Ms. Marvel and Obi-Wan Kenobi could be preparing to compete for viewers, if a new rumor about the Marvel TV show is to be believed.
In what should be a world first for Disney, the company's two biggest franchises, Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), could face off on Disney Plus.
According to The Hollywood Partnership website, which regularly notifies Los Angeles residents of upcoming Hollywood street closures ahead of movie and television premieres, Ms. Marvel's coming out party is scheduled for Thursday, June 2. .
A quick look at the release dates for other Marvel Phase 4 projects, including Moon Knight and Doctor Strange 2, suggests their releases will be Tuesday, March 22, and Monday, May 2. There are eight and four days left respectively before Moon Knight and Doctor Strange 2 are officially released.
Using these premiere and release dates as a guide for Ms. Marvel, Reddit users think they'll have figured it out when Ms. Marvel hits Disney Plus on Wednesday, June 8. Normally, this would be big news for MCU fans. We already knew that Ms. Marvel would be coming to Disney Plus this summer, but a concrete release date has yet to be revealed. So any hint of its upcoming release would be sucked up by those awaiting official news on that front.
But there's a problem with this potential release date: It puts Ms. Marvel in direct competition with the standalone Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show on Disney Plus.
Disney is generally very cautious about its streaming platform's launch strategy, especially when it comes to Marvel and Star Wars productions.
Shows like The Mandalorian, WandaVision, The Book of Boba Fett, and Hawkeye have never really competed for a share of the Disney Plus subscriber base. Each of these projects, and their various siblings, went off on their own, an exit strategy that has kept Disney Plus's biggest series from alienating viewers from one another.
The potential arrival of Ms. Marvel in June could break this planning playbook. If its first episode hits Disney Plus on June 8, it would air at the exact same time as the third Obi-Wan entry. Given the hype surrounding the two shows, this would be a very big and extremely confusing move on Disney's part. After all, why are two titans of entertainment vying for viewers' attention?
The scapegoat, or should it be a girl? – in This must be Ms. Marvel. Star Wars fans have been asking for a standalone Obi-Wan story for years. And, as MCU fans eagerly await the arrival of one of Marvel's newest popular superheroes, Ms. Marvel is arguably the "underdog" in Marvel's Disney Plus 2022 lineup. That's if you compare it to the Oscar Isaac starring Moon Knight, the upcoming legal comedy She-Hulk and probably the action Secret Invasion, which sees the return of Samuel L. Jackson as the iconic Nick Fury.
They wouldn't hold a red carpet premiere a month before the show started. This confirms that Ms. Marvel will be released in June. They can put it on Friday so that Kenobi does not mount. March 9, 2022
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This isn't all bad news for Ms. Marvel or Obi-Wan. Both shows will be available to stream anytime on Disney Plus. Viewers interested in Marvel and Star Wars can simply watch one before the other, if new episodes of each show arrive simultaneously.
There's also the fact that some MCU fans just aren't interested in Star Wars, and vice versa. Therefore, launching Ms. Marvel and Obi-Wan side by side offers more options for consumers who only intend to watch the show that most intrigues them.
If it wanted to, Disney could always reverse its decision to launch the Marvel TV series on a Wednesday. The first MCU shows to debut on the Disney streamer, WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, launched on Friday. That release schedule changed with Loki in June 2021, with new entries of MCU TV shows releasing mid-week in a bid to distance them from competing shows on Netflix, Prime Video, and more on Fridays. Yet another change in launch day strategy is unlikely to be high on Disney's agenda.
It's unclear if Ms. Marvel will debut in the middle of Obi-Wan's six-episode run on Disney Plus. We won't know for sure until Disney confirms the release date of the first one. But, given its upcoming release date, a June 2022 release seems increasingly likely.
If Ms. Marvel arrives in a few months, it will be fascinating to see if there is a way for the Marvel and Star Wars shows to co-exist if they are presented side by side. It may be a gamble on Disney's part, but with the sheer amount of MCU and Star Wars content coming to Disney Plus in 2022 and beyond, it's likely that these two titans will clash on the streamer at some point. Now, then, seems like the best time to see if they can live together.
For more Obi-Wan content, check out the first trailer for the series, which was uploaded on March 9. You can also read how to watch Marvel movies in order.