In addition to interacting with the multiverse, the MCU has many characters interacting with each other – in barely remembered storylines that always work jury duty at best, hollow fan service at worst.
As the films entered Phase 5, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine assembled heroes and villains for a Thunderbolts team, Spider-Man and Sam Wilson (the new Captain America) attempt to figure out their evolving roles as heroes, and Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye have young children or successors to mentor. The Eternals have seemingly complicated everything, but few recognize their immensely powerful existence. There are tons of new characters (Clea, Eros, White Vision, Hercules, Black Knight) that you have to wonder if fans will even care if and when they get more than a scene, so there are all people introduced in various Disney+ shows that haven’t yet penetrated the consciousness of your average moviegoer: Scarlet Scarab, the Power Broker, Echo, Kamran.
There’s so much going on in the MCU, in fact, that lingering details have caused plot holes and confusion for fans.
It’s pretty crazy how no one recognized that the celestial Tiamut is cooling in the ocean, or that thousands of people saw Arishem in the sky when he came for the Eternals. The plot threads surrounding Shang-Chi’s search for the origins of his rings, Doctor Strange working with Clea in the Dark Dimension, and everything Moon Knight has done to make the MCU’s narrative overcrowded – and pulled by hair in that all of these heroes seem to be siled and oblivious to each other’s (often world-threatening) struggles.
Do you still have a headache? Hold on, because the ground is about to get a lot more crowded with Blade, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Deadpool and all their peripheral characters about to impose themselves in the play.