2025 is set to be a big year for Marvel. After largely taking a year off in 2024 (excepting the casual box office mega-smash that was Deadpool Vs. Wolverine), the MCU is back with three major movies in the coming months: the long-awaited Captain America: Brave New World, misanthropic team-up movie Thunderbolts*, and – at long last – the arrival of Marvel’s first family in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. And that’s just the beginning. The current Marvel slate all leads up to Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027 – an outing not only bringing the return of Robert Downey Jr., this time as Dr. Doom, but also reuniting Marvel with directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriter Steven McFeely. The A-team is back in a big way.

Not that returning to the MCU was an obvious move. “Endgame was the end, and it took a little time for us to begin to think about it as something other than an end,” Anthony Russo tells Empire in a major new interview – sitting down with Joe Russo, and screenwriting duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to talk their ongoing partnership, including on this year’s The Electric State. For the gang, Marvel was never too far away, even after they all left. “We’re very close with Kevin and Lou [D’Esposito, Marvel Studios’ Co-President] and the entire Marvel team and we’ve had conversations through the years. We’ve talked about a lot of ideas,” Anthony Russo says. And then, inspiration for Secret Wars struck. “Really what happened was, we ended up stumbling upon an idea that activated all of us,” he teases. “You couldn’t see it coming until it came, and once it came it was like, ‘Well, that’s a story we need to tell.’”