Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider and a new Black Panther in the same week is Marvel admitting the old engine is tired.

Comic-Con handed the keys to a flaming skull and to David Jonsson as T’Challa’s son. Different movies. Same tell.

Marvel used Comic-Con the old-fashioned way: two images designed to restart arguments. Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider is pulp, fire, and a movie star who looks good covered in a bad decision. David Jonsson as the grown son of T’Challa, with Ryan Coogler back and a December 2028 date, is the opposite energy — inheritance, grief, a nation that already had its masterpiece.

Read as a pair, they are not ‘more content.’ They are a studio shopping for tones that do not require another ensemble spreadsheet. A spirit of vengeance is a character with a job. A new king is a character with a debt. Both can be movies. Neither needs twelve shows of connective tissue to make sense.

They are not expanding the universe. They are looking for a new religion.

I am more nervous about Panther III than I am about the Rider, which is a compliment to what Coogler already did. You do not replace a performance like Boseman’s by finding a talented young man and a date. You replace it by being willing to make a film that is about succession instead of resemblance. Jonsson can do that work. The question is whether the machine will let the film be about a person instead of a logo.

Gosling on fire is the easier swing and I hope they keep it nasty. If they sand the skull into a quip machine, they will have wasted the only new trick they showed in that hall.