Think of the Marvel comics themselves—they've had a connected universe for sixty years. That's not a handicap; it's a city grid. Each solo series is a building with its own rooms, but the streets between them let characters bump into each other naturally. Daredevil doesn't lose his gritty crime story just because Spider-Man swings through Hell's Kitchen once in a while. The crossover becomes a landmark, not a trap. The MCU works the same way. A movie like Winter Soldier works as a standalone spy thriller, but the shared universe adds a second layer—like seeing the same city from a helicopter after walking its streets. You get both views. That's not limiting narrative freedom; it's giving the story more dimensions. The handicap only exists if every story has to hold the universe's hand. But Marvel doesn't do that. They build rooms, then connect them.