Disney Only Guarantees Two Marvel Series in 2023 for Disney+ as 'Echo' & 'Ironheart' Potentially Delayed, Nova to Get a Slower Development Process

by Darian Scalamoni

    Hot off the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it seems that Bob Iger is the driving factor on Marvel (and Star Wars but we'll save that for another day) scaling back their operations on-screen across film and television. In a report coming from The Hollywood Reporter, there is some news on some upcoming MCU projects that seem to be delayed.

    There was massive excitement surrounding the plan set forth by Marvel patriarch Kevin Feige when he outlined Phases 5 & 6 with his infamous timeline graphics. These graphics laid out the foundation for what fans could expect with the newly coined Multiverse Saga following the Infinity Saga centering around the culmination of the battle against the mad titan, Thanos. Feige finished off the presentation revealing the fifth and sixth Avengers movies, subtitled The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars respectively with details of what would come before that to lead into those massive undertakings. This was a clear indication that Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors would be the big bad moving forward at the company and their new on-screen chapter.

    Feige pronounced at last year's San Diego Comic-Con that five series would head to Disney+ in 2023: Secret Invasion, Season 2 of Loki, Season 2 of the animated series What If...?, as well as solo series on new characters Echo and Ironheart. According to THR's report, the latter two projects surrounding the female heroes may be shifting to a later release date. While we already have a trailer for Secret Invasion as well as confirmation and set photos of a sophomore season of Loki, the latter two we haven't gotten much confirmed news about.

    Echo is a story that is centered around the titular comic book character that made her debut in the Disney+ series Hawkeye, who had an established relationship with villain Kingpin. The Native American deaf actress Alaqua Cox made her acting debut as Maya Lopez in five episodes of the series before being given a show of her own that is written by Marion Dayre and Amy Rardin. While not confirmed as of now Vincent D'Onofrio, Charlie Cox and Zahn McClarnon are expected to reprise their MCU roles in the show while Reservation Dogs breakout Devery Jacobs is also in the series. 

    Ironheart centers around Riri Williams played by Dominique Thorne who made her Marvel debut at the end of 2022 in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Williams is a student at MIT, a Stark Scholarship recipient who is brought in by Shuri and Okoye to try and help them take down Namor. They discover that Williams has designed her own Iron Man suit, coining the Ironheart phrase and superhero moniker going forward. Thorne will share the screen with In the Heights star Anthony Ramos who will play the villain called The Hood, who is a magical entity engaging in a battle of magic vs. technology as the backdrop for the series. Alden Ehrenreich is also in the series and Sacha Baron Cohen has been rumored to be playing Mephisto aka Satan within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

    Though both shows are in stages of wrapped filming months ago, it seems that Marvel will be taking their time with these shows echoing the comments of spreading out projects which Feige alluded to back in his interview with Entertainment Weekly that we covered last week. It's probably a smart play from the Disney team as Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe had 18 projects total which was 7 more than all of Phase 3. However, the bigger issue is that the quality has seemingly gone down project to project for Marvel. Though I was admittedly a fan of Quantumania, the movie was torn apart by critics leading to one of the lowest scores on Rotten Tomatoes. By the way, that's along with another Phase 4 project Eternals which was helmed by Chloe Zhao who was coming off Best Picture winner Nomadland. 

    In the final bit of news from this report, it appears that the highly-anticipated Nova project that was percolating over at Marvel Studios will also slow its development track. Though Nova has not formally been announced, it's been highly speculated and reported by Deadline that a project surrounding the cosmic hero known as Richard Rider would be written by Moon Knight's Sabir Pirzada back in March of last year. Now, THR has given an update leaning more towards Feige and co. taking their time on bringing the beloved hero to television or film.