Momentum is a thing. Honestly, I think it’s even more of a thing than franchise fatigue.

Remember back in 2016, before Twitter went to hell and took a little bit of our democracy with it, when the biggest thing online that spring was whether you were Team Iron Man or Team Captain America?

It was a silly twitter hashtag stunt, of course, intended to drum up publicity for “Captain America: Civil War,” which came out that summer, introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and helped build momentum for the final Avengers films in 2018 and 2019.

Momentum, all but wasted over the next couple of years by Covid-delayed MCU movies and Disney+ series that seemed too little, too late.

And I liked a lot of them. I was one of the people who really liked “The Marvels” a couple of weeks ago.

Now Marvel and Disney’s momentum is lost, thanks to assholish behavior by the studios that led to actors’ and writers’ strikes that, ultimately, proved only how greedy the studios and streaming services were.

So where do Marvel movie fans like me go from here?

I’ll certainly be seeing the third “Deadpool” movie when it comes out in July 2024. It’s the only “real” Marvel movie coming out during the year.

But then … 2025 and (barring more schedule shuffling) “Captain America: Brave New World,” featuring the starring debut of Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, the new Cap, then “Fantastic Four” and “Thunderbolts” and “Blade.”

I’m so excited to see how “Fantastic Four” shakes out because the FF were my favorites, along with the Avengers, when I was a comic-reading kid.

But I’m probably most hyped to see Mackie continue wearing the shield he won in the “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series.

There’s a moment in the first “Iron Man” movie when Rhodey (then played by Terrence Howard) looks at Tony’s spare suit and says, “Next time, baby,” and the crowd in the theater with me fairly screamed at the possibility of the larger Marvel universe finding its way on screen – a possibility that seemed to be a real thing when Samuel L. Jackson showed up in the end credits,

I was ready then. I’m ready now. For more Marvel.