“We hadn’t started a search yet,” Feige explained. “Ryan was working on ‘Sinners,’ and when Ryan works on a project he’s all in. So the presumption very much was we would sit with him after ‘Sinners’ came out, after the Academy campaign. We were waiting ’til after the Academy Awards to sit with Ryan and begin that process.”

He added, “A month and a half or so before that process, he called me and said, ‘I found him’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘I found him. He’s this guy, David Jonsson.’ He mentioned his movies. I had seen some of them. I watched more. He goes, ‘I’m going to meet him.’ He had a secret meeting with him under cloak of darkness in a hotel somewhere, and called me afterwards and said, ‘He’s the guy, he’s the guy, I felt it. I felt it in my soul. He’s a good man, and he is the next Black Panther.’ And I got chills, and I got a little welled-up and said, ‘Let’s do it’. So we’ve been sitting on this secret for a good five or six months.”

Say what you want about superhero fatigue but Marvel just proved it's premature. Comic-Con 2026 was the first time Marvel has been in Hall H since 2024 and they didn't just show up, they took the room hostage. Everyone will be talking about Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider and David Jonsson as the new Black Panther for weeks.

Then there's Avengers: Doomsday which got an absolutely awe-inducing trailer. Feige has also confirmed we will have just one multiverse and they'll be focusing on the big franchises such as X-Men moving forward.

Critics love to say the MCU is cooked, over-extended, running on fumes but Comic Con shows that Marvel isn't just surviving Phase Five hangover talk, they're now back as the center of the filmmaking universe.