Ryan Gosling’s Ghost Rider Movie Could Be the Secret In-Road to Blade Finally Joining the MCU

The MCU is headed for a major shake-up. With Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars set to close out the Multiverse Saga, all eyes are on what Marvel Studios plans to do next. There are a few things we already knew were coming, like Jake Schreier’s X-Men reboot and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther 3, now set to star David Jonsson as T’Challa II. But one of the biggest announcements at SDCC was that we’re getting a new Ghost Rider film starring Ryan Gosling. While we don’t even know which Ghost Rider Gosling is playing yet, we can’t help but be curious what the introduction of Ghost Rider could mean for the wider MCU. Specifically: is Ghost Rider going to help finally introduce Mahershala Ali’s Blade?

If you’re wondering what these heroes have to do with each other, I’m glad you asked. Ghost Rider and Blade are both founding members of the Midnight Sons, a team of supernatural vigilantes in the comics. If Ghost Rider is the lead-in to a Midnight Sons crossover that leans into the dark and mystic side of the Marvel universe, perhaps we can finally see Ali’s Blade in action. How would this work? Let’s take a look.

Who Are the Midnight Sons?

If you’re not familiar with the Midnight Sons from the comics, a brief overview is in order. The Midnight Sons are a team that first appeared in 1992, coming together as part of a branding exercise across several different comic series titled “Rise of the Midnight Sons.”

Those comics included Ghost Rider, Morbius, Nightstalkers (starring Blade, Frank Drake, and Hannibal King), and Darkhold: Pages From the Book of Sins, which featured a group of mystic investigators known as the Darkhold Redeemers. You may recall the Darkhold being the book of black magic used in WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Ghost Rider side of the equation also involved the Ghost Rider and Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance comic, which starred Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch working side by side.

Characters from all of these series came together as part of a crossover storyline to battle Lilith, the Mother of Demons, a major mystic threat who had an army of demonic children called Lilin. However, the team didn’t last long, only having a couple more stories before the line was retired by 1995 due to lagging interest.

The Midnight Sons name would not be used again until Marvel Zombies 4 in 2009, which featured a team including monster characters like Werewolf by Night and Man-Thing. The team would see a couple more resurgences during the Damnation and Blood Hunt events, expanding the roster to include heroes like Moon Knight, Doctor Voodoo, Elsa Bloodstone, Magik, and Nico Minoru of the Runaways.

That said, the Midnight Sons have not actually had a ton of comics to their name despite the potential of the heroes involved. This would give a film adaptation room to pick and choose which characters they want to include and how they want to shape the story without annoying fans of the source material, since there isn’t a lot of that source material to draw from. This is something that the video game Midnight Suns did, reinterpreting the team as originating in the 17th century with heroes from that era and reforming in the modern day with a new roster when Lilith returned (it’s also an excellent game that you should play if you haven’t).

But since Blade and Ghost Rider are both original members of the team in the comics, it would make the most sense to have them as part of the MCU’s lineup, especially if it allows Marvel to bypass whatever problems they’re having getting their Blade reboot off the ground.

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