Where the Fantastic Four Should Fit in the MCU Timeline, Explained

The Fantastic Four are Marvel’s first family. The great Stan Lee created them and made them one of the most beloved teams in comic books. With the news that they will enter the MCU, it’s a very scary time for their fans. Fans are attached to each of the lead characters in the comics, and after the 2015 Fantastic Four adaptation, audiences want to see the characters done right. What happens if Feige screws up?

This is the main reason that they need to be treated differently. They need to be kept separate, at least for a while. There are ways to do it and hundreds of reasons for doing so. Let’s look at a few of both and see how the Fantastic Four should be brought into the MCU, as well as the best ways to do it.

Why The Fantastic Four Are So Important

The Fantastic Four were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s. The duo were looking for something new to write, and they hit upon an idea thanks to their editor. Stan Lee tells it best, according to CNN:

“One day [the editor] came to me and he said you know one of our competitors has a book called
The Justice League
and it’s selling well and it’s a bunch of superheroes, why don’t we do some superhero magazines? I said OK, I wanted to keep my job so I came up with
The Fantastic Four.”

It sounds a bit utilitarian for a group that would become the cornerstone of an entire comic empire. However, this team became the first family. They were all the personalities. Reed is the nerd, Johnny is the hothead, Ben is the lug from Yancy Street, and Sue is the voice of reason. People may not have related to all of them, but they always related to one of them. Also, the fact that their powers came from science and not some god-given lightning strike was very important to Stan Lee. He wanted things to feel just grounded enough. That’s why he put them and Spider-Man in New York City instead of a fictional city, as DC Comics did.

The Fantastic Four Have Undergone Some Changes

Since their inception, the Fantastic Four have been older, younger, geniuses, friends, enemies, and everything in between. How Marvel Studios portrays them is very important, and the casting announcement has given us a clear image of a few things. Namely, their ages. In some iterations, Reed and Ben are the same age, Sue is a bit younger, and Johnny is the youngest.

In this version, it appears that the team is a bit older, considering that Pedro Pascal has been tapped to play Reed, and he’ll be 50 by the time filming starts. Vanessa Kirby will be 35, Joseph Quinn is 30, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is 47. This is not a young team. Instead, it’s a Fantastic Four team that’s likely been through a lot, which is just one reason that their MCU story cannot, or should not, be an origin.

The MCU’s Fantastic Four Film Should Not Be an Origin Story

Remember when Tom Holland’s Spider-Man arrived fully formed in the MCU, making a statement to Ned about “A spider bit me”? We didn’t need the retelling. We all know what happened. The Fantastic Four are the same way. Feel free to give them a three-minute flashback if you have to, but other than that, let them go about their business. And give them a version of the Captain America treatment.

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The Captain America Treatment

Remember when Cap had his own story set in the ’40s and then woke up in the present day, a man out of time? The Fantastic Four need to have their own story in their own universe set in the 1960s and then somehow show up in the present day. This will probably look like universe-hopping, and that would be fine. Different time, different place. They need to reestablish themselves. Maybe they have no money. Perhaps they need to figure out a way to restart the Baxter Building. Marvel could even find a way to give Reed all of Tony’s old tech and a decent grant and put him to work, but they need to be fish out of water. It makes the story more compelling, uses a formula that has already worked (Marvel loves that), and gives audiences a new team of heroes who do not need to be introduced to one another.

Fantastic Four Will Need to Do Something Different

The Fantastic Four are compelling because they can bring so many personalities at once and come as a package deal. That being said, it has been noted that Julia Garner has reportedly been cast as the Silver Surfer. However, she is Shalla-Bal, not Norin Radd (the original surfer), which makes for an interesting scenario. This could mean Marvel is looking at a swapped universe or a different take. Audiences should be thrilled (even though some “fans” are already fuming over another female casting decision) since the MCU should be cherry-picking stories and characters and making something new for themselves.

The Building Blocks for Fantastic Four Are There

Considering that Marvel has botched many characters, you must remember what they’ve done right. The question is whether they can break their mold again, a la James Gunn’s Guardians, and keep it broken. For better or worse, the Fantastic Four are the life raft our drowning Marvel Studios needs to keep things fresh and bring audiences back. They’ve done it before, but this time, it’s about proving that superhero fatigue isn’t as bad as everyone thinks. If they muck it up and act like the Fantastic Four have been around this entire time, they’ll be shuttering an experiment that has officially run its course. Fantastic Four is heading to theaters on July 25, 2025.