Disney Plus: Marvel fans will need a Disney+ subscription to understand MCU Phase 4

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

last updated 13 November 2019

For those who don't follow every film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, watching Avengers: Endgame must be a very confusing ordeal. Clued-up fans watching the film alongside these poor souls are likely to be bombarded with questions like "who is that character?" or "what can she do?" or even "is that a raccoon?"

Well, it's about to get worse. We've known for a while now that Disney Plus will play home to several limited television series from Marvel, such as Loki, Hawkeye, WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Most Marvel fans were always going to tune in, but completists will have to pick up the streaming service, as the series look set to be required viewing if you want to follow the plot of future films.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Marvel's chief creative officer Kevin Feige admits that "if you want to understand everything in future Marvel movies, you’ll probably need a Disney Plus subscription."

He confirms that WandaVision and Loki are both set to tie into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, one of Marvel's most-anticipated Phase 4 films starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular sorcerer. Elizabeth Olsen is set to co-star as Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a the Scarlet Witch, and the film will take place after the events of her WandaVision Disney Plus series. If you want to follow along, you'll need a Disney Plus subscription to watch the series before heading to the cinema.

Needing a Disney Plus account to follow the movies might be one content stream too many for casual comic-book-moviegoers. But for the hardcore set who were already going to purchase a subscription to the streaming service, more of the interconnectivity that has made Marvel so successful can never be a bad thing.

The news that Loki ties into Doctor Strange is especially interesting, as Tom Hiddleston's Loki was last seen (spoilers) teleporting away to parts unknown during the events of Endgame. This connection is a brand new nugget of info, which Feige drops during the interview. "I’m not sure we’ve actually acknowledged that before,” he said, on whether the Loki series connects to Strange. “But it does.”

The other Marvel series will also share close connections with the films. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will feature the return of old Captain America foe Helmut Zemo, while Hawkeye is set to introduce ace archer Kate Bishop to the MCU, who could appear in feature films down the road as a member of the Young Avengers.

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Matt Evans now works for T3.com sister brand TechRadar, covering all things relating to fitness and wellness. He came to T3.com as staff writer before moving on, and was previously on Men's Health, and slightly counterintuitively, a website devoted to the consumption of Scotch whiskey. In his free time, he could often be found with his nose in a book until he discovered the Kindle.

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