How Captain America: Brave New World Addresses The Biggest MCU Loose Ends

This post contains major spoilers for "Captain America: Brave New World."

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going strong for nearly 17 years now, dating back to 2008's "Iron Man." With the release of "Captain America: Brave New World" in theaters, we're coming up on 40 movies released in that span, not to mention all of the TV shows on Disney+. While Kevin Feige and co. at Marvel Studios have done an impressive job weaving an interconnected narrative through all of that media over the years, some threads have been left dangling. "Brave New World" attempts to reckon with some pretty big ones.

2021's "Eternals" was a big swing for Marvel, one that ultimately didn't connect with audiences in the way the studio had hoped. Be that as it may, "Eternals" ended with a giant alien Celestial named Tiamut half-emerged in the ocean. That has needed addressing for some time. Though an unexpected place to contend with such a massive, cosmic, dangling thread, "Brave New World" does finally pull this thread, while also using leftover plot points from another unlikely source — namely, 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" — to do just that.

Director Julius Onah's entry in the MCU sees Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson taking up the mantle of Captain America. After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), Sam's friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) seemingly attempts to assassinate the military man turned politician. Sam partners with Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) to try and clear Isaiah and uncover the truth behind a nefarious global plot. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) is revealed to be pulling the strings as Ross tries to pull together a treaty to divide up all of the adamantium that has been discovered at Celestial Island.

This is Sam Wilson's first solo movie as the MCU's new Captain America, taking over for Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, who retired after "Avengers: Endgame." It's already a gamble given that Sam officially took over in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," a Disney+ series, as opposed to a movie. At the same time, Marvel decided to hinge the whole thing on a villain from "The Incredible Hulk," a 17 year old major box office disappointment. It's a bold move.

To what degree that boldness is effective? That's another question entirely. Focusing first on the "Eternals" of it all, we've had nine MCU movies (if you count "Werewolf by Night" as a movie) and several TV shows since and none of them have addressed the existence of Tiamut. This is a hulking mass in the Indian Ocean that was at the center of a global event. Onah and the writers of "Captain America: Brave New World" used it as a backdoor to bring adamantium, aka the metal used to make Wolverine's claws, into the MCU. So, it's doing a little bit of teeing up for the "X-Men."

Using Tiamut as a way to create an international frenzy over a valuable resource is, on the surface, an unexpected and clever way to deal with the remnants of "Eternals." The problem is that the events of Chloé Zhao's ambitious film are never really addressed in "Brave New World," and neither are the characters. Ross just mentions Tiamut and makes very vague, quick references to Tiamut's appearance. Nobody mentions the ancient heroes who thwarted the Celestial's emergence, nor does anyone mention Arishem's appearance over Earth at the end of the film. That certainly seems like something that would be worth bringing up.

So yes, on the one hand, "Brave New World" did finally address the biggest of all big elephants in the room. On the other hand, it didn't truly do much to deal with everything that was left dangling in the aftermath of "Eternals." Granted, that movie's dangling threads aren't this movie's responsibility, it's not unreasonable to expect perhaps a little more connective tissue. In that way, Tiamut's return could be viewed as a bit of a disappointment, particularly for those who enjoyed Zhao's film and those characters. 

There's virtually no chance that "Eternals 2" is going to happen, so unless other movies pick up the first movie's cliffhangers, they're going to be left hanging indefinitely. Sam Wilson's Captain America, a man with no superpowers in the midst of a political thriller, did his best to pick up some of those cosmic pieces.

Even more unexpected, arguably, is the fact that "Captain America: Brave New World" hingest very heavily on the events of "The Incredible Hulk" — which, up until the release of "The Marvels" in 2023, was the lowest-grossing movie in the history of the MCU. Even if we set aside for a moment that "Incredible Hulk" came out way back in 2008, that makes it not exactly a prime candidate for plot fuel at this point.

And yet, Tim Blake Nelson's Samuel Sterns (aka The Leader) is revealed to be the real villain of "Brave New World," as he's seeking revenge on Ross for keeping him in captivity for all these years. For those who may not recall, Sterns was exposed directly to gamma radiation that warped his brain, which was teased very briefly in "Incredible Hulk." Ross' character arc is connected very heavily to the events of that movie even though we've since seen him elsewhere in the MCU, played by the late William Hurt in films like "Captain America: Civil War" and "Avengers: Infinity War." Right down to Ross' fractured relationship with Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), this version of Ross very much traces his DNA to Marvel's 2008 misfire.

It's rather impressive just how much "Brave New World" leans into "Incredible Hulk," rather than just grazing up against it like the plot points from "Eternals." Again, to what degree it's effective is another question entirely. Is The Leader a good villain? Does revisiting that movie and those characters through the lens of a "Captain America" movie make sense? That's largely a matter of personal taste but the reactions to "Brave New World" suggest it's merely "fine" and not great.

At this point, the MCU has left a lot of major plot threads hanging that have yet to be resolved, such as the introduction of Starfox in "Eternals" or the Council of Kangs in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." Sooner rather than later, as the Multiverse Saga comes to a close, Marvel Studios has to start addressing some of these threads. For better or worse, this movie took on some of that responsibility and tried to check some of those boxes.

"Captain America: Brave New World" is in theaters now.