From the moment that Disney bought Fox it was a question of when, not if, the first family of comics, the Fantastic Four, would be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the end of last year Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige confirmed that a Fantastic Four movie, the third shot at a franchise since 2005, was in development. At this point, the only thing we know about the movie is that Spider-Man franchise director Marc Webb will helm the film. Details about the movie itself are largely unknown, but professional geek Kevin Smith thinks he may have found the MCU's path to Fantastic Four in a recent episode of WandaVision.
In a recent episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast, Kevin Smith explains that he thought an early dialogue exchange in the fourth episode of WandaVision could be meant to lay the groundwork. In the scene, Monica Rambeau is talking with the head of S.W.O.R.D. and he tells her that most of their space exploration is no longer being handled by humans. Smith suggests that this dialogue could be there to set the scene for whatever is being done with Fantastic Four. According to Smith...
Somewhere in there it feels like the Fantastic Four lies. Whether they're not going to send them into space, but instead go into the quantum realm or whatever fuck. It seemed like an unnecessary scene until you really started looking at the dialogue. Not an unnecessary scene but unnecessary dialogue, until you really start thinking about going, like 'wait a second, maybe this is just sewing the seeds for like, what is a manned mission for S.W.O.R.D? And if so, is one of those missions send [the Fantastic Four] into outer space.
It's certainly true that the details of how S.W.O.R.D. works regarding manned vs unmanned space missions isn't information that is strictly necessary to the WandaVision episode that it's in and hasn't been important since then either. It's potentially meant as part of the explanation of how Monica Rambeau ends up involved in the whole WandaVision story, but it seems like a lot more explanation than we actually need, so are the lines there for another reason?
It's certainly possible. It wouldn't be the first time that we'd had lines of dialogue that seemed innocuous at first turn out to "mean something." And it's could be that this is meant to at least hint at this possibility. At the same time, the Fantastic Four movie is several years away and there's no indication that the script is even being worked on yet. While there might already be some ideas within Marvel Studios regarding how the first family of comics will join the MCU, it seems more likely that these decisions haven't been made yet. If not, then this dialogue may mean less than it appears. Although, somebody writing the new movie could certainly use these lines as part of the Fantastic Four backstory if they wanted to.
