For more than a decade, Marvel Studios has trained fans to hold out hope and wait, for not just the finale, but the post-credits scene for a true picture of what comes next.

But what we may not realize right now is that we're leaving through a meta version of a Marvel Studios post-credit scene as we wait for the next chapter of Marvel itself. Just as Marvel Studios' Iron Man post-credits scene wasn't intentionally the kickstarting of the entire MCU as we know it now way back in 2008, the post-credits scene we're all living through isn't entirely intentional - but is working at such towards what appears to be a bigger payoff beginning in 2024.

And not just for Marvel Studios, but all of Marvel: movies, shows, comics, and more.

Marvel Studios could be reborn in 2024

Much like Thanos erased billions of people from the MCU, Avengers: Endgame removed many of the core Marvel heroes (and actors) from Marvel Studios' roster for future movies and TV shows. While Thor stuck around and Black Widow had a last hurrah thanks to a prequel movie, the core Avengers - and pillars of the MCU for the first decade of is existence - are gone. While rumors of returns for the likes of Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. at this point remain just rumors (and, sure, crowd-pleasing hopes when we asked Evans directly), the void left by those stars has yet to be filled - especially considering that fans have come to expect surprise returns every year.

However, in much the same way that MCU's five-year The Blip ended in 2023 with the return of everyone they lost, 2024 will be five years since MCU's metaphorical blip after 2019's Avengers: Endgame... and the first star to return is Marvel's first modern movie star. No, we're not talking about Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. We're talking about Hugh Jackman, who debuted as Marvel's Wolverine in Fox's X-Men eight years prior to RDJ's first outing as Iron Man - the same film in which Feige was first hired by Marvel.

Notably, Jackman is coming back in the multiverse-bending movie Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems the perfect ground to at least tease the return of others - like Wolverine's war buddy from comics Captain America.

Also worth noting, the movie hits theaters the week of Comic-Con International: San Diego, where big, overarching announcements by Marvel Studios are common... and if not there, then Disney's D23 Expo just weeks later. Seems like the perfect opportunity to unveil some big news for Marvel's movie and television plans across the next few years, doesn't it?

Marvel Comics could be reborn in 2024

Although Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has been known as the big boss of the Marvel brand for going on two decades now, he didn't actually became the real boss until March 2023, when the Walt Disney Company laid off longtime Marvel chairman Isaac 'Ike' Perlmutter, a figure Feige had numerous run-ins with over the past 20 years.

Here now in April 2024, Feige can only be just now getting his grip on the larger Marvel brand - encompassing Marvel Studios, the core Marvel comic book business, and everything surrounding it all. With the pandemic passed, Perlmutter ousted, the writers' and actors' strikes resolved, and Marvel Studios finally beginning to play with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four in ways they never could before, 2024 is primed to be the year it all changes... potentially.

According to our sources within Marvel, the company's comic book business has come under significant increased attention from Kevin Feige's office since he became their boss in early 2023. That, combined with increased collaboration (and co-habitation) between the Marvel Studios offices in California and Marvel Comics' offices in NYC - including a stealthly move of Marvel Comics' longtime developmental director Sana Amanat over to work for Marvel Studios (while keeping her desk at Marvel Comics' NYC offices) - means that the Marvel publishing of 2024 isn't the Marvel publishing of even a year before - let alone five, 10, or 20 years.

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Related: From Beyond the Spider-Verse to a Brave New World, here's every upcoming Marvel TV show and movie (plus their release dates!)

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One of the biggest internal decisions made within Marvel publishing since Feige became its direct boss came back in August 2023, when long-time executive editor Tom Brevoort was asked to lead a linewide relaunch of the X-Men. What is curious about that move was that it wasn't Marvel's editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski who approached Brevoort, but publisher Dan Buckley - who is Feige's direct report into all that's going on inside publishing.

This raises the obvious question of just what Cebulski's place is in all of these changes. Cebulski came into the editor-in-chief position in late 2017 as part of a shake-up within the company led by then-chairman Ike Perlmutter and then-publisher Joe Quesada. Here in 2024, post-Perlmutter, post-Quesada, and post-the still-stinging cultural appropriation scandal surrounding Cebulski and his pretending to be a fictional Japanese author named Akira Yoshida in order to get freelance writing work at the company while he was employed there, one has to wonder what role Cebulski will have once Feige's intentions for Marvel's publishing arm begin to more concretely materialize.

Hasn't Marvel Studios always been connected to Marvel Comics?

While they share a name, for a long time, Marvel the comic book publisher and Marvel Studios acted as distant relatives.

Marvel Studios started life as part of Marvel Entertainment — the same company that was responsible for creating and publishing comic books each and every week. For a long time, both were under the control of Ike Perlmutter, who had been vice chairman of Marvel since 2001 after helping bring the company out of bankruptcy three years prior. However, as Marvel Studios’ success grew — and Feige became more known for his contributions to the studio — he and Perlmutter started to clash on an increasingly regular basis. Amongst the differences between the two were Feige dissolving Perlmutter's Marvel Creative Committee (a group of publishing creators and editors created as a braintrust for the MCU's future), and the botching of an initiative to have certain Marvel comics be in continuity with the MCU.

The conflict between the two culminated in 2015 when Perlmutter intended to fire Fiege (as revealed by Disney CEO Bob Iger years later) — a decision that backfired in a big way, when Perlmutter's Disney bosses moved Feige and all of Marvel Studios out from Marvel Entertainment entirely, instead placing it under the Walt Disney Studios brand in Disney’s corporate structure.

In 2019, Feige gained more power as Marvel Entertainment's chief creative officer - a title previously held by Perlmutter's longtime lieutenant (and former Marvel EiC) Joe Quesada. Perlmutter still maintained control over the Studios-less Marvel Entertainment until March 2023, when he was part of Disney's massive layoffs. It was then that Disney reportedly considered Marvel Entertainment "redundant" as its own silo'ed business unit, which led to it being consolidated with Marvel Studios - which is led by Feige.

(If anyone is very confused, think of it this way: In 2015, Marvel Studios was spun out as its own entity from Marvel Entertainment... and eight years later, Marvel Entertainment was then effectively merged back into Marvel Studios, this time as the smaller entity.)

Since then, Marvel Comics' publisher Dan Buckley has reportedly directly to Feige - but Feige has had his hands pretty full as the blockbuster film studio was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, a un-even move into streaming, and the impending writers' and actors' strikes. But all that is past, and the future is wide open.

How Disney sees Marvel in 2024 and beyond

Since Bob Iger returned as Disney's CEO, there's been one thing more telling than anything about the Marvel brand as a whole and how he sees it. Marvel Studios, which was a cashcow when Iger originally left Disney in 2020, is now in some doldrums, with Iger attributing some of it to lack of attention from Marvel executives to the inner workings of things like its movies. Around the same time, Feige's heavily-promoted Star Wars project - which would mean him focusing less on Marvel and more on Star Wars - was shelved as well.

From the sounds of it, Iger wants Feige and other Marvel executives to spend more time on making Marvel work - and 2024 might be when we'll start seeing Feige get the Marvel house in order.

Including, it seems, the longtime publishing arm that calls itself the House of Ideas.