I think you missed some of the points I was making.
Black Widow may be a flagship character now, but that's only because of the characterization and depth added to her retroactively. In the earlier movies, she was little more than a sexy plot device.
It's true that Captain Marvel is an incredibly powerful character, and that she had a solo movie. But what I was saying is that Marvel made 15 male solo films before they made one with a woman. Having a token female film out of that many male ones is barely diversity, and it's definitely not equality.
And as I mentioned before, there were quite a few television shows in the MCU before Wandavision. Scarlet Witch did not "launch the MCU's television brand."
You can find many individual examples of Marvel doing a diversity thing. I'm not denying any of that. What I'm saying is that if you look at all the movies (and tv shows) in the MCU overall, they haven't done a particularly good job of it. The diversity that they do is strategic, not realistic, which is why the "one of each" thing happens so much.
Marvel does not use their brand to promote diversity, they use diversity to promote their brand.
Well, I think we have divergent views on this. I think that Marvel established their brand with their biggest names and titles who are all, traditionally, white men. Because they were not an established cinematic brand yet, at all. Once they became established, they became known as the brand, and believe me, I read this crap every day on the internet in comments sections, that are "trying to shove diversity down our throats!!!" Millions of fans think Marvel goes way too far with all of this as opposed to you who thinks Marvel is only doing it to cash in on the popularity of diversity right now. Of course, diversity is actually UN-popular with about half of this country, so that wouldn't really be a good strategy considering a significant portion of the other half would still see the movies.
Black Panther was such a colossal risk and changes Hollywood outright and probably forever. They did not have to do it. Their movies were habitually landing on the highest-grossing of all time lists, pretty much every outing. They chose to use that platform in a way that is actually extremely unpopular with millions of fans. My god, the whining of incels and basement-dwellers and so many others over the de-sexifying and empowering of all the Marvel female characters is deafening. And NO ONE has ever taken the
BP gamble, putting $200M in the hands of an essentially all-Black cast and crew to tell an all-Black story with all-Black themes. It is arguably the single boldest move for inclusion and diversity in the history of cinema. And it was a risk because a big part of the reason no one's ever done it is because the powers that be believed that it would never make money. Never make money. So a cash-grab it can NEVER be called. They put it all on the line for this. And they delivered.
Now who's the flagship of the MCU television? Wanda Maximoff. Who's the most powerful character in the MCU? Carol Danvers (played by the most reviled actress among incels). Who's No.2? Wanda again. Who was the actual leader of the Avengers in the final movies? Natasha Romanov. What do we got coming up?
Shang-Chi,
The Marvels,
Wakanda Forever.
You're just not going to convince me that Marvel decided to do something that's immensely unpopular with millions of people, in fact is THE political battleground right now for half the country, because they thought it was going to make them more money. They were already making
all the money. All of it. They basically could not make more than they were. And they risked it to include people who have historically been marginalized in Hollywood and possibly change the way Hollywood works forever.
Marvel = Heroes.