Earlier this week, we looked at one hypothetical 2021 release calendar for Marvel Studios. That possible calendar saw Hawkeye wrapped up on Christmas Eve 2021 and it seemed like a bad place to stop thinking. Following the same premise of trying to get new content out on as many Fridays as possible, here’s one totally made up and hypothetical way Marvel Studios could do that in 2022!
***NOTE***
Please read and share responsibly and don’t latch your hopes and dreams onto this. Don’t take it seriously and don’t start marking your calendars. This is one possible option with the only real intention behind it being to see if it could be done well.
After originally thinking Hawkeye would carry over into 2022, we learned that the series is only 6-episodes, meaning it will conclude on Christmas Eve 2021 and they’ll probably skip out on New Year’s Eve content. If we assume Marvel Studios follows a similar start to WandaVision in that it allows the studios to return from the 2-week holiday layoff, get whatever press events and social media teases up and running in the week leading up to release, the 2022 Marvel Studios onslaught will kick off on January 14th!
She-Hulk is going to get to kick off 2022 in style. The Tatiana Maslany-led comedy series begins filming in Atlanta in March 2021 and could easily turn episodes around in time for a mid-January 2022 release. The series is filming for quite a long time and we’ve seen some information that leads us to believe they could be filming as many as 10 episodes next year. Whether that is one long season or two is unknown, but should it be one, long 10 episode season, it could run from January 14th until March 11th, which fits nicely in our big puzzle.
Should Marvel Studios continue their Marvel Studios Legends series, they could stream a Doctor Strange episode the weekend of March 18th, one week ahead of the release of Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness. By the time this film comes out, it’ll have been 6 years since the first film and almost 3 years since we last saw the Sorcerer Supreme on the big screen, so it wouldn’t be the worst idea to catch fans up and tell the story to new audiences. We would also expect the final trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder and the first trailer for Black Panther II to be released ahead of this so theater audiences could preview them ahead of the film.
The sledding gets a little rougher here with Moon Knight potentially running into the theatrical release of Thor: Love and Thunder. Thankfully, I am reminded that Season 1 of The Mandalorian took a Friday off so that audiences could head to theaters to catch The Rise of Skywalker (big high five to The Machine for helping me get out of my mental rut). That same idea could work here and who knows, maybe a film that includes a God Butcher could unexpectedly tie-in to a series about a guy working as the Earthly avatar of an Egyptian god…
Thor: Love and Thunder promises to be an absolutely wild ride. Taika Waititi is back and has made no bones about the fact that he’s turning everything up on this one. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is the first Marvel Studios solo character to move beyond the trilogy structure meaning all bets are off. Natalie Portman returning as Jane Foster to become the Mighty Thor is the biggest news, but adding Academy Award Winner Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher, bringing back Jamie Alexander as Lady Sif alongside Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie AND having the Guardians of the Galaxy along for the ride make this the studio’s biggest non-Avengers film to date.
An episode of Marvel Studios Legends for Nick Fury and Talos seems like a must leading into Secret Invasion. We know Talos has posed as Fury in the past and it’d be alright if Marvel Studios cleared some of that up heading into Secret Invasion and that could stream on May 13th, one week after Thor 4 hits theaters. Secret Invasion is still in the earliest stages of development, so there’s no word on an episode count, but for the purposes of this calendar, we’re sticking with the standard six; hypothetically, if Secret Invasion kicked off a six-week run on May 20th, it would conclude on June 24th, just ahead of Black Panther II.
It’s still tough to think about a sequel to Black Panther happening without Chadwick Boseman, but Marvel Studios has a plan and a date. An episode of Marvel Studios Legends ahead of this film could serve not only as a tribute to Boseman, but also as a way to highlight whomever Marvel Studios has chosen to focus on from the World of Wakanda. Black Panther II is currently set to premiere on July 8th, which means it would be accompanied in theaters by trailers for Blade and Captain Marvel 2.
While there was no direct indication that What If…? Season 2 would stream in 2022, Kevin Feige did mention in an interview in December of 2019 that they were already hard at work on the 10-episode second season. As was the case with What If…? Season 1, there’s no indication of whether or not Marvel Studios will stream a new episode of the animated series each week or drop them all at once, but given the nature of the premise is to slot new content on as many Fridays as possible, I’m going with the former.
Like Moon Knight before it, Ironheart could be headed for a one-week hiatus to get Blade in theaters on October 7th (something that is yet to be announced by the studio but we’ve included in our little experiment). Marvel Studios could get Riri Williams’ story started on September 23rd and 30th before taking the week of October 7th off for Blade.
Though there’s no word on when Blade would hit theaters, the official Disney Investor Day Fact Sheet lists it chronologically ahead of Captain Marvel 2 and Disney still has the October 7, 2022 date set aside for a Marvel Studios project. With those things in mind and for the purpose of our hypothetical calendar, we are putting Blade right here.
Ironheart returns from its one-week hiatus and jumps back into action, concluding its run with a 4-episode stretch from October 14th through November 4th.
Following the pattern of Marvel Studios preparing audiences for the return of popular characters through episodes of Marvel Studios Legends, a Captain Marvel episode could stream on November 4th. With Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan joining Carol Danvers in the film, a Legends episode could prove pretty useful to catch fans up to speed ahead of the November 11th debut of Captain Marvel 2.
While he’s never been the centerpiece of his own project, James Rhodes has been in 7 Marvel Studios films. His story is one worth recapping in a War Machine episode of Marvel Studios Legends on November 18th one week before he takes the lead in Armor Wars!
Breaking from the mold just a little here, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special can debut on Thanksgiving, which is the kickoff of the U.S. holiday season.
Boom, you looking for this! The final Marvel Studios project of 2022, Armor Wars, could begin its six-week run on November 25th and run right up until the final Friday of the year on December 30th.
Piecing this one together meant taking quite a few liberties, including adding a film that has not officially been given a date. But again, the working premise here was to get new Marvel Studios content on as many Fridays as possible. As things developed, keeping streaming series from dropping new episodes on the same days as films would make their theatrical debuts became a secondary concern and that meant having to color outside of the lines a few times. However, it looks like we mish-mashed together a way to get 51 weeks of Marvel Studios content in 2022!
