Every mainstream comic book character is defined by their pre- and post-adaptation life. After they’re brought to life in film or TV, the change becomes notable, and nowhere is it more apparent than with the Avengers. They’ve always been a key superhero team, but they were elevated to a higher position thanks to the MCU and Marvel not owning fellow high-profile teams, the X-Men and Fantastic Four, and actively working to downplay them throughout comics and other media.
With four movies under their belt, it’s no wonder Marvel decided the superteam deserved their own full-fledged video game. Marvel’s Avengers wasn’t their first gaming rodeo, but the co-op action title developed (mainly) by Crystal Dynamics and released September 4, 2020, for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One was their first game made directly in the MCU’s shadow. It was first announced as part of a multi-project collaboration between Marvel and Square Enix in 2017—a year after the superhero team was all over Captain America: Civil War and prior to their partial reunions across 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War—and its gameplay reveal led to unfavorable comparisons to the films. That the characters looked just a smidge off from their cinematic counterparts overrode the conversation to such a degree, Crystal and Square delayed the game out of its initial May 2020 date.
But interest slowly turned around once players got their hands on the game’s multiple betas, and it later earned solid reviews at launch. A lot of that can be owed to its single-player campaign and its cast, primarily Kamala Khan. In spite of the game’s flaws, it was a solid introduction to the character before the MCU took hold of her and subsequently kicked her years-long Inhuman heritage aside to make her a mutant. The game, which lost Crystal Dynamics’ support in 2023, is the last piece of Kamala media to keep her an Inhuman, a species whose existence drives its core plot and hasn’t been major players in the comics for nearly a decade.
Marvel’s Avengers was driven by a particular era of the MCU, which puts it in such a sharp contrast next to Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The DisneyXD series premiered September 22, 2010, and despite arriving in the midpoint of the MCU’s first phase, the movies may as well not exist. Creators Joshua Fine, Ciero Nieli, and Christopher Yost looked to the comics as inspiration for the show, made clear from the outset with its initial roster, which features the Wasp and Ant-Man as founding members alongside Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. (The size-changing duo who helped found the team in the comics wouldn’t join the MCU until 2015’s Ant-Man, and even then, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne specifically weren’t around until its 2018 sequel.)
Over its two-season run, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes adapted big event stories like Secret Invasion and Kang Dynasty, or specific comics from various comics and team runs, like Marvel Premiere #47, which introduced second Ant-Man Scott Lang. For those who grew up on the likes of Cartoon Network’s Justice League, this felt like the Marvel equivalent: it took the characters and their world seriously while also having fun letting them bounce off each other in interesting ways. Those first two seasons got by on a lot of charm (and a great theme song), which only highlighted how abrupt and unsatisfying the end was. It’s always seemed like the show could’ve gone on basically forever, since numerous concept artists have revealed artwork for planned future seasons, and both Fine and Yost discussed how they wanted to adapt stories like Infinity Quest and Secret Wars.
After Earth’s cancellation came Avengers Assemble, which put the characters more in line with their MCU versions; it initially has the lineup of the first film, with Falcon on hand as the new guy, and the characters look and interact similar to how they do in those movies. (Later seasons would even go on to introduce then-upcoming MCU mains like Vision, Ms. and Captain Marvel, and Black Panther.) But things were going in a more synergy-focused direction even before then: Earth’s second season featured a Spider-Man who would’ve been voiced by Josh Keaton (reprising his role from Spectacular Spider-Man), only for him to be replaced by Drake Bell, who was voicing the wall-crawler in the then-upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man and its sibling series, Assemble.
Logically, Disney was not in the wrong for wanting audiences to have a particular version of the Avengers at the forefront of their minds. But that synergy stranglehold has arguably done more harm than good—younger fans have come up thinking the Avengers are the literal center of the universe, while older ones know they’re just a superhero team among many heavy hitters. For the MCU, this focus has made various team incarnations feel barely established whenever a new universe-wide shakeup occurs. Too often, audiences are asked to get invested in the current roster for a particular film that often loses at least half that lineup by the end, and then this process repeats across other films until it’s time to bring everyone in for a saga-ending crossover. In speeding to the endgame, Marvel does a disservice to the Avengers and the idea of getting invested in their group outings, none of which have ever just been a regular team-building day.
Image: Disney/Marvel AnimationMeanwhile, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is all about team-building: so much of Earth is the Avengers hanging out in different groupings, and to pretty good effect. (Hawkeye’s relationships with Hulk and Black Panther are particular high points for many; Wasp not really having a character beyond loving Hank? Not so much.) The medium of TV lends itself to these character dynamics much better, and it’s easy to imagine how the future Civil War season would’ve built off that, especially after season two tackled Secret Invasion. As a live-service game, Marvel’s Avengers couldn’t really have a similar level of character interplay, but Crystal Dynamics made an effort by giving each DLC hero their own mini-story campaign to establish themselves in this universe and why they’d join the team. For those wanting to play as Marvel superheroes in a single-player title with greater depth and relationships to them, Firaxis’ Midnight Suns more than gets the job done.
With the Fantastic Four and X-Men back in play in the movies, Marvel is going to spend the next few years getting audiences used to them with sequel films and guest appearances in other films. It’ll be some time before we see this change reflected in television, but it’s already coming across in video games: Marvel Rivals and the 2026 fighting game Marvel Tōkon were both announced with X-Men characters front and center in the lineup, and in the former’s case, NetEase took more time revealing Avengers mainstays like Captain America and Black Widow were in the launch roster. It feels like a subtle way of the developer and Marvel telling the public they can finally acknowledge how significant the X-Men and Fantastic Four are, and that the load is being taken off the Avengers’ backs. That team will always matter to Marvel’s grand plans, but now they’ve got some backup—and for fans, the shifting balance of power is more than welcome.
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