The past three years were extraordinarily dense with new content from the MCU, but there were few meaningful connections between the various stories. With no essential plot threads, audiences stopped feeling any obligation to actually watch all this stuff, and the result was Disney's worst box office year in a long time.

Now, with the release of Echo, the MCU is on semi-hiatus, with only Deadpool 3 currently scheduled for 2024. Marvel is taking a pause to figure out what to do with the franchise's story direction--including how to deal with Jonathan Majors and Kang the Conqueror. They've got their work cut out for them, because the MCU is a huge mess these days--there are many dangling story threads, and very little movement has happened with any of them. In other words, there have been lots of Chapter 1s since 2021, and not a lot of Chapter 2s.

Because of that, there are probably at least a few threads you've completely forgotten about. Like Moon Knight, which made no references to other Marvel things, and which has never been referenced elsewhere in the MCU at all. With so few connections between the stories, it becomes easy to forget the many loose threads that remain.

With so few connections between the stories, it becomes easy to forget the neglected threads

But we can help with that. What you're about to read isn't a full recap of the MCU's story so far or anything like that--I have a life beyond writing nerd blogs. Instead, this is just a quick trip around the MCU to give a refresher about where each outstanding plot thread currently stands and what all the major characters were last up to as far as we know. That's up to and including Echo, so be warned that there will be spoilers here.

Kang the Conqueror

The new main villain of the current era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was supposed to be Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors. We've seen a few versions of this character--He Whe Remains on Loki Season 1, a pretty low-key variant from the 1800s called Victor Timely in Loki Season 2, and one of the actual Kangs in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania.

But Majors is out of the franchise after being convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, and so things are about to change in some way or another. But Disney has delayed essentially the entire franchise because of that and the disastrous box office performance of The Marvels, and it's tough to say if we'll ever see Kang again. But at the end of Quantumania we got a look at the Council of Kangs, so there are many of his variants still potentially available. That said, there's a better option than simply re-casting Kang.

Ravonna Renslayer

There's also Renslayer, the former administrator of the TVA who it turned out was a top lieutenant for He Who Remains in the past multiversal war--before he erased her memory. Renslayer has been marooned at the end of time, where she learned the truth about her old boss. She could be the new Kang.

Captain Marvel

Carol Danvers teamed up with Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan on a galaxy-hopping adventure to stop a new Kree rampage--and after a lot of fighting and death, Carol managed to pull it off by using her powers to reignite the Kree homeworld's dying sun, and eliminate the need for further bloodshed.

Ms. Marvel

The teen hero Kamala Khan, after honing her new Marvelous powers with Carol and Monica, returned to Earth with another magic bangle to pair with the one she got on her show. With both of them, Kamala has a whole new level of power that basically nobody really understands yet. And now she's teaming up with Kate Bishop for what could be the seeds of a Young Avengers group.

Monica Rambeau

Monica had to sacrifice herself to close a rift in spacetime at the end of The Marvels--but in this case, that sacrifice didn't involve dying. Instead, she became trapped in an alternate universe, where she met the X-Man known as Beast and a superpowered version of her dead mother, who goes by the name Binary. Monica still doesn't have her own superhero name, though.

With Monica in another universe and the likely key to the introduction of the X-Men to the MCU, she's almost the franchise main character right now.

Nick Fury

The former SHIELD boss was a key participant in the events of The Marvels, though he was primarily concerned with saving his space station full of Skrulls by having the alien kitty cats eat them temporarily for easy storage so they could be evacuated to Earth.

Echo

By the end of her series, Maya Lopez gained the power of her ancestors, and used it to apparently change Kingpin's memory so he didn't remember beating his father to death with a hammer when he was a kid. What else can Maya do with this power? Honestly, we don't have a clue. When we last saw her, Maya was leaving her hometown, and we don't know where she's going. But the Daredevil show is the best bet, given Kingpin's involvement and Maya's own fight with Daredevil in the premiere episode.

Kingpin

It seems right now that Echo has served mostly to tee up Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin for some future role, presumably in the new Daredevil series. We don't know yet how Maya's power changed him, but his final scene on Echo shows him listening to a radio talking head discuss the New York mayoral race--who's ready for Mayor Kingpin?

Gi'ah the Super Skrull

Talos' daughter underwent a major change during the Secret Invasion finale, as she and the villain Gravik were given a lot of superpowersafter being fused with the DNA of a bunch of folks who fought in the big battle at the end of Endgame–including Captain Marvel. Gi'ah killed Gravik, and now she might be the most powerful being on Earth.

Ant-Man and the Wasp and the rest of their family

After this Quantum Realm incident that we saw in Quantumania, Ant-Man and his family are once more living their normal lives in the real world.

Ghost and Dr. Bill Foster

These characters have never been referenced since they played key roles in the second Ant-Man movie. Last we heard they were in hiding, with Foster (Laurence Fishburne) attempting to stabilize Ghost, who had become a quantum entity because of experiments her father had done with Foster and Hank Pym decades earlier. It's possible they'll never return.

Loki and Sylvie

After Sylvie killed He Who Remains in Season 1, reality began to unravel in Season 2. But it turns out this was still part of He Who Remains' failsafe plan to force someone else to take his place as the boss of the multiverse. That someone ended up being Loki, who spent the season getting control of his new time powers before becoming the God of Stories existing outside the multiverse and keeping it under control.

And that leaves Sylvie as the only regular Loki still active that we know of. With the old Loki out of the picture sort of, could Sylvie take his place in the MCU?

The retired Guardians of the Galaxy

After defeating the High Evolutionary and saving all those children, a large chunk of the Guardians called it quits. Drax decided to stay with the kids, because he liked being a dad, and Nebula joins him. The alternate universe Gamora that joined the main MCU timeline in Avengers: Endgame got back with the Ravagers. Mantis now has a bunch of new large monster friends that she's riding around with.

The new Guardians

While most of the old team is riding off into the sunset, there's still a Guardians of the Galaxy out there, now led by Rocket. The rest of the team includes Groot, Cosmo the dog, Kraglin the Ravager, Adam Warlock and his pet Blurp, and one of the weird children they rescued named Phyla.

Peter Quill

The Star-Lord, meanwhile, is no longer with the Guardians but he's also not leaving the franchise yet. But we last saw him on earth having breakfast with his grandpa.

Natasha Romanoff's family

While the Black Widow herself is dead, her family lives on and will continue to be a part of the MCU. The last time we saw her "parents"--David Harbour's Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz's Melina--was at the end of the Black Widow film, set between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. They helped Natasha take down Dreykov and the whole Widow program, and then they left with the rest of the surviving Widows. Their whereabouts are otherwise unknown.

Natasha's "sister" and fellow Black Widow Yelena Belova, on the other hand, has been active in the present, after being snapped by Thanos and being returned at the end of Endgame. Yelena showed up in Hawkeye to confront Clint, having been told by Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Valentina that he killed Natasha. But the truth came to light, and Yelena teamed up with Clint briefly before disappearing once again.

Hawkeye and Kate Bishop

Hawkeye's sins came back to haunt him on his Disney+ series, when some criminal elements he dealt with during the Snap are trying to take him out in the present. He teamed up with a young archer named Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), whose mother was also involved with these criminals, to deal with that threat and the one posed by Yelena mentioned above. Hawkeye is currently hanging out with his family and Kate, who he brought home as his protege/bonus daughter.

Kate, however, also just met Kamala Khan in the mid-credits scene from The Marvels, so maybe she'll pop up again sooner than later.

Captain America and the Winter Soldier

Sam Wilson, once known as the Falcon, has taken on the mantle of Captain America, though without the super soldier serum that Steve Rogers benefitted from. To do that, he and Bucky Barnes--the Winter Soldier--had to take down a different Captain America. That man, John Walker, is still alive and has rebranded as US Agent and works for Valentina now.

We last saw Sam and Bucky hanging out with Sam's family in Louisiana.

Wanda Maximoff

Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch battled across the multiverse in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, all for control of the Darkhold, a book that offers the power to rule the multiverse for the greatest possible cost. Wanda was eventually defeated, and she fell on her metaphorical sword, so to speak, killing herself and destroying the Darkhold for good.

Doctor Strange and America Chavez

But Doctor Strange didn't come away unscathed--dabbling with the Darkhold left him with a third eye, and then a mysterious sorceress named Clea showed up and told him about a new dimensional incursion that he caused. And the multiverse-hopping America Chavez decided to stay in the prime MCU reality and train at Kamar-Taj with Wong.

Vision

After the original Vision was killed by Thanos in Infinity War, he was resurrected twice in WandaVision. One of them was Wanda's magical recreation of Vision using her Chaos magic that was unlocked by the Mind Stone that had given the original Vision life. The other was a government reconstruction of the original Vision's body that was intended as a weapon. But Wanda's magical Vision restored Vision's old memories to his rebuilt body, and the result was a new person that we know as White Vision.

The magic version of Vision was removed from reality when Wanda ended the hex on Westview, and White Vision is still at large.

Mordo

While we met alternate versions of Mordo in Multiverse of Madness, the Mordo from the prime MCU world--the one from the first Doctor Strange film--remains at large and presumably still wants to kill Strange.

The Eternals

7,000 years ago, a group of super beings were created and sent to Earth supposedly to shepherd humanity and protect the world from monsters known as Deviants. But it turns out they were actually designed for a secret other job: to protect the Earth itself, which was actually the seed for a new Celestial. It partially emerged--a giant hand reached out of the ocean--but the surviving Eternals went against their programming and prevented this world-destroying birth from taking place. That hand is still sticking out of the ocean, presumably, but it has not been mentioned anywhere else in the MCU yet.

Shang-Chi

Shang-Chi defeated his ancient father and the Dweller-In-Darkness that was locked away near Ta Lo, and now he possesses the powerful Ten Rings artifact. He was last seen in the company of Wong at Kamar-Taj, where he, Bruce Banner and Captain Marvel discussed the magical nature of the rings and what their origin might be.

Shang-Chi's sister Xialing took a different path. She chose to take control of the Ten Rings criminal organization that their father had been running for centuries. To be clear, there's the Ten Rings artifact that gives people magic power, and there's the Ten Rings organization, and these are completely separate.

Thor

After pursuing Gorr the God Butcher to the center of the universe and handling the threat that he represented, the being Eternity resurrects Gorr's daughter just as Gorr himself dies. Thor, wielding the reassembled Mjolnir, gives the young girl his axe Stormbreaker, and the two now patrol the universe as the new superhero duo Love and Thunder.

Meanwhile, Thor's old girlfriend Jane Foster has died of cancer after her own stint as Thor and now resides in Valhalla with Heimdall and the other Asgardian dead. Valkyrie, after being injured in the fight against Gorr, once again rules New Asgard on Earth.

Spider-Man

Thanks to all the multiversal shenanigans that occurred during Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man's secret identity is fully secure--meaning Peter Parker is fully on his own in the world with no friends and nobody who knows he's a superhero. MJ and Ned are now dating each other, and Peter's whole family is dead.

The Black Panther, Namor, and the Wakandans

With T'Challa dying of an unknown illness at the beginning of the film--a nod to the late Chadwick Boseman--his sister Shuri has taken over the mantle of the Black Panther. But she decided to travel the world instead of staying in Wakanda, leaving the throne to M'Baku. In Haiti, Nakia raises the secret child she had with T'Challa, a boy named Toussaint.

And Namor still rules Talokan, but now in alliance with Wakanda, as he expects they'll need to unite against the nations that would exploit them.

War Machine

After being quite prominent in Phases 2 and 3, Colonel James Rhodes has made only one MCU appearance since Endgame: in the premiere episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, when he questioned Sam Wilson's decision not to take on the Captain America role. Sam did eventually become the new Captain America, but we haven't seen Rhodey since--he's set to appear next in the Disney+ series Secret Invasion.

Pepper Potts and Morgan Stark

Neither Pepper nor Morgan, her daughter with Tony Stark, have been seen since Avengers: Endgame. But they aren't necessarily gone for good--Lexi Rabe, the actress who played Morgan in Endgame, apparently had some kind of appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home that ended up being cut.

Moon Knight

The Moon Knight, whose real name is Marc Spector (or Steven Grant or Jake Lockley, depending on the circumstances) and who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, remains trapped in the service of the Egyptian god Khonshu after defeating and killing the villainous Arthur Harrow and his genocidal patron deity Ammit. And in a similar fashion, his romantic interest Layla now serves the god Tawaret and has become the hero Secret Scarab. Moon Knight featured no connections to the rest of the MCU, but if this version of Khonshu is like his comics counterpart, then he should be very well acquainted with Kang the Conqueror.

She-Hulk

When we last saw Jennifer Walters, she was physically bursting through the fourth wall to make the computer that runs the MCU rewrite the ending of her series finale while it was happening in order to prevent her billionaire stalker Todd from also becoming a Hulk. Then she started dating Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil).

He-Hulk

With Jennifer Walters being his cousin and sharing his green affliction, Bruce Banner naturally popped up multiple times on the She-Hulk series. In the final scene he shows up, having freshly returned once more from Sakaar, the planet he was living enduring Thor: Ragnarok. It turned out he fathered a muscular green son, named Skaar, while he was there and had just found out about it. Bruce remains in his Professor Hulk form, meaning he's big and green but with Bruce's mind intact.