Marvel Can Make The Dark Universe Universal Couldn't

Marvel is currently working on a Halloween Special that will stream exclusively on Disney+, and it will reportedly have Werewolf by Night as the lead, which means Marvel can make the Dark Universe that Universal just couldn’t achieve. The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues its expansion now that the Infinity Saga came to an end with Spider-Man: Far From Home, and its highly-anticipated Phase 4 is doing things differently by covering not only movies but also TV shows, all of them streaming on Disney+. This has allowed Marvel to tell different and more detailed (and in some cases more complex as well) stories, and it could be on its way to creating a Dark Universe of its own through some of them.

The MCU has a long list of projects lined up for the near future both on the big screen and TV/streaming, and while the current theme in this universe is the multiverse, some of the upcoming projects are going in a more supernatural direction. Marvel Comics is best known for its superheroes and villains, but it also has many interesting and obscure characters of which some are about to join the MCU very soon – and it’s through them that the MCU can make its own Dark Universe similar to the one that Universal has failed to build and maintain for years now.

With the original Avengers line-up now dissolved, and even though the Guardians of the Galaxy are still around, the MCU is missing a big team, and it could see the formation of a very peculiar one thanks to the supernatural characters that have already been introduced and those who are set to arrive soon. This team is the Midnight Sons, a group of supernatural superheroes that originally consisted of the Nightstalkers (Blade, Frank Drake, and Hannibal King), Morbius, Vengeance, and the Darkhold Redeemers (Sam Buchanan, Victoria Montesi, Louise Hastings, Modred the Mystic, and Jinx), who were secretly brought together by Doctor Strange, who later joined the team. A version of the team also includes Moon Knight and Werewolf by Night, both set to arrive at the MCU in 2022, thus setting the basis for a Marvel Dark Universe like the one Universal could never achieve.

Universal’s Dark Universe, best known as Universal Classic Monsters, is a franchise based on horror movies produced by Universal Pictures from the 1930s to the 1950s, with the most notable titles being Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi), Frankenstein (starring Boris Karloff as the Monster), The Mummy, and The Invisible Man. Following the success of The Mummy in 1999, Universal tried a couple of times to reboot the franchise with projects that ended up being a failure, the latest one being the 2017 remake of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise. Now, and as mentioned above, the MCU is bringing supernatural-based characters like Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac), Blade (Mahershala Ali), and Werewolf by Night (Gael García Bernal), thus making way for the formation of the Midnight Sons, more so as characters like Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Morbius (Jared Leto) will already be part of this universe by the time they arrive. Marvel, then, has the perfect opportunity to build its own version of Universal’s Dark Universe with these characters, and it has better chances to succeed as it already knows how to connect its characters to make a cohesive shared universe.

Of course, with Universal still working on various monster movies, and with the success of Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man on its side, the Universal Dark Universe might finally find what it has been missing to be a successful franchise, but until then, it all points at Marvel having better chances to succeed in that area with Moon Knight, Blade, Werewolf by Night, and the potential Midnight Sons team.

Next: Why So Many Movie Shared Universes Have Failed