A new volume of essays exploring the on-screen politics and real-world implications of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s expansion into the multiverse. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) moved on from the Thanos storyline, it became more political than ever—both on screen and off.

The Marvel Cinematic ​Universe (MCU) is the most expansive and widely viewed fictional narrative in the history of cinema. In 2009, Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, including its subsidiary film production company, Marvel Studios. Since then, the MCU—the collection of multimedia Marvel Studios products that share a single fictional storyline—has grown from two feature films to thirty interconnected movies, nine streaming Disney+ series, a half dozen short films, and...