Does The Fantastic Four’s Full Title Tease Another Character’s Debut?

Marvel Studios’ reboot of The Fantastic Four is finally on the horizon, with the upcoming film wowing the crowd at San Diego Comic-Con with first-look footage and new details. The film, which is operating under the full title of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, will bring Marvel’s First Family into a new cinematic era, with a story set in the 1960s and in a separate universe from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe. Questions surrounding The Fantastic Four: First Steps will surely grow as the theatrical debut of the film draws closer, but even the film’s full title raises one possibility — could the First Steps subtitle hint at the cinematic debut of Franklin Richards?

The eldest son of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, Franklin’s birth and arrival in the comics revolutionized Marvel storytelling when it occurred in 1968. The character has grown up before readers’ eyes in subsequent decades, becoming one of the strongest Omega-level mutants in history, with reality-manipulating and psyonic superpowers. He was subsequently joined in the comics by his younger sister, Valeria Richards, and their family dynamic with Reed and Sue has become a core element of the Fantastic Four’s storytelling.

Will The Fantastic Four: First Steps Introduce Franklin Richards?

The subtitle First Steps inherently provokes multiple interpretations — the film’s idealistic 60s setting, the franchise’s literal first steps into the MCU, the team’s early tenure as superheroes, and potentially even their move into the main Earth-616 of the Marvel multiverse before Avengers: Secret Wars. Director Matt Shakman confirmed to ComicBook that while the subtitle broadly references the film’s place in the 1960s Space Race, it does have “a few meanings” that can’t be spoiled just yet. This begs the question if First Steps could also be interpreted as one of the more ubiquitous meanings of the phrase — the “first steps” taken by an infant.

The Fantastic Four footage screened at Comic-Con showed a bit of Reed (Pedro Pascal) and Sue’s (Vanessa Kirby) domestic life, indicating that they make an effort to eat dinner together as a family. It certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility that their family life could involve Franklin and/or Valeria, both to add extra weight to the team’s emotional crusade, and to differentiate from previous onscreen incarnations of the franchise. (It’s worth nothing that in 2017, years before Disney’s official acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its Marvel characters, there were rumors of a kid-friendly Fantastic Four reboot at Fox led by Franklin and Valeria.) While there’s no telling exactly how Franklin would be woven into The Fantastic Four: First Steps — as a child, a small infant, or even with Sue being pregnant across the movie — his arrival would certainly shakes things up for the franchise even further.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is currently scheduled to be released exclusively in theaters on July 25, 2025.