[Note: This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.]
Although most of its energy at today’s big Hall H Comic-Con panel was devoted, understandably, to its upcoming slate of films, Marvel Studios didn’t neglect its smaller-scale projects, either—at least, the new ones it’s making for its parent company. (Sorry, Netflix Defenders shows.) Kevin Feige and company showed off logos for all the planned series (Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, and the ever-ridiculously named WandaVision) today, and managed to include some fascinating tidbits for each of them—including how they’re going to justify Tom Hiddleston being up and walking around for a Loki TV show, given, well…You know.
The answer is one that speculation-loving Marvel fans have probably already worked out: Per Feige’s hints, the Loki in Loki—out in Spring 2021—is the one who slips away, Infinity Stone in hand, from the time travel screw-ups in this summer’s Avengers: Endgame. That’s interesting especially because that Loki is still several movies from any kind of pre-death(s) tentative reconciliation with his brother Thor, making for a much more interesting character dynamic going forward.
WandaVision, meanwhile, got no such explanation: While it definitely takes place after Endgame, there’s no explanation for how The Vision is going to be up and around for all these rom-com-y shenanigans. (That being said, Wanda’s presence in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness does offer up some hints.) The big takeaway here, though, is another bit of surprise casting: former Mad Men co-star Teyonah Parris as Monica “Photon” “Captain Marvel” “Monica Rambeau” Rambeau, a character whose existence was previously hinted at in Captain Marvel. How does she fit into WandaVision’s mythology? Who can say!
For Hawkeye, meanwhile, the big pull is less the cast—mostly because they haven’t revealed yet who’ll be playing Kate Bishop, the young archer Jeremy Renner will be training in the series. Rather, it’s the logo, which has been lifted pretty much directly from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s critically beloved Hawkeye run of comics. Can Hawkguy and Pizza Dog be far behind, bro?
Finally, we’ve got The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, which went with a very straightforward tease—and not about changing the title to Captain America And The Winter Soldier, even though that feels like a gimme at this point. No, instead, Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie got ambushed by Daniel Brühl’s Civil War villain Baron Zemo, revealing who they’ll be taking on when the series arrives in Fall 2020.
Disney has a lot riding on these shows, which are going to be a huge part of its attempts to draw people into Disney+’s warm, labyrinthine embrace. But, then, they’ve long been the masters of the Comic-Con game, so it’s no surprise they managed to pull something interesting for each of them to get our whistles wet.