How Taylor Swift Can Save the MCU and Other Lessons in Cultivating Fandoms
This Is Not Your Average Taylor Swift/Marketing Think Piece
Looking at it now, it all seems so simple: a series of inter-connected but not purely linear movies that would add up to something greater, a cinematic universe. Despite its simplicity, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a shot in the darkest dark that made Hollywood rethink what a movie franchise could be and had every competitor studio chasing that fame with cynical clones.
The first decade of the MCU grew to dominate pop culture in a way few do any more. Ten billion-dollar movies, movie stars by the pocketful, and a frenzied fanbase that would come back every time and do a significant amount of Marvel’s marketing for them. The franchise’s crowning achievement, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (movie number 22!), culminated storylines for dozens of characters and gave dramatic send-offs to several of the highest profile stars. Endgame became the highest-grossing movie of all time, and in that moment, it felt like it wasn’t just the end of a decade, but the start of an age.
Fast forward to last December, Marvel officially declared The Marvels its first failure when they announced they would no longer report on its box office earnings after just four weeks. While The Marvels was largely a victim of incel drama queens taking swings who poisoned the well as part of an anti-woke agenda, the movie’s failure followed negative fan reaction and financial underperformance from Ant-Man and the Wasp: QuantumMania and ho-hum responses to many of the MCU’s Disney+ shows. Suddenly, the MCU’s reputation’s never been worse. Their currency of cool has been lost.
Is it over now? Does the MCU have a chance to escape these trying times? The next 2-3 years will determine whether this cinematic universe is gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames.
If Marvel doesn’t want to lose all its meaning, they need to take some lessons from one of the few fandoms that could dominate the MCU: Swifties.
Taylor Swift has saved the NFL, movie theaters, and dozens of local economies in the last year, so let’s explore the ways she can save the MCU.
The first and most obvious way is to cast Taylor into the MCU as a hero (or anti-hero). For more on that, you can scroll to the end. But we’re more interested learning lessons from the way she has cultivated her Swiftie followers. So here are 5 Ways of the Swift that the MCU should apply to their own storytelling, marketing, and fandom engagement, and that every brand should embrace to turn their consumers into fans and those fans into stans.
ONE: Dig the Rabbit Hole Deeper
Every great fandom is like a rabbit hole, which encourages fans to keep digging by providing ever-more unique, rewarding experiences the deeper you get. Taylor asks a lot of her fans (example: five different variants of her upcoming album), but those that reach the deepest levels get real benefits (an exclusive song for each of those album variants, for example). The more special the fan, the more special the rewards, like when Taylor held album listening parties for her fans in her mom’s home or how she selects one lucky fan to receive the “22 hat” during each show of the Eras Tour or her propensity for throwing likes on fans’ social media posts. Taylor’s fandom rabbit hole is so enchanting, it creates the illusion that fans can one day join her celebrity friends at its deepest level, as if by achieving .000001% top fan status on Spotify they can join her Squad and start palling around with Blake Lively and Travis Kelce.
Marvel’s fans, in contrast, don’t get similarly varied experiences. Aside from some influencer invites to movie premieres, the experience begins and ends with the core film and TV content itself. So what experiences can Marvel create to bring fans further down the rabbit hole? They can start by reviving one-shots, the 10-12 minute short films that filled in gaps between movies. Bury these on Disney+ and let fans hunt them down.
Or give us truly complimentary content across other media. Now that the MCU has been going for more than 15 years, how about an in-universe podcast commenting on all that’s gone on in that time?
But perhaps the most impactful step they can take is to stop being so adherent to a sense of continuity and canon. Taylor has built a deep mythology around her discography that relies on the loosest of walls between her songs and her life. Literally everything Taylor does is part of her canon, and her fans obsess over every word in every post and every color choice at every show. In many ways, the clowning over rumors and easter eggs is just as important a part of Ultra Swiftiedom as listening to the music.
Similarly, much of the Marvel fanbase is begging for footnotes in the story; they want to pull at every thread, trying to solve the puzzles that may or may not even exist. But the studio isn’t cultivating them the way Taylor (and her merch/fan club arm Taylor Nation) do. Aside from casting rumors and in-movie references, there’s not much to engage with. Now is the time for Marvel to expand the conversation into its marketing.
The beauty of a deep fandom rabbit hole is that the deeper it goes, the more room is created at the top for new fans. To take advantage of that, you must…
TWO: Diversify Points of Entry
For years we’ve been told that each MCU film is a different genre, but it wasn’t true. Every MCU entry has been a comic book action movie that borrowed tropes from other genres like political thrillers or heist movies but still featured lots of quippy banter, a supervillain, and a massive third act action sequence. But when every day is like a battle, neither the characters nor the audience can grow.
Taylor Swift famously organizes her own song lyrics into three genres, all pen-themed: Quill Lyrics, which feature “phrasings that are antiquated” and seem to be written “after reading Charlotte Bronte”; Fountain Pen Lyrics, “modern storyline[s] or references with a poetic twist”; and Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics, unabashed pop songs that are “frivolous, carefree, bouncy”. It’s time for the MCU to move past the blood and bruises and similarly diversify the formats and style of the content.
Give us a courtroom drama, a noir-ishly shrouded mystery, or a superhero sports movie. Not only will these lower scale stories invite new audiences in, but they can also be produced for a lot cheaper! If you make something for $50 million, there are enough Marvel stans to guarantee profitability while hopefully bringing first-time fans in.
But there’s one particular type of tale the MCU has been lacking: it’s a love story. While there’s been plenty of couples, almost of those relationships developed off-screen. Let us have an entire movie or show that shows how a super love came to be. Not only will this invite a new type of fan, but it will also intensify the stakes when that love is inevitably threatened by some cosmic threat in a future move.
The MCU managed to achieve the highest of highs by appealing primarily to its core of young males, but now is the time to start thinking about the hipster lesbian couple on Cornelia Street and the Midwest family who spend every Tuesday night at Olive Garden and the retiree walking in Camden Market.
In addition to telling different types of stories, distributing those stories in more places will create new fans. What if the next story featuring the teenage Ms. Marvel was neither a theatrical film nor Disney+ story, but a series of TikToks? Recently HBO experimented with putting 25-second recaps of Sopranos episodes on TikTok, which is a great example of an easy entry point, simple bait that sits at the very entrance to the rabbit hole.
THREE: Create Identities and Sub-Sub-Cultures
Every major pop superstar has a label for their fans, just like football (soccer) clubs’ supporters usually have a branded label, so saying that ‘Swiftie’ is an identity would be to state the obvious. But Taylor’s fans set themselves apart by how diverse and numerous their sub-identities are. Taylor is the master at creating what Caroline Siede described as “‘declare your allegiance’ appeal that fuels Hogwarts House sorting and Twilight boyfriend debates.” Swifties declare album allegiances like doctors declare their specialisms. You’re not just a Swiftie, you’re a Swiftie, Rep Stan or an Evermore Swiftie. It even goes beyond albums or songs to the more obsessive and crazy Swiftie sub-cultures and conspiracists like Gaylors or Lost Album Truthers. This is a level of identity detail that even sports fans don’t pursue: As an Arsenal fan, I’m a Gooner, and the fact that I became a fan in the Invincible era is incidental. But I’m very decidedly a folklore/Speak Now Swibling (a Swiftie brought into the fandom by a sibling, that’s a Reason & Whimsy original). This specificity not only creates more dialogue as fans debate and defend their favorite eras, albums, songs, and Taylor exes, but for the most hardcore it makes Swiftiedom not just an identity, but the defining aspect of their personhood.
The closest the MCU has ever come to creating this level of intra-fan identities was Captain America: Civil War, whose central plot revolved around bad blood between Iron Man and Captain America. But the lack of complementary content and the relatively quick resolution of the conflict in Endgame lowered the stakes and didn’t encourage even the biggest fans to pick sides (And yes, the fact that these are fictional characters doesn’t help).
But Taylor’s fiercest sub-stans (like Gaylors) are more focused on the real world, not the music, so Marvel should follow her lead and plant seeds of debate not just in the stories they tell, but in how those stories come to be. What if they release the never-produced Edgar Wright Ant-Man script to encourage fans to debate if it’s better than the actually-made movie? Or do more re-casting of characters to spur discussion of which is best for their favorite superheroes?
There’s another thing that Taylor has done to reinforce Swiftie identity and create even greater allegiance from her fans…
FOUR: Stick to Your Guns
To be something that people truly care about, you have to be something that some people hate. Taylor Swift is the most popular celebrity in the world, despite the fact that 20% of Americans believe that she is literally is a psyop to win the presidential election for Joe Biden.
Marvel’s former chairman Ike Perlmutter is famously (allegedly) racist and sexist, and for years refused to greenlight movies led by women or people of color. Once his control was removed by Disney CEO Bob Iger, Marvel Studios finally began making more diverse films. Now, some hand-wringing dudes over there on the internet have convinced lots of people that Marvel’s rapidly increasing on-screen diversity has caused the MCU’s recent stumbles. Just because the wrong ones think they’re right, doesn’t mean you have to listen.
Being all things to all people means being very little to even less, so Marvel needs to stand by their diverse choices. This doesn’t mean every movie needs to be about fuckin’ politics and gender roles, but when the trolls come out, the studio (and their stars) should shout them down. And rather than take half-steps towards inclusion (like implied or CGI-character same-sex relationships), if the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go. In other words, make Captain Marvel gay!
Now is the time for Marvel to be fearless, to persist and resist the temptation to bow to pressure from a very vocal but small segment of potential fans.
FIVE: Embrace Vulnerability & Ditch the Masterplan
Taylor’s decision to be ever-so-slightly more political is captured in a fascinating scene in her Netflix documentary Ms. Americana, in which her dad expresses concern of losing half her fans to a very upset Taylor. The scene epitomizes one of the defining aspects of her relationships with her fans: vulnerability.
The likely genesis of this vulnerability is the Kanye West/VMAs incident, but Taylor has fostered it in the years since. It goes beyond on stage gaffes and self-effacing jokes. Her highly tactical use of social media lets fans into her psyche (usually without any specifics on her real-life relationships), and her live shows are filled with commentary like “The connection that we have to each other through music, like I love the feeling like I’m not alone a certain emotion.” Even her re-recording of her albums to take back ownership from (what she saw as) villainous thieves put her in a position to need her supporters to choose those songs over the original masters.
(BONUS Taylor Lesson for the MCU: If Taylor can reclaim ownership of her songs, Marvel needs to find a way to reclaim the Spider-Man characters from Sony before they are run into the ground)
Of course it’s much harder for a corporate movie studio to be vulnerable, but Marvel Studios can do it by ditching the “it’s all connected” confidence of their perfectly continuous universe and start admitting that they have nothing figured out beyond the next movie or show, that they made mistakes and made some choices that hurt the narrative. And fix them! The platform of Disney+ provides the opportunity for the studio to continuously revise what’s come before to help it all sync. An upgrade to some of the animation in one film; a slight re-design of Thanos in his first appearance to make it more consistent with his later look; even a re-write of script lines that were retconned later. These types of changes will make the MCU’s saga a living story. (And going back to Ways of the Swift #1 and #3, provide more opportunities for the deepest fans to continuously engage while encouraging debate.)
Not being so rigid about the continuity will also give the MCU freedom to make narrative leaps without having to over-explain plot developments. One of the most randomly fun moments in the MCU was when the Hulk morphed from a brute to a sensitive intellectual between Infinity War and Endgame, suddenly wearing a cardigan and discussing quantum physics.
This Week’s Whimsies: Fancasting Taylor Swift into the MCU
If Marvel reallllly wants Taylor’s help to reclaim their cultural dominance, putting her in their movies is the easiest way to get it. Here’s some ideas of comics characters yet to be introduced into the MCU that she could play:
Polaris, whose main power is her magnetic field being a little strong (she’s Magneto’s daughter)
Jean Grey is known in the comics for major romantic drama (a love triangle with Wolverine and Cyclops!) and somewhat destructive resurrection, which seems like a perfect role for Taylor.
There are already rumors that Taylor will cameo in the upcoming Deadpool movie as Dazzler, whose comic creation was a result of Marvel comics and a music label, and her superpower is basically the ability to make the whole place shimmer.
But casting Taylor as a character from the comics is almost too easy. If Marvel really wants to invite Swifties into the MCU, they should let Taylor create an original character, like these:
The Man- A ruthless corporate saboteur with the ability to appear to be any gender, depending on the biases of whoever they are talking to at the moment.
Ms. Misery- A miserable and magical being, who started life as a medieval Spanish princess that was forced to marry another man in a foreign land. To escape, she made a deal with a witch to kill her cruel husband, cursing her to wander the earth haunting doomed romances for 20 lifetimes.
Crimson Clover- A classic, tights-wearing superheroine. She was an Irish soldier on a peacekeeping mission in Syria when an unexplained explosion gave her the power of flight and extreme strength.
The Archer- The secret identity for the world’s biggest pop star, a master assassin and arch-nemesis of Hailee Steinfeld’s Hawkeye.
Ricochet- This anti-hero is basically the MCU’s Dexter: a cryptic and Machiavellian serial killer with an axe to grind for the boys who broke her heart, who specializes in killing men who killed their wives. Her victims are never seen or heard from again. Also has a boat, named Karma.
There’s one more possibility for a character that can be connected to the existing MCU while being drawn directly from Swiftie folklore and the real world:
Rebekah Harkness, the real-life New England socialite and subject of Taylor’s song “The Last Great American Dynasty” whose Rhode Island house Taylor now owns AND who shares a last name with Agatha Harkness, the title character in the upcoming Agatha: Darkhold Diaries Disney+ show, played by Katherine Hahn in the MCU. Rebekah was known for having a marvelous time ruining everything, which sounds exactly like the kind of mayhem a descendant of a centuries-old practitioner of chaos magic who survived the Salem witch trials would be involved in. (Don’t bother pointing at that Harkness was Rebekah’s name by marriage. We’re over three thousand words into this thing, so I’m granting myself some tortured poetic license.) The MCU can introduce Rebekah in a post-credits scene of Darkhold Diaries to an instrumental version of Taylor’s song “willow,” before giving her her own Disney+ show in which she deals with whatever 1950s shit is going on in the MCU, including partnering with Agent Carter to grow S.H.I.E.L.D. and funding the Fantastic Four’s early technology.
If you made it this far, you might have noticed that there are 67 fragments of Taylor Swift lyrics or song titles* in this absolutely uhinged essay (I know it’s sad but this is what I think about). I don’t know if this is the worst thing I ever did or one of the best things that’s ever been, but I’d do it over and over and over again. Just like the world needs pop superstars that can emotionally unite people around the globe, there’s also power in a sprawling, ever-evolving story like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I hope it never ends.
(*The first person to correctly identify all 67 references will receive a free two-hour storytelling training for their team or company.)
Next week: How Carly Rae Jepsen Can Fix the Journalism Crisis, Maybe