I think Ralph Boner is a little different. The timeline is:
- Disney acquires Fox.
- Fans get excited about the X-Men
- Even before Comic-con or D23 event Feige says. We Got no plans for X-Men and they aren't coming anytime soon.
- Fans don't believe him and speculate make all types of 'rumor' videos and messageboard posts about X-Men, "Wolverine is going to be in Falcon and the Winter Soldier", "Eternals explaing the existence of Mutants" etc.
- Comic con happens, Feige tells everyone what is coming via movies and Disney + and doesn't mention or even hint @ Mutants being in the current Slate. Then says we still haven't told you about F4 or Mutants, which strongly implied F4 and Mutants is after all this stuff I just announced.
- The rumors and misinformation online persist.
- WandaVision drops and he trolls all the people who would not believe what he said about mutants multiple times explicitly. lol
Fam 90% of the people I know that watched "Wandavision" don't follow half the things you listed. All this Marvel shyt is mainstream pop culture at this point so there's people that don't even know who Feige is, or have no idea when Comic-con happened.
They watched "Wandavision", seen Quicksilver, and thought the X-Men were coming. It's as simple as that. Not to mention, if I'm Feige and I'm telling you "no mutants any time soon" then put Quicksilver in a Disney+ show....what he said in the past doesn't matter, Quicksilver is in the show.
Now you could argue "that wasn't him" but again....there was no reason to think that wasn't him. Producers, actors, writers, etc. lie all the time to throw fans off, people are going to believe their eyes more than something Feige said 8 months ago.
Fred.