The immensely successful Marvel-themed hero shooter has been nothing short of a gargantuan hit. Marvel's marketing apparatus has experienced a moment of serendipity as they have advertised bringing the iconic Fantastic Four characters to Rivals, while they are simultaneously getting the media hype engine moving for their upcoming film Fantastic Four: First Steps (I genuinely do not like that name.) Despite the continuous blows of their MCU films and TV shows getting poor critical buzz, and some of their projects bombing in the box office, the Marvel brand still seems as relevant as ever. Marvel Rivals has led a great deal of this resurgence in the brand. The game is in its early days still, currently part of the way through its first season, and what a cool season this has been so far. Let's dive into what exactly Season 1 of Marvel Rivals is about.
You'll no doubt notice upon booting up the game that the current tone and aesthetic of the game is quite dark and gothic-inspired. Some of the character skins in this battle pass look like something out of the Darksiders series or Evil West. The season is named Eternal Night Falls, and as the name and aesthetic would perhaps indicate, it's all about vampires, namely the head honcho bloodsucker - Dracula.
I'm very familiar with Marvel superheroes and most of their stories, but I'll admit that I had no idea that Eternal Night Falls is at least in part based on an existing Marvel comics storyline. Blood Hunt came out last year and hits on many of the same story beats that Eternal Night Falls has. In the comics, vampires begin appearing on Earth and Earth's superheroes are trying to contain the threat. Doctor Strange is attempting to use the Montesi Formula to exterminate all of the vampires, but requires the missing Darkhold, which is an eldritch grimoire that is chalk full of important spells and mystical knowledge. You might remember that the Darkhold was of critical importance in the connected plotlines of the MCU show WandaVision and the contentious film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
In Blood Hunt, Varnae, a vampire that is part of Marvel's Dracula mythos and connected to Marvel's interpretation of Conan the Barbarian, possesses Blade and forces the half-vampire to lead the vampiric horde against Earth's heroes. Doctor Doom teams up with Doctor Strange in an effort to repel the vampires, by taking Strange's powers and ultimately refuses to return Strange's mystical sorcery after succeeding in forcing the vampires back. Dracula, the enemy in Eternal Night Falls, actually serves as a hero of sorts in Blood Hunt, by training Blade's daughter and working with her to labor toward saving her father from Varnae's possession. The Fantastic Four are not quite as important to the events of Blood Hunt as they are in Eternal Night Falls. But, some of the other characters like Black Panther and Moon Knight are important in both stories. Let's now pivot to what exactly is going on in the events of Marvel Rivals' first season.
In Eternal Night Falls, our story largely is explained via the Gallery Cards that you unlock through missions and the battle pass. I will do my best to summarize the overall plot.
Doctor Doom serves as the chief antagonist of Rivals so far, even though we haven't really experienced him as an in-game character. Doom wants to steal the Darkhold from Doctor Strange who refuses to give it to him. Strange safekeeps the Darkhold in a pocket dimension of sorts and finds himself lost in the Astral Plane (it happens to the best of us.) As he got lost, he decided to look for the Darkhold again to make sure it was still safe and realized that Khonshu had plucked it. Khonshu knew that the Darkhold had the power to nuke all of the vampires from existence, but Strange thought that the magic that would kill the vampires, would likely also kill anyone who the vampires had turned, which would no doubt create a veritable tsunami of splash damage. Khonshu took Strange captive and attempted to force his hand, for the good of the world, but Strange was able to instead barter his freedom and the Darkhold back through a game of Senet (basically ancient Egyptian chess.) Now Doctor Strange is leading a team of heroes to attempt to fix the timeline and end the Eternal Night.
When Doctor Doom was rebuffed by Strange, he went to Dracula with Chronovium (the MacGuffin of the Rivals continuity), which is a substance that is essentially time itself in a physical form. Doom theorizes that an immortal like Dracula could put a single drop of his blood onto Chronovium and gain full control over time itself within a limited space, i.e., New York City. Doom told Dracula that the Chronovium could be utilized to make eternal darkness, by keeping the Moon in the sky forever. Dracula was understandably hesitant to trust Doom, but when Doom also mentioned obtaining the Vampiric Verses, a missing page from the Darkhold that would allow Dracula to create more vampires, the immortal vampire could not resist such a wager. Doom, however, had a master plan. He thinks that if a single drop of Dracula's blood could give someone control over time in a small area, he could let Dracula create a horde of immortal vampires and could get enough blood to alter his Chronovium supply and create "Pure Blood Chronovium," which he imagines will let him completely alter entire timelines as he wishes. His final Gallery Card is labeled "Plans Within Plans," which is from the perspective of an alternate Doctor Doom in 2099 who is studying these events surrounding the Eternal Night. He details that Doom changes allegiances once the Vampiric Verses are located so that he can show up to "help save the day" with the heroes, but still come away with his Pure Blood Chronovium.
To jump back to the hero side of things, we have essentially two separate teams with different ultimate goals for handling the vampiric threat. Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic are working to build a device to fix the timeline error, and hopefully simultaneously erase the vampires. On the other hand, in a Gallery Card centered around Moon Knight, we read a prayer of his to Khonshu where he explains that himself, Iron Man, the Winter Soldier, Psylocke and Wolverine have taken to just eliminating any vampires that they can find, fearing that the Strange/Fantastic team will not be able to fix things. Interestingly enough, in this same prayer to Khonshu, Moon Knight explains that the awesome, gothic outfits from the battle pass are the result of Iron Man's innovations to make everyone vampire hunting gear with built in Chronovium abilities. The last interesting tidbit from Moon Knight's prayer is that he notes seeing a group of vampires under someone else's control; a person who he describes as being in a suit of white armor. He states that the man looks familiar and that he looks like someone who will battle Dracula for control over the vampire army. I'm not sure who he's referring to here, but I'm sure we'll be finding out very soon.
To cap this off with our most recent update, there is a Gallery Card from the perspective of Blade. He details his journey thus far. That he fought alongside some of the other heroes, namely Spider-Man and the Human Torch and that they tried to carve a path straight through to Central Park, but Dracula ambushed Blade and took him captive. If you play the new Central Park map, you can find Blade and he is indeed chained up in some sort of magical dungeon. He provides some insight into why Ratatoskr is also chained up in Dracula's castle. The Asgardian squirrel god's horn can kill anything; even something otherwise immortal. So Dracula summoned Ratatoskr and imprisoned it to get the god out of the picture.
The story so far is actually quite compelling. Obviously it's heavily inspired by Blood Hunt, though different enough to be somewhat unpredictable. For instance, it seems like Blade is not a possessed villain in this story, nor is Dracula a hero. Doctor Doom on the other hand seems to be up to no good either way the story was told. Without a proper campaign, it is somewhat difficult to piece together the timeline for everything, but I tried to lay out what seemed like the proper flow of events. I'll try to update this when more story is indubitably revealed. Who do you think the figure in white armor was that Moon Knight noticed? Will Doctor Doom's future recollection of the Eternal Night actually come true, or will the heroes prevent him from obtaining the Pure Blood Chronovium?
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