Key Personnel
Three characters. Three completely different ways of carrying this universe.
If you watch the Doomsday Spine and stop there, you will follow the plot. If you take the time with these three, you will understand why people love this universe in the first place.
T'Challa
The first time we see T'Challa, his father is dying. The second time, he is hunting the man who killed him. By the end of Civil War, he has chosen to forgive that man instead of avenging his father, and that choice is what makes him a king.
This is the thing Chadwick Boseman understood that almost no one else could have. T'Challa is not a hero who became a king. He is a king who is also a hero, and the difference is everything. Every choice he makes is filtered through what it means for his country, his throne, his ancestors, his future. He cannot afford the kind of selfishness Tony Stark gets to indulge in. He cannot afford the kind of doubt Steve Rogers gets to wrestle with. He is the only Avenger whose individual story is always also a national story.
Black Panther earns its place in the canon on craft alone. Ryan Coogler made the kind of film Marvel had not made before and arguably has not made since. Killmonger is the best villain in the MCU because his argument is not wrong, it is just not the king's argument. Wakanda is the first time the MCU took a place seriously as a character. The score is the best in the franchise.
But the real weight of T'Challa is what came after. We lost Chadwick in 2020. Wakanda Forever did not pretend it had not happened. Ryan Coogler wrote the film around the loss instead of around it. The opening sequence, where Shuri is desperately trying to save her brother and fails, is one of the most respectful things mainstream Hollywood has done in years. The film is about grief. It is also about who picks up the mantle when the person who carried it cannot anymore.
That is the through-line. The mantle is heavier than the person. T'Challa knew that from the start. Shuri had to learn it. And both of them taught us what it means to lead something larger than yourself.
When Shadows of Wakanda lands in 2028, this is the story it will continue.
Groot
He says three words. He means everything.
I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot.
The miracle of Groot is that you understand him completely. You always have. The voice cast knows what he is saying. The other Guardians know what he is saying. You know what he is saying. The fact that he only ever uses three words is the joke and also the point: love does not need vocabulary. It needs presence.
When he sacrifices himself at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, he says it the only way he knows how. "We are Groot." Not I am, we are. He has stopped being a single thing. He has become the team. The little stick at the end of the film, the one Rocket plants in a flowerpot, is not really Groot regrowing. It is the team carrying him forward until he can do it himself.
This is what found family looks like. The Guardians did not choose each other on purpose. They were assembled by accident, by jail break and by greed, and somewhere in the middle they became something none of them had ever had. Star-Lord lost his mother. Gamora lost her father, twice. Drax lost his wife and daughter. Rocket lost the only friends he had ever made in the lab that built him. Mantis was raised in isolation. And Groot, who started as a treasure-hunter's muscle, became the still center they all orbit.
By Vol. 3, when Rocket is dying and the team is fracturing, Groot has grown into someone the others rely on. He speaks more. He understands more. And in the final shot, when he sits with the trees he has come from, he says one last line, in English, and you cry because you have watched him become.
The Guardians of the Galaxy films are not in the Doomsday Spine because Doomsday does not strictly need them. But this universe does. Without the Guardians, the MCU is just earth and aliens. With them, it is a family.
We are Groot.
Peter Parker
Stan Lee said many times that Spider-Man was his favorite. He created a lot of characters. He came back to that one.
The reason is not complicated. Peter Parker is the only major Marvel hero who is just a person. He is not a god. He is not a billionaire. He is not a soldier. He is not a king. He is a kid from Queens whose uncle was murdered and who decided that meant he had to try to be useful.
Tom Holland's Peter is the version that finally got it right. Not because he is the best Spider-Man on screen, but because he is the first one who actually felt like a teenager. The high school stuff is real high school stuff. The crush is awkward. The jokes are bad on purpose. He worries about the homework. He gets in trouble with his aunt. He has not figured anything out, and the powers do not make it easier.
Homecoming is the best Spider-Man film because of one moment. The moment Peter realizes the Vulture is his date's father. Adrian Toomes is not a comic book villain. He is a working man who lost a contract and started doing something he should not be doing to keep his family afloat. He is not wrong, exactly. He is just on the wrong side of where Peter has to stand. And the scene where he figures out who Peter is, in the car, before the dance, is the best villain reveal in the MCU. No exposition. No speech. Just two people looking at each other and knowing.
That is what Stan Lee loved about Spider-Man. The story is never really about the bad guy. It is about whether the kid can keep getting up. Whether he can be a good person while losing everything that should make him a good person. Uncle Ben. Tony Stark. Aunt May. By No Way Home, Peter has lost everyone the world knew he loved, and the universe has forgotten he exists, and he is still in the suit.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is coming in July 2026. It will be the first Peter Parker story in a world where no one remembers him. That is one of the saddest premises in modern superhero film. It is also the most Peter Parker premise ever written.
What These Three Have in Common
Nothing, on the surface. A king, a tree, and a teenager.
But all three are characters whose power is not really the point. T'Challa's strength is not Vibranium. It is restraint. Groot's gift is not regeneration. It is presence. Peter's power is not the spider. It is the choice to keep going.
That is the version of this universe worth caring about. Not the explosions. Not the multiverse. Not the team-ups. The people inside the suits, the trees, the masks, who keep choosing to be good when nothing is making them.
That is what we are protecting when we walk into the theater in December.
You may have noticed that Carol Danvers and Tony Stark don't have their own essays in this section, even though they're two of the characters I've followed most closely over the years. That was a deliberate choice, and one I want to be honest about.
T'Challa carries the dedication to Chadwick. Groot carries what found family looks like in this universe. Peter carries Stan Lee's favorite. Three felt like the right number for what this section needed to do, and these three felt like the right three.
But the character section in my head looks a little different. Carol is the most powerful person in the MCU and the most underwritten by the films, which is a complicated thing to love as a woman watching this universe. Tony is the long arc I grew up alongside. Groot is the one who taught me how much a single sentence can do when you mean it. If I ever build the extended cut of this manual, all three of them get their own files. For now, I wanted you to know they're on my mind too.