Remember The Marvels? Of course you don't. Nobody does. The movie grossed about $206 million worldwide on a budget north of $250 million, according to Box Office Mojo, which is the kind of math that gets people fired in any other business. But in the wonderful world of Marvel Studios, where consequences are just a cute little suggestion, the retconning has begun.

According to The Direct, Marvel is taking its first real steps toward retconning Captain Marvel 2 out of existence. The sequel that nobody asked for, starring a lead nobody wanted to follow further into space, is being quietly swept under the rug. And why wouldn't they? The thing was a bomb of historic proportions. You could feel the air leave the theater on opening weekend.

Brie Larson's Carol Danvers went from the character who punched a spaceship into submission in her 2019 solo debut to the character who couldn't fill theaters despite being the only Marvel movie in sight. The first Captain Marvel made $1.1 billion, per Box Office Mojo, and you can argue how much of that was genuine enthusiasm versus audiences stocking up on lore before Endgame hit a month later. Either way, the sequel had every advantage of the Marvel brand behind it. The brand didn't hold. The audience had already checked out.

The retcon moves are underway, according to The Direct's reporting, though the specifics remain vague. Marvel is gradually walking away from the film's plot threads and character arcs. That's how it starts. First they distance themselves from it. Then they rewrite the parts that tested worst. Then one day someone at a press junket will say "we're taking the character in a new direction" and that'll be the official confirmation that everything from November 2023 is dead and buried. We've seen this playbook before. It's the same one DC used when they decided Superman's mustache was a better look than what came before.

The box office number tells you everything. $206 million worldwide. The first Captain Marvel made $1.1 billion. That's a cliff. Audiences didn't just reject the sequel. They rejected the entire formula. You can't replace charismatic leads with checklist casting, stuff the runtime with plot threads nobody cares about, and expect the brand to carry the weight forever. The brand was the weight. It collapsed.

And let's be clear about something. We didn't do this to them. They did it to themselves. We showed up for Captain Marvel in 2019 because Endgame was coming and we wanted every piece of the puzzle. We skipped The Marvels in 2023 because we'd learned the lesson they spent four years teaching us: that the magic was gone, the people in charge didn't respect what came before, and the audience was expected to shut up and consume. So we didn't.

Now they're retconning their own flop like it's a bad issue of a comic run nobody bought. Which is the most Marvel thing they could do. The comics side has been papering over bad stories for decades. The movie side is just catching up to the family business.