With the arrival of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has begun, putting an end to what is easily the most fractious period in the franchise’s history, phase five.For those who don’t remember, Marvel’s fifth phase came sooner than initially intended, as franchise boss Kevin Feige decided to bring a quick end to the more experimental Phase Four by introducing Kang the Conquerer as the new big bad in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. No sooner did that movie release than news leaked of Kang actor Jonathan Major’s misdoings, not only tampering any excitement but forcing Marvel to once again restructure.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});The desperation of that restructure can be seen all over Phase Four. In the span of two years, Marvel had to change its plan from building to a battle against Kang and his variants in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to setting up Doctor Doom and the destruction of the multiverse with Avengers: Doomsday.Without a doubt, the chaos resulted in some lackluster entries, with Marvel relying on an increasingly tired formula instead of exploring something new. At the same time, Phase Five saw the release of some real standouts, which prove that the period wasn’t a waste of time. Here is every film and TV show from the MCU Phase Five ranked. 14. Secret Invasion (2023)It would be tempting to say the worst thing about Secret Invasion is that you could skip it and not miss a thing. After all, it basically ends with Samuel L. Jackson‘s Nick Fury, finally the lead of his own show, in the same place where he began: in outer space, working on interplanetary defense. But skipping Secret Invasion means missing some major moments for the shared universe, including the death of Maria Hill and the revelation that Rhodey has been replaced by a Skrull.So the worst and most accurate thing to say about Secret Invasion is that it does every single thing wrong. It bungles the Skrulls-as-refugees metaphor established by Captain Marvel, unintentionally (one hopes) suggesting that refugees are, in fact, a threat to host nations. Despite strong work by Jackson and co., the character drama never works and the deaths of Maria Hill and Talos feel empty. The series doesn’t even commit to its sci-fi premise, keeping the Skrulls in shabby human form instead of letting them be crazy green aliens. In short, it would be nice if Secret Invasion was just a waste of time, instead of the colossal misstep it actually is.13. Echo (2024)On one hand, it’s admirable that Marvel wants to diversify its roster, both in terms of representation and hero set. As demonstrated by her regular appearances in Daredevil and Avengers comics, Echo has potential to be an interesting character. Furthermore, the series commits to specificity when portraying Maya Lopez’s Choctaw community in Oaklahoma, giving the MCU a break from the sometimes anonymous depiction of New York.Sadly, none of that makes up for the fact that Echo is deadly dull, a big nothing in between the far superior shows Hawkeye and Daredevil: Born Again. Star Alaqua Cox does her best with a bland script that reheats plots about returning home and seeking revenge, but she never holds the audience’s attention. Whenever Daredevil or Wilson Fisk show up—or whenever a castmember from the wornderful show Reservation Dogs appears on screen—we’re reminded that Echo is just a placeholder, not a story that justifies its own existence.12. What If…? Season 3 (2024)Did you know that there was a third season of What If…? The fact that so many people would answer “No” just shows how unnecessary the animated series really was. Like the anthology comic that inspired it, What If…? brings viewers to various worlds that feature key differences from the mainline Marvel Universe. They are guided by the Watcher (voiced by a pitch-perfect Jeffrey Wright), a powerful being cursed to only witness the rise and fall of worlds.The first two seasons of What If…? never transcended the status of inessential curio. Sure, the animation made for dynamic actions scenes and it was fun, for example, to hear Chadwick Boseman voice T’Challa one last time. But the whole thing could be avoided without missing much. The third season of What If…? tries to justify its existence with a big multiversal storyline, but it only ends up proving that the show is kind of its own weird corner of the franchise.11. Captain America: Brave New World (2025)Captain America: Brave New World isn’t good, but it is often quite enjoyable. The movie gets in a couple of fun action sequences, Tim Blake Nelson has enough innate oddness to make his villain compelling, and Carl Lumbly has the gravitas to give the film sufficient pathos. Yet, these successes must be weighed against its many shortcomings.Brave New World may be the nadir of the factory approach Marvel has always taken, as it most clearly bears the evidence of its many reshoots and clunky edits. The plot was clearly patched together in edits, which somehow made President Ross (played by a disinterested Harrison Ford) the main character and a peace treaty the main conflict. Worse still, the film forces Anthony Mackie to tamp down all the charisma he previously brought to Sam Wilson, making his Captain America a drag on his own movie.10. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania isn’t the worst MCU movie, but it was the one that broke the superhero bubble. Audiences put up with lackluster visuals and clunky pacing for a little while after Avengers: Endgame, given a slight pass to disasters like Thor: Love and Thunder. But they were not having it with Quantumania, showing no patience with Michael Douglas stumbling over the phrase “Quantum Realm” or the (delightfully!) uncanny appearance of MODOK.Still, it’s hard to blame viewers for turning on Quantumania, given how much stars Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer seem to hate being in it. Nor can one fault viewers who correctly note that Quantumania doesn’t feel much like an Ant-Man movie, discarding Michael Peña’s lovable Luis and for some reason pitting the heroes against new big bad Kang. Even if off-screen issues didn’t relegate him to an also-ran, Kang would have seemed like a joke after getting his butt kicked by Scott Lang and a bunch of insects.9. The Marvels (2024)The Marvels suffers from a lot of the same problems as Brave New World, including a hacked up plot that seems to remove key elements (why exactly does Carol suddenly hate kids?). But it has one big advantage over Brave New World: stars that are excited to be on screen and have fun together. It’s hard to get too angry about clunky storytelling when Kamala Khan, Monica Rambeau, and Carol Danvers are playing jump rope or when the movie suddenly becomes a lavish musical.Sadly, The Marvels can’t be a hangout movie with three charismatic performers. Instead, it has to become a superhero action movie and that’s where it falls apart. The central conflict stems from an event that occurs in narrated flashback way too late in the movie, treating Carol’s destruction of the Kree homeworld’s sun as an unimportant aside. As much fun as Zawe Ashton has chewing scenery as Dar-Benn, she ultimately feels like she’s interrupting the fun stuff with the three main characters hanging out.8. Ironheart (2025)Ironheart should have been a disaster. Riri Williams felt shoehorned into Black Panther: Wakanda Forever for no other reason than to hype of her series, and the first episode of the show devotes way too much time to characters declaring that Riri is a genius. If anyone could be called Marvel’s Poochie, it would be Ironheart.And yet, once the show stops trying to justify itself and lets the creators work, Ironheart is extremely enjoyable. Dominique Thorne manages to make Riri feel like a real person laboring under incredible expectations, especially when bouncing off her able supporting cast, which includes Lyric Ross as her AI best friend, Alden Ehrenreich as her goofy/haunted benefactor, and Anthony Ramos as her magical nemesis the Hood. Yet, good as they all are, they can’t quite completely sell a mediocre plot that culminates with the long-awaited and very disappointing arrival of Mephisto in the MCU.7. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)Deadpool & Wolverine finally brings Ryan Reynolds’s Merc With a Mouth into the MCU and, of course, he winks at the audience every step of the way. Hugh Jackman reverses his post-Logan claims that he’s done playing Wolverine to pop the claws once again. Deadpool & Wolverine goes beyond deep cuts, including bringing back Jennifer Garner as Elektra and Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, to make reference to superhero movie inside baseball, complete with cracks about the production of Blade III and the canceled Gambit movie.Just reading all of that feels exhausting, so it’s to Deadpool & Wolverine‘s credit that it isn’t just a collection of metatextual fan service. Jackman puts in a genuinely good performance as a haunted failure version of Wolverine, and Emma Corrin is having a blast as baddie Cassandra Nova. In the end, Deadpool & Wolverine plays like a buddy comedy through the history of the superhero movie, making it slightly less slight than one would expect.6. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (2024)Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man swung onto Disney+ with high expectations, set by predecessor X-Men ’97. When fans found out that this animated series wasn’t a continuation of any previous Spidey property, not even of the mainline MCU movies, some of those expectations dropped away, and audience interest with them. But that’s their loss, because Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a pretty ingenious 2020s update of the Steve Ditko and Gerry Conway eras of comics.Here, Norman Osborn (voiced by a fantastic Colman Domingo) stands in for Tony Stark as Peter’s tech mentor, a more satisfying version of the MCU relationship. Lonnie Lincoln is reimagined as an all-around good kid who tragically gets pushed into criminal life, even before he becomes the supervillain Tombstone. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man doesn’t ever reach X-Men ’97 heights, let alone those of Spider-Verse (try as it might with its animation style), but it is a rich, fun series that deserves more attention.5. Daredevil: Born Again (2025)For as much as Disney tried to assure viewers that the revival show would retain the hard edge of the three season Netlfix series that preceded it, Daredevil: Born Again was an MCU show all the way. Not so much in terms of shared universe nonsense, which was mostly relegated to a cameo by Kamala Khan’s father Yusuf. Rather, Daredevil: Born Again had some of the same clunky plotting and bad editing that has plagued the franchise for years.However, many of those problems could be blamed on the troubled production of Born Again. Showrunner Dario Scardapane and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead came late to the project and had to use lots the previous creatives’ footage. As a result, Born Again is often incongruous, split between deadly dull courtroom and political drama and genuinely great superhero action. But Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio manage to elevate even the dull stuff, and Scardapane, Benson, and Moorehead are telling a unique and compelling story about guilt and power, making us excited about the trio having full control for season two.4. Agatha All Along (2024)For a long time, the smart money said Agatha All Along wouldn’t happen. As much as WandaVision remains the ideal Marvel TV show, it’s been non-stop diminishing returns since that series completed. Worse, many of Marvel’s problems come from overextension, which means that no matter how much we love Kathryn Hahn’s performance as the witch Agatha Harkness, we had to wonder if it was necessary.Turns out, it was. Of course, Hahn is wonderful in the lead, adding notes of humility to the brash Agatha. She’s joined by a group of ringers, including Patti LuPone and Sasheer Zamata as fellow witches, Aubrey Plaza as Death, and Joe Locke as “Teen” a.k.a. a long-awaited addition to the MCU. Best of all, Agatha All Along uses the conceit of a haunted path to play with narrative structure, resulting in a series that is both thematically rich and formally inventive.3. Thunderbolts* (2025)Rough as it has been, Marvel’s fifth phase ends on a high note thanks to Thunderbots*. Forget the asterisk gimmick, forget the baggage of all the movies and TV shows that introduced the main characters, forget the way it leads into Avengers: Doomsday. Thunderbolts* is first and foremost a character drama, layered with superhero action.Director Jake Schreier wisely leans on Florence Pugh, who adds earned pathos to the heretofore playful performance she’s given as White Widow Yelena Belova. Although a late addition to the proceedings, Lewis Pullman makes for a likable figure as the jittery nice guy Bob, who also happens to be the film’s big bad. Thunderbolts* isn’t immune to the MCU world-building that one expects this late in the MCU, but even that is well done, finally justifying Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s presence in the franchise. Thunderbolts* leaves us looking forward to the adventures of the New Avengers but, more importantly, it leaves us satisfied that we have experienced a full character arc.2. Loki Season 2Speaking of full character arcs, no Marvel character has had an ending as satisfying as the one given to Loki. Well, satisfying on a narrative level. Introduced in Thor as a son of Odin and nearly conquering the world in The Avengers, Loki certainly had better days before found himself as an unnecessary variant and avoiding pruning in his solo series. But Loki gets a properly tragic ending, one that sees him fully transform from the God of Lies to the God of Stories.Part of the joy of Loki’s second season comes from Hiddleston’s still committed performance in the title role, especially when he’s once again paired with Owen Wilson’s pitch-perfect beaucrat Mobius M. Mobius. Ke Huy Quan makes for a charming addition, and even the heavy presence of Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely doesn’t distract. But the highest praise belongs to showrunners Benson and Moorehead, who never let Loki‘s alternate reality shenanigans distract from character building and who craft some pretty incredible visuals.1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3As much as this list shows that Marvel’s beleaguered fifth phase was far better than one might assume, it’s pretty damning that the best entry of the period comes from James Gunn—the guy who is now doing incredible work for Marvel’s Distinguished Competition. Still, that inter-company tidbit shouldn’t take away from the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 successfully brings to an end Marvel’s most unlikely team of heroes.Guardians 3 has all the quipiness and comedic stylings of the previous movies, as Gunn devotes plenty of time to Drax, Mantis, and Nebula ribbing each other. And the visuals remain a high water mark for the MCU, most notably in a visit to a planetoid made out of organic matter. Yet, Guardians 3 takes a darker turn than previous outings, including some truly upsetting animal abuse imagery involving chief baddie High Evolutionary. Still, Guardians 3 manages to earn the right to end on a cathartic high, an appropriately celebratory bit before Gunn leaves the MCU for good.The post Marvel Phase 5: Ranking Every Movie and TV Show appeared first on Den of Geek.