For the past decade, Marvel has taken the world by storm and is quite possibly the biggest and most successful movie franchise ever. The Infinity Saga, starting with “Iron Man” and ending with “Avengers: Endgame” was Marvel at its peak. Each movie felt connected leading up to the eventual conclusion. The intense buildup and cinematic conclusion of “Avengers Endgame” was a perfect way to end many characters’ stories and plots. Unfortunately, post-Endgame has left Marvel in a difficult position; What’s next for the MCU after the most powerful universal threat has already been defeated?

The appeal of the MCU is that every movie is connected, giving potential for different characters to interact and work together. No movie studio had ever done something like this, and this unique interconnected style not only started a trend of other studios doing the same but signified Marvel as a studio where anything can happen and every movie had to be watched.

Because Marvel only released three movies every year, the hype for every movie was unmatched. Tickets were bought months in advance, social media blew up after each release, and each movie made millions of dollars. Every movie felt like a must-watch event because these were not just movies, they were experiences.

Unfortunately, post-Endgame Marvel has some inherent problems that restrict Marvel from reaching the success and hype the movies once had. Some of the problems include a lack of a concise overarching story within the movies, unfinished CGI, and the biggest issue which is their quantity over the quality problem.

Phase one of Marvel featured six films across four years, while Phase 4 has already tallied six films and six live-action TV shows over a year and a half. Because it feels as though you have to watch each new movie and show in order to understand the next one, this is simply too much work for a casual Marvel fan. Senior and Marvel fan Jackson Haftel even claims that “this overload of content is definitely a problem Marvel has. There is barely any breathing room between projects.”

The new content feels less and less exciting and more like a chore to watch especially the Disney Plus shows. Haftel claims that “The six-episode format is the worst thing ever to do, just taking stories that would have been a good movie and extending them into a stretched 6-hour ordeal.”

The shows are basically longer movies with an even bigger budget. The show “WandaVision” number of VFX shots was higher than the number required for “Avengers: Endgame”, according to “WandaVision” costar Paul Bettany, and The Hollywood Reporter previously reported that MCU series like “WandaVision”, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, and “Hawkeye” cost as much as $25 million per episode to make.

Because there are so many shows and movies being released Marvel has less time to review scripts and spend time creating better-crafted stories and a more concise narrative. This is especially obvious with the Disney Plus shows as they have to be drawn out in order to fit the six-episode format, which makes the episodes feel incredibly bloated with very little plot progression.

Many critics agree with the decline of Marvel and its underbaked stories. According to Rotten Tomatoes, Phase Four has the lowest average score at 75 percent. This means that, on average, critics’ reviews of Phase Four MCU films tend to be more negative. Other movie review sites reflect this, with the average review for every movie in phase four being 6.6/4 compared to other Marvel phases having an average of 7.5/10.

Overall there is simply too much content to keep up with. This not only ruins the hype for upcoming movies but leads to the Marvel project being unfinished with lower quality and leaving the MCU with nowhere to take the ever-growing universe.