Disney has recently been going through the never-pleasant routine of downsizing in order to cut costs, and laying off a rather substantial chunk of staff has apparently been a necessary part of that campaign. However, it’s not merely regular workers that are being subjected to this, but those at the very, very top as well. Per a report from Collider, the chairman of Marvel Entertainment Issac “Ike” Perlmutter has officially been fired while Disney considers absorbing the entity into its larger merchandise business conglomerate.

Related: Brie Larson Reveals Why She Was ‘Scared’ to Join the MCU

While Marvel has recently been enduring a bit of an unstable rollercoaster when it comes its latest cinematic releases, there are many who would argue that Ike Perlmutter was a significantly controversial individual that many times swayed the MCU in the wrong direction for all the wrong reasons. To start with, Perlmutter was infamous for being a ruthless, profit-driven cutthroat. His extreme cost-cutting and very biased approach to business decisions was ironically a huge factor in saving Marvel from bankruptcy years ago in 1997. Once Disney moved forward to acquire Marvel after the first Iron Man (2008) film officially launched the new MCU, Perlmutter still kept tight hold of the reins on everything that Marvel produced, or tried to produce.

The Real Reason(s) Perlmutter Was Let Go

While Disney is clearly looking to cut back on its expenses while it reconfigures and consolidates its businesses and all of its upcoming projects, there’s most likely more to Perlmutter’s firing than just one less person on payroll. He had developed a rather unsavory reputation the past decade or so among those at Marvel Studios, particularly with Kevin Feige. Especially after emails leaked at Sony Entertainment back in 2015, Perlmutter had become well-known for his sexist, homophobic, and racist stances, at least when it came to what he allowed Marvel to produce. It turns out that he was the main point of conflict when it came to movies like Black Panther (2018), Captain Marvel (2019), and Black Widow (2021). While Feige had wanted to push on at least one of those projects much sooner, Perlmutter argued that superhero films with either a female lead or a person of color would not succeed nearly as well. He refused to green light any of those movies, and at the same time pushed to get Feige fired so that he could assume full control over Marvel Studios as well.

This all explains why both Black Widow and Captain Marvel in particular came out at rather unusual points in the MCU’s main storyline. Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, a very powerful and integral character in the war against Thanos, first made her appearance in an after-credits scene in Avengers Infinity War (2018). Her origin film Captain Marvel came the following year, and released in theaters barely a month before the monumental Avengers Endgame (2019) film, barely giving any time for audiences to absorb her induction into the MCU. Even stranger was the Black Widow film coming out two whole years after Natasha’s death in Endgame, and just after the peak of the pandemic that briefly shut down the movie industry. The timing of both was clearly not that well-executed, but there at least now seems to be a clear reason why. With Perlmutter’s exit, there could be a shift in a more positive direction for the MCU, which it evidently needs right now.