Marvel Scraps its 2023 Release Schedule and Postpones Several Series

Things are changing at Marvel: The show calendar for the remaining months of 2023 has been completely scrapped and is likely to disappoint a lot of people. The second season of "Loki" will be the only live-action series to be released this year.

Marvel's "Secret Invasion" was a huge flop, leaving critics and fans disappointed. A mere 994,000 viewers opted to watch the first episode of the series about Nick Fury and the Skrulls - making it the second worst debut ever for a Marvel series after "Ms. Marvel". In terms of quality, things are looking bleak as well: The finale barely achieved a score of 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and thus fell short of expectations.

Now Marvel seems to have taken the criticism to heart and is pushing back several projects to 2024. As the Hollywood Reporter points out, there are possibly two reasons for this decision: First, some projects are still in production and are therefore affected by the actors' and writers' strike. Second, Marvel will now also react to the negative feedback on their previous productions. As such, the studio announced that future projects will be released at a greater interval in order to make each series an "event".

This has now resulted in 7 productions being postponed until next year and some even indefinitely:

"Echo" - which is a spin-off to the "Hawkeye" series and is said to have a grittier and more grounded tone - is set to kick off in January 2024. Next up is an animated return of the X-Men in "X-Men '97" - which is meant to be a sequel to the 1990 classic series and is now slated to premiere in Spring 2024. Likewise, we will have to wait a little while longer for Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness: The "WandaVision" spin-off "Agatha: Darkhold Diaries" will not be out until Fall 2024.

"Ironheart" is a series based around the inventor Riri Williams, who was already introduced in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and was supposed to premiere this fall. However, due to the strike, the production is on hold and so the release has been indefinitely postponed. The rescheduling of "Daredevil: Born Again" is also expected to result in disappointment for fans - after all, a return of Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in the MCU was regarded as highly anticipated. The "Wonder Man" played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is also a long time coming.

Nevertheless, we won't have to do without the MCU altogether this year: The second season of "Loki" will still premiere on October 6, 2023, and "What If...?" Season 2 will also be available around Christmas.