The Avengers seem to be heading towards a new version of Marvel‘s Civil War that pits Tony Stark against a different hero. Marvel’s original Civil War broke the unspoken rule that previously kept the Marvel Universe in a state of comfortable equilibrium. Before 2006, Marvel’s crossovers generally relied on an external threat to unite disparate factions of heroes under a singular banner. Mark Millar’s story rejected this safe formula, instead turning the lens inward to expose the fragile philosophical seams that held the superhero community together. Civil War replaced traditional black-and-white heroics with an uncomfortable gray area where both factions possessed valid yet flawed arguments.

Civil War‘s immense critical and commercial success stemmed from its willingness to channel the intense geopolitical anxieties of its era directly into the Marvel Universe. The Superhuman Registration Act serves as an allegory for the real-world dilemma between national security and privacy. Civil War also established the foundations for the “hero versus hero” arc. It has been translated directly in adaptations like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 and the MCU’s Captain America: Civil War. Within the Marvel Comics universe, crossover events such as Avengers vs. X-Men, Inhumans vs. X-Men, and A.X.E.: Judgment Day have all drawn inspiration from the original Civil War.

The 2006 crossover event was followed by a direct sequel in 2016. Ten years later, Marvel has revisited the original Superhuman Registration Act, but the publisher is yet to confirm an official Civil War III. However, the first hints at a new iteration of the conflict may already be starting to show, just in a different continuity.

A Third Civil War Is Inevitable

Marvel’s Most Famous Hero-Versus-Hero Story Doesn’t Feel Like A Duology

Marvel’s original Civil War drove a wedge between Tony Stark’s national security pragmatism and Captain America’s fierce stance on civil liberties. Ten years later, the 2016 sequel Civil War II struggled under the weight of a rushed narrative and an unconvincing predictive justice premise centering on the Inhuman Ulysses. However, Civil War II‘s flaws don’t invalidate the event’s concept. A third major hero-versus-hero conflict can serve as a final act for Marvel’s Civil War trilogy, with the narrative freedom to return to the deeply personal, gray-area ethics that made the original a pop-culture phenomenon.

A full decade has now elapsed since the Marvel superhero community last tore itself apart over the ethics of profiling the future in Civil War II, and there’s already a considerable narrative vacuum ripe for exploitation. Ten years of publication history have seen the Marvel multiverse evolve significantly, from the fall of the mutant nation of Krakoa to the rise of Hydra to Knull’s attempt to conquer Earth to Varnae’s takeover and the subsequent regime change between Doctor Doom and Red Hulk. Judgment Day also provided a Civil War 2.5, with the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Eternals fighting each other.

The emergence of a vibrant new generation of heroes provides the perfect fuel for a new war. A modern schism could easily weaponize the generational divide between veteran heroes and the younger vanguard, and pit the uncompromising heroism of Ms. Marvel and Miles Morales against the more weathered worldview of their mentors. Disputes over the cosmic jurisdiction of Earth’s defenses following One World Under Doom and Armageddon, or a war between earthbound heroes and cosmic guardians influenced by Imperial could reshape the status quo for a new era.

Ultimate Universe’s Finale Teases A Civil War Between Iron Lad And Luke Cage

Earth-6160 Might Be Heading Toward A Tony Stark Vs Luke Cage Divide

The Ultimates turn the tide in their war against the Maker, and Earth-6160’s Reed Richards a.k.a. Doom defies the odds to defeat the Maker on Earth-6160. Ultimate Universe: Finale ends Marvel’s second Ultimate Universe on a bright note, and it also reveals that this timeline will return. Besides setting up Earth-6160’s Victor von Doom as an eventual antagonist, Ultimate Universe: Finale also teases future events in this continuity. Tony Stark foresees multiple conflicts, including Thor joining the Celestials, Iron Lad battling Kang, the Americans opposing the Red Skulls, Namorita leading the Atlanteans, and Stark fighting Luke Cage.

The Maker’s chokehold on Earth-6160 required an unprecedented joint effort by heroes and anti-heroes alike. Characters like Winter Soldier Wolverine, Doom, Shen Qi, the Maximoff Twins, Jim Hammond, and the Guardians of the Galaxy would have never worked together if not because of the Maker and his Council’s direct influence on their lives. However, once the Maker’s threat is gone, their timeline likely won’t retain its peace forever. The aftermath of the Maker’s defeat leaves the Ultimate Universe’s heroes prone to conflict, especially regarding the way superheroes and vigilantes tackle similar threats in the future.

Earth-6160’s Civil War Could Be A Better Version Of Civil War II

Ultimate Iron Lad May Rely Too Much On His Predictions

The new Ultimate Universe provides the perfect stage to reconstruct Civil War II‘s premise into a far more compelling ideological conflict. In the 2016 sequel, the central debate over predictive justice felt heavily forced because it relied on the vague premonitions of the Inhuman Ulysses, which depicted Carol Danvers as a one-dimensional hero. Ultimate Universe: Finale‘s ending tease might lead to a battle between Tony Stark and Luke Cage where the former starts relying too much on his predictive algorithms. Armed with advanced technology and data harvested from the Maker’s files, Ultimate Iron Lad could easily represent a danger to his fellow heroes’ free will.

Ultimate Iron Lad’s data-driven approach meets its counterpoint in Luke Cage, whose grounded worldview directly challenges Tony Stark’s technocratic hubris. Cage has already demonstrated his fierce independence when he rejected a formal spot on the Ultimates, choosing instead to dismantle the remnants of the Maker’s cabal through his own grassroots methods. To a community leader like Cage, Tony Stark’s reliance on calculations and preemptive strikes resembles the same authoritarian control that the Maker used to subjugate their world in the first place.

Marvel’s Second Ultimate Universe Might Adapt More Famous Events

Earth-6160’s History Is Only Starting

Now that the Maker has lost his grip on history, the Ultimate Universe naturally rushes to correct itself, potentially leading to the beginning of familiar conflicts, with several major changes. Instead of a generic robot rebellion, an Ultimate version of Ultron’s many attempts at rebellion could emerge directly from Tony Stark’s desperate attempts to automate world defense in the wake of the Cabal’s downfall. Similarly, Earth-6160’s diverse landscape of active heroes suggest a drastically different take on The Infinity Gauntlet, possibly with more than one major supervillain attempting to accomplish what Thanos achieved in the original 1991 arc.

The Ultimate Universe’s victory over the Maker also opens the door for reimagined takes on other storylines like Superior Spider-Man or King in Black. Given that Peter Parker starts his superhero journey as a married father, a body-swapping crisis with a similarly seasoned Otto Octavius would threaten the safety of Spider-Man’s mature family dynamic and offer a completely different psychological struggle over Peter’s stolen life. Meanwhile, a symbiote crisis could bypass typical alien-invasion clichés and instead manifest as a dormant, bioengineered fail-safe buried deep within the Maker’s secret vaults.

Ultimate Universe: Finale is now available from Marvel Comics

Would you like to see Civil War III take place in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe?

Publisher(s)

Marvel

Writer

Brian Michael