It’s crazy how the MCU was omnipresent in popular culture for over ten years and then seemingly vanished overnight. The transition to producing a bunch of shows in 21/22 kind of bled off some of the franchise's momentum but arguably there just wasn’t a point to continue after Endgame. I mean, Endgame was the true ending and the later Phases come off as fanfiction trying to recapture the glory days when the MCU was a money-printing machine.
As I said upthread, they had a decade+ long period of warm-up, vigorous intercourse, and a massive, earth-shattering climax with Infinity War/Endgame. At that point you need to have a cigarette, and then have a nicely satisfied rest. Instead they kept trying to push rope when their partner was ready for a nicely satisfied sleep.
The glaring flaw in Disney's plans for the MCU is the arrogance in believing that they can sustain interest, quality, and insane profitability until the end of time. Yes, the MCU made a ton of money, but
it hit the finale. It took over a decade to get everyone invested, and then they reaped the rewards of their carefully planned movie blitz. The thing about a climax, though, it that it means
the end. They titled the movie Endgame, they had to know that that was it, the big send off.
After that nobody has the energy or desire to continue with that same level of interest. You can't expect to bring people to a level of heart-attack inducing hype and hold them there for years upon years. You set yourself up for failure thinking that you can, especially when you killed or retired all your big draws as part of the climax.
The smart thing to do then would have been to focus on a nice steady drip feed
of high quality content, a few modest shows here, a movie there, with low,
personal stakes,
modest budgets and conservative goals for profitability. Shows like
Daredevil and movies like
Homecoming were on the right track, they focused on low stakes and personal growth. No giant space apocalypse - just a mob boss controlling crime or 7/11 robbers having laser guns, which gives room for relatable stories of personal growth. Just nice stand alone movies that any normie can enjoy without knowing all the lore (but its better if you do) with that focus on
quality.
The point is not to make tens of billions and break records, that won't happen and you'll waste money, the goal is to keep the IPs and connections with the audience alive. Sell some toys at Christmas, keep the idea of the IP at the back of everyone's minds, make enough to keep core talent around, and mothball the rest.
That way in ten years or so you can take off the dust cloths, warm up the engines and do the entire fucking thing again, essentially. But you have to let the field lay fallow between cash crops.