Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in The Fantastic Four: First Steps Marvel Studios
The next big installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, hits theaters on July 25, and it’s already shaking up the multiverse. According to the film’s creative team, Marvel’s First Family—Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing—actually come from a parallel universe, separate from the one where the Avengers and Thunderbolts operate.
Now, jumping between universes is nothing new for the MCU. We’ve seen it in Spider-Man: No Way Home, where multiple versions of Spider-Man and their villains collided, and again in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But this time, it raises a big question: Why would the Fantastic Four leave their own universe and come to the Avengers’ timeline?
A Warning From the Silver Surfer
Trailers for First Steps reveal that Silver Surfer arrives on the Fantastic Four’s Earth to deliver a dire warning: their planet is facing total destruction. That could mean one of two things:
- The Fantastic Four fail to save their Earth and escape to a safer timeline—ours.
- Or, they succeed, but realize there’s a larger threat looming across the multiverse and come to warn the Avengers and their new counterparts.
Either way, their jump to the main MCU universe seems like more than a cameo—it could be a turning point for the entire saga.
A Universe-Colliding Crossover Is Coming
Chances are, we’ll see the Fantastic Four officially meet Yelena Belova and the rest of the so-called “New Avengers” either at the end of First Steps or early in Avengers: Doomsday, the next major crossover film.
And Avengers: Doomsday comes with a wild twist: Robert Downey Jr. returns, not as Iron Man, but as Dr. Doom, the Fantastic Four’s iconic nemesis—this time from yet another universe.
The movie promises to be a true multiversal mash-up. The cast includes:
- Original Avengers like Thor (Chris Hemsworth),
- The full New Avengers team from Thunderbolts,
- And even X-Men legends like Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and James Marsden’s Cyclops.
That lineup all but confirms that the multiverse is collapsing in on itself—or being drawn together by a threat bigger than anything the MCU has tackled so far.
So, while Thunderbolts ended with a hint that something cosmic was coming, The Fantastic Four: First Steps may be our first look at why. And with Avengers: Doomsday looming, it seems the MCU is gearing up for its most ambitious collision of universes yet.
