Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t actually take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—or at least, not the main one, where Iron Man, Captain America, and all the other Avengers went on their adventures. The Fantastic Four: First Steps takes place in a different corner of the multiverse, Earth-828. Rather than resemble the real world, as the main MCU continuity does (give or take a giant Celestial hand), this is a a retro-futuristic wonder, an almost utopian vision of the ’60s and the promise of mid-century America that harkens back to the vibe of the original Jack Kirby comics. It’s a great place for this iteration of the Fantastic Four to have a standalone, introductory adventure without all the burden of the main MCU’s history and massive cast of characters.
Going into First Steps, though, fans assumed that the foursome weren’t going to stay siloed in this Jetsons-esque reality forever. They’re eventually going to join up with the main MCU’s heroes for Avengers: Doomsday, and the post-credits scene of Thunderbolts* even showed their spaceship entering the reality of Earth-616. It seemed likely that part of First Steps‘ plot (or at the very least a post-credit scene) would tee-up Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing’s entrance into the MCU proper. Surprise, then, that First Steps ends with the team still happily in their home reality with no multiversal shenanigans at all.
Confined to a (very logical) stand-alone universe
When Fantastic Four: First Steps begins, the titular heroes—played by Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach—have had superpowers and been saving the day for four years. They save the day yet again when the world-eating cosmic entity known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson) arrives to consume the Earth. Galactus does not succeed in chowing down on Earth-828, a development that might reasonably force the Fantastic Four to flee to some other Earth, like Earth-616. Their plan to defeat him does not involve the multiverse at all (they ultimately teleport him to the vast emptiness of their own universe, leaving him stranded there). They do not travel to Earth-616 to warn the Avengers about an equivalent version of Galactus.
Even the post-credits scene takes place entirely within Earth-828; there’s another four-year time jump and Sue Storm is reading books to her son, now a toddler. She gets up to get another book only to see the back of a green-cloaked man kneeling down before her boy. It’s Doctor Doom, and while that’s a pretty good tease by the standards of recent MCU post-credit scenes, it doesn’t explain how or when the Fantastic Four will be making their way over to the main continuity. We’ll have to wait for Avengers: Doomsday next year to find out.
Having the Fantastic Four make their MCU debut in a standalone universe makes a lot of sense. Not counting fake-outs in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, (where John Krasinski briefly played a Mr. Fantastic from yet another reality before he got turned into human spaghetti) and Deadpool & Wolverine (where Chris Evans reprised his Johnny Storm role from the ’00s movies), First Steps marks the team’s first proper appearance in the Marvel Studios franchise. Although the Fantastic Four are one of the earliest and most important heroes in Marvel Comics history, they’re late to join the MCU because Marvel didn’t own the film rights to the team when the franchise started in 2008. It was only when Disney, which owns Marvel, acquired Fox in 2019 that it regained the keys to this group of iconic, highly anticipated heroes.
The stakes were extremely high. Previous big-screen adaptations of the Fantastic Four weren’t critical successes; the ’05 and ’07 movies are mediocre cheese at best and the Josh Trank movie from 2015 is downright reviled. The MCU needed to get Marvel’s so-called First Family right, and it needed to do it in a cinematic universe where the family would hardly be the first heroes. A key part of the Fantastic Four’s appeal comes from their Space Age origins; they were brave scientists who explored space and returned as transformed heroes. That’s simply not exciting in a reality where superheroes have been commonplace since Iron Man had a press conference, aliens have invaded multiple times, and a mad Titan erased half of all life (before everybody came back).
The Fantastic Four needed to be pioneers in a world in order for them to be special. Hence Earth-828, revealed at the end of the credits to be numbered that way as an homage to Fantastic Four creator Jack Kirby’s birthday, August 28, 1917 (8/28). In a fantastical world where the Fantastic Four were the first and only superheroes, their importance is clear. First Steps is hardly a perfect movie, but it’s likely to the heroes’ and the film’s benefit that it’s focused entirely on telling a story about the Fantastic Four rather than bothering itself with multiversal connections and table-setting for upcoming cinematic crossover events.
Where do they go from here?
But what next? Given that a title card at the end of First Steps promises they will return in Avengers: Doomsday, the Fantastic Four are coming to Earth-616. The Thunderbolts* post-credits scene, which is a cut-down version of a larger scene from Doomsday, shows their ship arriving. Doomsday already seems like it’s going to a tremendously over-stuffed movie, as the confirmed characters in it include The Avengers, the New Avengers, Black Panther, Namor, Shang-Chi, the X-Men as played by the actors from the Fox movies, a Doctor Doom who looks exactly like Tony Stark for some reason, and probably a whole bunch of other characters, too. That’s a lot of balls to juggle while also getting the Fantastic Four out of their home universe and into the main one.
Once the Fantastic Four are in the main Earth-616 universe, you have to wonder what happened to Earth-828. Are they merely guests stopping by Earth-616 for an Avengers movie and they’ll return to Earth-828 for a standalone Fantastic Four sequel if one happens? (Which, unless this bombs or the superhero bubble truly busts, seems likely.) Or have we seen the last of Earth-828 and they’re part of the main MCU now? Both options have downsides. The former runs the risk of this much-anticipated addition to the MCU not actually feeling like it’s really part of the MCU while the later undermines any investment in the nicely realized retro-futuristic world this Fantastic Four hails from. Will future movies ever return to that vibe? Is there any point in caring about that world or its supporting characters? Why plant the seeds of a romance between The Thing and Rachel Rozman, a love interest played by Natasha Lyonne, if she and her homeworld are ultimately irrelevant? What of Mole Man? Surely we’ll see more of Paul Walter Hauser’s Mole Man again, right? Right!?
Giving the Fantastic Four their own special universe to start this latest cinematic adaptation while still positioning them to join the main MCU might inherently hamstring the heroes’ possibilities. Mr. Fantastic could probably figure out a way to have them join one universe while still celebrating the one they came from. We’ll have to wait until late 2026 to see if Kevin Feige can do the same.
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