quality that series did with the format. Deadline Hollywood Anthony D'Alessandro, writing after audiences polled by CinemaScore gave Eternals a "B" and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness a "B+" (two of the lowest CinemaScores for MCU films), said this should be a "splash of cold water in Marvel's face". He discussed some fan concerns that Phase Four was not as cohesive as the projects in the first three MCU phases, with most of those films building towards the Infinity Saga storyline, and felt that this was impacting on the box office of the new films. He suggested that Marvel Studios "regroup, re-think and get these movies back on track". Meredith Loftus of Collider agreed that Phase Four felt "disjointed" by the release of Multiverse of Madness, stating that each project was "complex and challenging, exploring themes of grief, mental illness, and family trauma... [but] what's made Phase Four so strong is also its weakness—while we're getting to deepen new and old characters alike, the expansive universe these characters live in feels isolated". She highlighted Moon Knight lack of connections to the rest of the MCU, and discussed how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did not address the events of Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home as some had expected. Loftus concluded, "Maybe this is a lesson in audience expectations, but when a studio has built a cinematic universe off the back of each movie with a through-line story for over a decade, the lack of one in Phase Four makes it feel incomplete." James Whitbrook of Gizmodo also noted the lack of a singular threat for each of the phase's projects, like Thanos in the Infinity Saga, and said the multiverse storyline was the closest the phase had got to a "unifying build-up". He added that "this sense of aimlessness feels odd to an audience that has, over a decade, been trained to connect the dots and see how each of Marvel's releases connects to the others", with the films and Disney+ series "rarely [feeling] like they're in conversation with each other". Writing for Variety, Adam B. Vary agreed that "there is no sense yet of where Phase Four is heading—if, indeed, it is heading in any single direction", but he felt this could be "a feature, not a bug", explaining, "With the explosion of MCU content on Disney+, there may be simply too many titles