Captain America: Civil War is here, kicking off Marvel Studios Phase 3 block of movies with a 'funny, thrilling, cool and intelligent drama' (as our review put it). There's another nine or ten movies coming in this phase of storytelling over the next four or so years, and they're off to a flying start.
And now the dust has settled on Steve Rogers and Tony Stark's emotional bust-up, where does this leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Here are some of the things that might shape the future of the Avengers and their allies.
(Warning: Contains spoilers for Captain America: Civil War.)
1. Captain America vs Iron Man
This might make us sound terribly naïve, but we expected Steve and Tony to bury the hatchet and team up against a common foe by the end of the film.
But Civil War is far more sophisticated than we had ever anticipated. Cap and Iron Man have very much gone their own ways, and there's no way this won't be reflected in the upcoming movies.
Neither of them have another solo movie on the schedule, and how much longer can we seriously expect Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans to stay at Marvel? Could the two-part Avengers: Infinity War be as much about reuniting the pair and bringing their story to a close as it is a fistfight with Thanos?
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2. Two teams of Avengers
One of the effects of the original Civil War comic was the splitting of the Avengers into Iron Man's pro-registration team (in the Mighty Avengers series) and Cap's underground heroes (in New Avengers).
We knew that the Avengers choose sides for the new film, but we didn't realise that Phase 3 was going to be a two-team world.
3. The Wakanda connection
Marvel has traditionally been big on its origin stories, and that's what we thought we were going to get with the Chadwick Boseman-starring Black Panther in 2018.
But with Cap's Avengers hiding out in his hyper-advanced African nation Wakanda, and the movie being the next best chance to feature the Avengers (after Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and the apparently off-world Thor: Ragnarok), it might turn out to be more of a Civil War-style ensemble piece than we predicted.
4. Spider-Man is not alone
It's official – Spider-Man is a part of the MCU. For the first time, we have a new Peter Parker who isn't operating in a vacuum where he is apparently the first and only superhero of note.
How exactly this is going to impact his mysteriously/weirdly titled Spider-Man: Homecoming solo movie is yet to be revealed, but with Robert Downey Jr apparently showing up in his movie the cross-pollination is only just beginning.
5. Vision's dark turn
Paul Bettany's synthetic humanoid Vision starts off as the comic relief as things grow increasingly bad between Cap and Iron Man, but he has his own dark turn as his relationship with Wanda gets more complicated.
In the comics, she happens to be his ex-wife, and trust us when we say that got very messy. There have also been various stories where his search for humanity and Ultron-related origins have seen him lose his emotions and even try to create peace on Earth under a totalitarian regime.
We're not necessarily expecting the MCU version to go to those extreme (though we're not putting any money on it), but it's clear that Vision is left wondering whether his closeness to Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch might be interfering with his proper, logical functioning. We'll be keeping a very close eye on him in Phase 3.
