The fictional island of Madripoor is set to make its MCU debut in the Marvel Studios Disney Plus streaming series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, perhaps even this very Friday. We’ll finally get to see how such an important location translates from the comics into live-action, and we very well might need to thank “The Blip” for such an opportunity.
When Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War the Marvel Cinematic Universe was forever changed. The Avengers managed to bring everyone back but certain things just weren’t able to be fixed by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, as the five years it took them to do so took their toll. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier has already shown us how much things have changed even after half the world’s population came back, and in WandaVision, through Director Hayward, we got an idea of just how hard those five years were on everybody that had to endure them.
You have no idea what it was like. What it took to keep the lights on.
This extreme change in status-quo within the Marvel Universe gives Marvel Studios the perfect opportunity to justify how a place like Madripoor, basically unmentioned through twenty-three movies and one tv show, can all of a sudden become an integral part of the MCU. With half the world’s population gone it would make sense for countries to concentrate the entirety of their diminished military power closer to home where it would make the most difference. This would mean that super-powers like the US or organizations like NATO would stop being so involved in world affairs creating a power-vacuum in certain parts of the world that would tend to be filled by those seeking power on their own terms. This way a place like the “Principality of Madripoor” could have gained a level of economic and social relevance it just didn’t have before, justifying its absence from the storylines being told up to this point.
And just like Madripoor, there are several other locations from the comics that might very well be introduced into the MCU in the coming years using “The Blip” as the catalyst. By having areas around the globe without proper protection by the so-called good guys, places like Bagalia could pop up by being in the perfect situation to establish themselves as the sovereign island nation ruled by criminals we know from the comics, becoming a haven for the ill-intentioned. Also, a nation like Latveria, led by a ruthless ruler, could thrive in the conditions the world found itself in for five years. Not having mentioned it since 2008’s Iron Man would become a non-issue, since only after taking advantage of surrounding nations that might have been left to fend for themselves in the five years where there wasn’t so much oversight, did it become such a relevant player on the global stage.
From a different perspective, and knowing how Marvel Studios enjoys approaching certain events and locations taken from the comics by giving them their own take, a place like the Blue Area of the Moon could also be something introduced using The Snap and the following five years that are yet mostly unexplored in the MCU. Its discovery might have prompted by an attempt to establish a defense system on the Moon with the prospect of keeping another alien invasion from reaching the planet in the future, and we could now be faced with a fully constructed human facility built in the previous five years, and perhaps even dealing with the Skrull, Kree, and Cotati background. Its development in secrecy might even have something to do with the theory that Steve Rogers “is in a secret base on the moon looking down over us”.
The bottom line is that there are a number of locations and even characters that would have had a hard time being introduced into the MCU after more than a decade without being acknowledged. But “The Blip”, besides having been an exceptional way to finish The Infinity Saga by taking The Avengers to their limits, just might prove to be the smartest thing Marvel Studios has ever done as it manages to set up an almost infinite amount of brand new possibilities for Phase 4 without having to retcon a single thing from past features.
