Five questions I hope Fantastic Four: First Steps answers

It’s not long till Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters, and with the MCU debut of Marvel’s first family imminent, we have some burning questions. Questions so hot they would make Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) start to sweat. Because not only is Fantastic Four: First Steps the next movie in the massive franchise, after a not-great year at the box office for Marvel, a lot is riding on the third (official) film iteration of Marvel’s first family.

Specifically, Johnny, Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) aren’t just showing up in First Steps... They’re already a cornerstone of the massive Avengers: Doomsday cast, which will pit them and every other hero (mostly) in the MCU against Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. And likely they’ll be key to Avengers: Secret Wars, as well. Not only that, but a sequel to First Steps – can we please title it Fantastic Four 2 The Streets, please? – is reportedly also in development.

Basically, after Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts underperformed at the box office, and nearly every recent Marvel TV series has not exactly torn up the Nielsen charts, all hope for the future of the MCU rests on the Fantastic Four to save the day. So can they do it? Can First Steps turn Marvel around? If they adequately answer these five burning questions, they will (and also other factors, we guess).

1. How much time passes in Fantastic Four: First Steps?

While the movie itself runs a relatively brisk 115 minutes, based on the trailers, there seems to be a curious amount of time that passes in the movie. We know, thanks to the official Marvel Comics tie-in, that First Steps picks up four years (appropriately) after the team has gotten their powers. They’ve already fought multiple battles, are celebrities all over their retro-future world, and are generally well established as the protectors of Earth.

However, we’ve also seen that likely towards the beginning of the movie, Johnny and Ben find out that Sue is pregnant. And at some point in the film, it’s clear that Reed and Sue’s son, Franklin, is born. Not only that, but thanks to official clips teasing the film, we know that uber-baddie Galactus (Ralph Ineson) is willing to not eat Planet Earth if the FF gives him their baby, like some sort of latter-day Fat Bastard. You may be aware of this, but babies usually take 9-10 months to be born. So, barring some sort of time-skipping machine built by Reed that speeds up Sue’s pregnancy, does the movie take place over the course of a year? Or more?

2. Who is Natasha Lyonne playing?

We’re mere days away from the debut of the movie, and we still don’t know who Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne is playing in the film. Granted, we also don’t officially know who John Malkovich is playing (though rumour points to Red Ghost). And we didn’t know who Paul Walter Hauser was, though the character of Mole Man in the Fantastic Four: First Steps comic book looks a whole lot like him, so that’s one mystery we can likely put to rest.

But Lyonne is an interesting one as, unlike Malkovich, she hasn’t even appeared in the trailers. Smart money puts her as playing Alicia Masters, the girlfriend of The Thing in Marvel Comics. And Malkovich could be playing her father, the villain known as The Puppet Master. But that’s also pure speculation.

Another option? Lyonne is reprising her role as Byrdie the Duck, the daughter of Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) from the animated What If…? But, uh, probably not.

3. How does the Thing shave?

Back in 2013, for Man of Steel, there was an ad campaign for Gillette that posited we know so many things about Superman (Henry Cavill), but we don’t know how he shaves. Except we do, thanks to the comics: he bounces his heat vision off his bathroom mirror to shave down his beard. You know, normal stuff.

But when it comes to The Thing mysteriously growing a beard in First Steps – see bullet-point one regarding a potential time skip in the movie – how does The Thing shave? While we have seen The Thing with a beard in the comics, the first time was when he time-traveled to become Blackbeard (don’t ask) and grew a human hair beard. The second time was in a future-set comic where he had a long beard, but died before he could groom himself. The answer is likely some sort of laser or something like Superman. But as is, this is a mystery for the movie to solve (or not).

4. Will the Fantastic Four… lose?

It seems unlikely for a superhero team to lose their big fight in their titular movie. And certainly, they’ve managed to beat Galactus multiple times in the comic books. But there’s a shot in the trailer that’s been alarming fans since it first appeared, showing a large part of what looks like planet Earth imploding.

We’ll discuss this a bit more on the next point, but is it possible that First Steps has a bummer of an ending, with the team unable to stop Galactus from snacking on their planet? The answer to this is likely “no,” and that shot indicates something else is happening to either the FF’s Earth, or another planet in the galaxy, or another Earth in the multiverse. But we’ll find out in the film.

5. Will Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom appear?

It seems kind of crazy to have Doctor Doom appearing in Avengers: Doomsday next year, but not, in some fashion, show up in the debut MCU movie from the superhero team he’s most associated with. While it’s unlikely that Doom will be a major facet of the movie, which already is introducing multiple villains, tackling the family dynamics, and more, it’s fair to speculate that the masked baddie will pop up in some fashion in a post-credits scene.

But that brings up a few more related questions, tied to the question above. We know, thanks to the end credits scene on Thunderbolts*, that 14 months after the events of that movie, the FF rockets into the main MCU universe – or at least their rocket heads to the universe. Whether they’re inside or not is TBD. So will the end of First Steps find the FF heading to the 616 after their planet is destroyed, giving us their perspective on the Thunderbolts* scene? Will they be trailing Doctor Doom? Or will we not see that until Doomsday? We’ll know all this for sure when Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters.

For more on all things MCU, read our guide to upcoming Marvel movies, and if you're confused, how to watch Marvel movies in order.