on some level, the vast majority of those narratives failed to feel essential as the MCU once seemed. In fact, before Endgame, the truth is, Marvel TV shows were disparate and only loosely connected to the actual MCU. But, post 2021, starting with WandaVision, most MCU stories have woven various tales that, with rare exceptions, have felt like side-quests, rather than the main event. And when certain shows dared to be very different, like Moon Knight or Agatha All Along, those series' place in the larger MCU pantheon automatically seemed uncertain. One question on viewers' minds throughout this more recent MCU phase has often been: “Do I need to watch this?” Rather than, “I can’t wait to watch this.” Kevin Feige at SXSW in 2025. | Andy Wenstrand/SXSW Conference & Festivals/Getty ImagesFeige, in a rare move, is admitting that the homework element of the MCU has been its problem. In fact, he claims that First Steps will be a “no-homework-required movie.” And he admits that the expansion of the MCU into Disney+ created a world in which too much of a good thing became a reality very quickly. “That I think led people to say, ‘It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’”The MCU tendency toward maximalism isn’t always a bad thing. Obviously, the thrilling result of Endgame came from a decade of unprecedented cinematic world-building and interconnectivity that had never been seen before or since. But, by the time we got to the series finale of She-Hulk in 2022, in which a meta-fictional AI called “Kevin” was seemingly controlling the story, even Marvel seemed to be mocking its own volume. “For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality,” Feige said.Now, apparently, the next seven-year plan for Marvel will be leaner, meaner, and certainly, more accessible. But what does that actually mean? Basically, we’re not going to be getting as much MCU stuff. And the various MCU TV shows won’t be as overtly connected to the films at all. This means that just like in 2015, when Daredevil and Jessica Jones barely impacted Civil War or Ant-Man, Feige vows that Marvel is “allowing a TV show to be a TV show.” The underperformance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in 2023 was a turning point for the MCU. | CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty ImagesWhich also seems to suggest that the overall plotting of the MCU will get a bit simpler. This is a big change from just a few years ago, in which the next Marvel big bad, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), was introduced not in a major film, but in the finale of Loki Season 1 in 2021. Four years later, it seems that there’s zero chance that Marvel will need you to have seen a six-part miniseries to understand what’s going on with its latest big theatrical release. In a sense, this radical reinvention of Marvel isn’t radical at all. Instead, if you read between the lines, what Feige is really saying is that the MCU will return to doing what it did in the days before Disney+, making movies that become cultural moments for a large audience, rather than getting into the nitty-gritty on TV. Will it work? Or has too much time passed? Unsurprisingly, whatever hardcore Marvel fans think of the changes doesn’t matter. The future of the MCU will depend entirely on the most elusive group of all: Casual fans who become converted to diehards, all because of one unforgettable new movie. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theaters on July 25, 2025.