Everybody's Freaking Out About: Huge Marvel news and Star Wars spin-off rumors

Welcome to Everybody's Freaking Out About... Since everything these days is either a spin-off or a reboot, we thought we'd do the same with our What's Everybody Mad About This Week?! series. We're here to give you a look at all the things fans were freaking out about over the past week. Strap in!

We're digging into the things that really stuck in fandom's collective craw — the things that had fans all-caps-key-smashing in anger, joy, excitement, or some combination of those things. There were probably tears. No, scratch that, there were definitely tears.

This week, the internet was all-in on Disney properties, including Marvel and Star Wars. Let's punch it!

Audiences got to see a lot of the expensive, elaborate, often-geeky Super Bowl ads ahead of their game time premiere. Planters teased us with the death of Mr. Peanut before his resurrection as a… baby Mr. Peanut; Walmart brought together many of the greatest sci-fi franchises into one blow-out mashup; and Google showed off some A.I. power that broke everyone’s hearts. What we didn't get to see before the big game, though, was a Disney+ Marvel TV spot.

And, oh boy, did people freak out.

The ad is literally 30 seconds long, but I probably screamed throughout the entirety of those 30 seconds. I imagine a lot of other people did, too.

We got first footage of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki — all of which showed us basically nothing, but boy was it exciting. I might still be screaming.

Okay, so it wasn't nothing. There have been some theories that we're going to see Wanda and Vision's twins in WandaVision (exciting), so that's definitely something. We got some very, very cool The Falcon and Winter Soldier shots. We got Loki vowing to burn this s**t to the ground.

Who's excited? I'm excited! And so was everyone else.

Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney

Let me be very, very clear here: This is not confirmed. This "news" comes from Walt Disney Company chairman Bob Iger talking to investors after a quarterly earnings meeting on Tuesday and using a lot of nebulous language that people (and news sites) are now kinda blowing out of proportion.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Iger talked about "the possibility of infusing [The Mandalorian] with more characters and taking those characters in their own direction in terms of series."

Again: Not confirmation of spin-off Star Wars series. But that didn't stop people from grabbing onto this nugget and running with it.

And you know what? I can't blame them. As the Star Wars galaxy expands into television with The Mandalorian Season 2 (now confirmed to be premiering in October 2020), the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor, and The Clone Wars Season 7, I can't blame people for seeing the possibilities. They are truly endless.

A lot of fans joked that the titular Mandalorian himself — Din Djarin — deserves a spin-off, as The Mandalorian is really Baby Yoda’s show more than his. Which… yeah, that checks out. Or we could just have a second Baby Yoda show. Maybe a Baby Yoda talk show?

I don't know, it's Friday, and I'm clearly still freaking out.

Credit: Michael Kovac / Getty Images for STARZ

Thought we were done with Marvel news, did you? Never. The Marvel news will never end.

That is to say that more Marvel news this week came in the form of Sam Raimi reportedly being in talks to take on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The film's original slated director, Scott Derrickson, left the project on January 9 due to "creative differences." Take that as you will.

Where do you know Raimi from, you might ask? Well, he is, of course, the man, the myth, the legend, the director behind the original three Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire as everyone's favorite web-slinger.

A lot of Marvel fans will tell you to this day that Spider-Man 2 (2004) is the best Spidey movie of all time. I respectfully disagree — but that's not important right now, even though this is my column and I can do what I want.

What's important is that Raimi might be returning to the superhero world. And given that the Doctor Strange sequel is going to have a horror vibe to it, Raimi is honestly a perfect choice. This is the man behind Drag Me to Hell and The Evil Dead; he knows his horror.

Everyone is still freaking out. Rightfully so.