MarvelBlog News for November 10th, 2024

Marvel plots what to do with Avengers who are no longer Young, Agatha All Along takes a victory lap, and Venom does okay.

We’ve got plenty to cover in MarvelBlog News.

The Young Avengers Dilemma

A different D23 Expo is occurring this weekend in Brazil.

In the buildup to this event, Marvel has announced some release dates for upcoming content.

The most surprising one isn’t even a confirmed group yet. Well, Marvel has confirmed that the group will return next year.

The trick is that the comic book company isn’t ready to say all the members of this new superhero team, one we’ve seen before.

Yes, the Young Avengers will gain a heightened presence in Marvel next year, as the team returns with a headline comic.

We know that core members will include Kate Bishop, Wiccan, Hulking, and Patriot. Probably.

During the Osaka Comic Con, Marvel’s C.B. Cebulski stated:

“The Young Avengers will be reuniting in 2025 from Marvel Comics…

There have been two Young Avengers teams but now we are deciding which characters for natural story reasons are going to join the new Young Avengers…Kate-Hawkeye, Patriot, Hulkling, Wiccan…who’s going to join? 2025!”

Marvel is highlighting the team in its story as it prepares a similar group in the MCU, which was suggested a year ago this week.

In case you’ve forgotten, The Marvels ends with Kamala Khan meeting Kate Bishop and suggesting they should speak with Cassie Lang.

Marvel hopes to align the Young Avengers from the comics with the existing characters in the MCU.

In addition to Kate and Wiccan, we’ve also already met Patriot and Hulkling, both of whom appeared in Disney+ shows.

So, the goal is to prepare a younger superhero team adjacent to The Avengers.

Alas, the problem is that the MCU characters are no longer teens. So, this group is probably going to possess a different name.

Depending on the outcome of that asterisk in Thunderbolts*, New Avengers is a distinct possibility.

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Agatha All Along

Speaking of Wiccan, Agatha All Along has proven a fascinating journey from a ratings and critical reception perspective.

As I type this, the show currently holds a moderately good IMDb score of 7.3, but its Rotten Tomatoes score is excellent at 83 percent.

However, that IMDb score reflects some of the strange anti-female cast voting prevalent within the system.

Let’s just ignore that nonsense and focus on the knowns. The first is that Agatha All Along started strong.

Disney trumpeted that 9.3 million viewers watched the first episode of Agatha All Along.

The Nielsen Streaming Charts supported the early success, as the show charted during its first two weeks.

Then, Agatha All Along dropped off the charts during the week of its fourth episode, a worrisome trend.

Marvel gets nervous about such behavior in the wake of what transpired with Secret Invasion.

Star Wars suffered a similar fate with The Acolyte, which started strong but then fell off the face of the Earth.

Agatha All Along’s decline caused similar concerns, which were thankfully short-lived.

I say this because the Disney+ series once again charted with 310 million viewer minutes during the week of its fifth episode.

More importantly, Disney and other tracking services have confirmed the same conclusion regarding the final episodes.

Agatha All Along by the Numbers

Agatha All Along soared in popularity as the end approached, a rarity for Disney+ programming.

First, the streamer confirmed that 4.2 million people watched the seventh episode on its first day of availability!

Remarkably, 4.6 million did the same with the eighth episode, and 3.9 million went ahead and finished the ninth episode, too.

As a reminder, those episodes aired back-to-back on October 30^th.

So, 81 percent of viewers kept watching until the end, while the others presumably needed a good night’s sleep before Halloween festivities.

The point is that Agatha All Along proved itself a show that could reliably hold its audience throughout the season.

We won’t know exact numbers for another month, as Nielsen is maddening with its chart publication strategy.

Still, based on the data Disney released, half the people who watched during the first week got hooked on Agatha All Along.

They loved the show so much they spent 90 minutes on Halloween Eve watching the finish. And I was one of them.

As a reminder, that first week total of 9.3 million viewers was seven times as much as the single-day totals listed above.

There’s a real chance that Agatha All Along kept its full audience the entire season, something that rarely happens with binge-based programming.

Disney must be thrilled with these results, and that’s before we factor in Agatha All Along being its cheapest Marvel show to date.

Not coincidentally, rumors of a quick greenlight for Wiccan season one have popped up everywhere.

Also, you’ll notice that Wiccan is a no-brainer inclusion for that young-ish Avengers superhero team.

This character is among the hottest in the MCU right now, which speaks to the show’s underlying success (and quality).

Marvel Miscellany

Venom: The Last Dance has won its third straight weekend at the domestic box office, which isn’t that big an achievement.

I say this because it’s more of a trick of the calendar than anything noteworthy about the movie itself.

Venom 3 earned a modest $16 million, giving it a domestic total of $115 million against a $110 million budget.

However, we can now state that the film is profitable because The Last Dance has earned $346 million worldwide.

So, it’ll finish slightly profitable during its theatrical run, which must feel like a huge win for Sony. And it is!

We can tell this by the fact that rumors of a new Venom side franchise have arisen.

Sony would love to create a new Venom franchise with cheaper talent than Tom Hardy. Will that work? Probably not.

Still, this is Sony’s operating procedure these days. On a seemingly unrelated note, the studio is also leaking something else.

Reportedly, Sony believes that Kraven the Last Hunter is a better film than Venom 3.

Theoretically, that shouldn’t be hard since The Last Dance is holding at 41 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, based on the turmoil surrounding Kraven, it sounds like more Sony nonsense along the lines of Morbius being an Oscar-nomination worthy performance.

We’ll find out for sure in a month. So, hold me to this if Sony has somehow saved a disaster project a la Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

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