Marvel Rivals season 1: Fantastic Four confirmed and release date speculation

Rivals is still in its season 0, and will look to really kick things off soon after a great launch, which exceeded everyone’s expectations, and a winter celebration that highlighted everyone’s favourite support character, Jeff the Land Shark.

We’re primarily going off leaks for what else we can expect in season 1 outside of the Fantastic Four, so take them with a pinch of salt. So far, though, they’ve not been proven wrong.

Keep reading for everything we know, including when season 1 of Marvel Rivals should drop.

When is Marvel Rivals season 1? Release date speculation

To an extent, we’re in uncharted territory here, as this is the first new season Marvel Rivals releases.

Still, when the current season 0 ends on Friday 10th January in the UK, we predict season 1 will either be released that day or that weekend after some downtime to install the new update.

Once we get a few seasons deep, it will become much easier to predict how Marvel Rivals will work, as it will likely follow other live-service games like Fortnite, CoD BO6 and FC 25, creating patterns with its release schedule.

Marvel Rivals season 1 rumours and latest news

If you look at potential leaks for the upcoming season, you’ll likely see plenty of different characters found in the code; however, it’s unlikely all these characters will drop at once.

Yet, after a recent announcement, it appears the Fantastic Four will join the game in season 1, introducing four new characters: The Thing, Mister Fantastic, The Human Torch and The Invisible Woman.

What is interesting is the appearance of HERBIE in the promo art released to tease the characters. It remains to be seen whether the robot will be playable or if they'll feature differently.

The new season is also rumoured to introduce new maps themed around New York City; the post announcing the Fantastic Four has the hashtag New York City attached, so these rumours appear to be on the money, with the home of Marvel's First Family likely to feature.

Season 1 will also come with a fresh battle pass for players to complete, including skins, in-game currency, emotes, sprays and more.

It’s still unknown how big the battle pass will be, as season 0 only had a mini one due to being a short season.

Fortunately, NetEase Games has confirmed all new characters will be added to the game for free, not requiring purchase separately. This means the Fantastic Four will be playable for everyone.

It's a welcome inclusion to live service, which can often lock specific goodies behind paywalls. Because it looks like four new characters will be released, we predict they will drop sporadically throughout the first season, but we will have to wait and see.

A trailer is set to arrive on 6th January, as promised by the social post above, with the trailer set to introduce the new characters and show off their kit. We will update this page with fresh information then.

The other characters that have been leaked are listed below:

• Angela
• Blade
• Captain Marvel
• Deadpool
• Emma Frost
• Hit-Monkey
• Jean Grey
• The Hood
• Valkyrie

There’s plenty for fans to get excited about right now, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds, either.

Read more on Marvel:

• Marvel Games boss talks multiverse, MCU and more: "We're cutting loose"
• Anthony Mackie on Twisted Metal: "The Marvel thing is completely different"
• The Stan Lee wisdom that inspired Marvel's Future Revolution mobile game
• Avengers game Hawkeye actor Giacomo Gianniotti on dogs, dystopia and "difficult" Hulk fight

Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.