Previously, On Marvel TV…
For seven episodes, we thought we had it made. WandaVision, the first MCU series to debut on Disney+, didn’t just try to recreate the adventures of movie heroes in a different medium. It engaged with television as a form itself, with each of the first seven episodes borrowing from a different era of sitcoms. The series picked up on plot threads from the movies, dealing with the death of Vision in Infinity War and bringing back Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo from Thor and Ant-Man. But it integrated all of the elements holistically, contributing to the ongoing story while also developing character and themes.
And then Wanda and Agatha had a special effects laser battle. And then Monica Rambeau got superpowers all of a sudden, a clear set-up for further side stories. And then Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came out and Wanda was all crazy again, as if the conclusion of WandaVision never happened.
Worse, it turns out that WandaVision‘s problems weren’t an exception for Marvel TV. They were the rule. The later series rarely took advantage of the medium and its serialized nature. Instead, they awkwardly broke up the standard superhero narrative into six to eight pieces, killing any narrative momentum the story might gain, and that’s before the final episodes culminated in an unconvincing CGI battle.
In short, Marvel TV shows almost never act like televisions shows. Instead, they import the storytelling styles of their moves — which have their own problems — and break them up into episodes. Not only is this approach unsatisfying, it misses the opportunity to use television as a medium — a medium that feels an awful lot like superheroes’ original home, comic books.
A Very Special Issue
Think about the best moments in Marvel television. Kamala Khan goes back in time to rescue herself during Partition. The Loki variants double-cross one another. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk talk in a diner. Each of these moments stand alone, rarely advancing a major plot or building to a bigger story. The few times Marvel has tried to pull a shared universe stunt, like having Fox X-Men star Even Peters show up as Pietro Maximoff instead of MCU version Aaron Taylor-Johnson, it fell flat.
These moments work because they’re based in character instead of plot. They tell a complete story about that character’s situation, and they don’t rely on special effects or pyrotechnics to pull it off.
