I think I said it in threads about Eternals on Articles and News, but it's baffling how clueless Disney/Marvel has been since Endgame ended, and it ultimately feels like they put way too much stock into people being invested in the "universe" and not simply "The Avengers".
It's becoming evident that people were more invested in Iron Man/Cap/Thor than they were in the MCU as a whole. And why wouldn't they be? Phase 1 and 2 were very much Cap/Iron Man/Thor centric. Yeah you had Incredible Hulk, but that was before the MCU *really* took off and was still core "Avengers". So the only real deviation was GOTG and the film managed to be fun on it's own merit.
But Phase 3 comes around, and it's over loaded with absolutely trivial shit. I guarantee you, most normies watched Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel purely to "understand" everything for Avengers: Infinity War. And after watching Infinity War and Endgame, you end up realizing that you didn't really need to watch them to understand anything in Infinity War.
So now we are at a point where the main Avengers storyline is over. What do they give everyone?
- A film about a dead character nearly a decade too late that's only there to establish a new character for a fucking TV show.
- A film about a nobody martial artist trying to ape off an abandoned plotline from the first Iron Man.
- A film about a team of nobodies that almost nobody gives a shit about, and the film turns out to be fucking boring and mediocre on top of it.
(oh and a bunch of TV shows I guess)
What the fuck are they setting up here? Like you said, there's no hook like "The Avengers Initiative" or Thanos smiling menacingly. Imagine if Endgame, a film all about time travel shenanigan's, had an after credits scene that just says "the 31st century" and you see a menacing Kang the Conqueror being alerted to time travel shit going on and hones in on "Earth, 21st century" and smiles menacingly.
But nope. Kang is saved for a stinger in the fucking Loki TV show and apparently is the villain for an Ant Man movie...
It's like Disney had the genius idea they had with Star Wars. "It just prints money! It's not like they can't watch it!"