As the MCU prepares for yet another end with Avengers: Doomsday, it’s as good a time as any to look back on how this phase of its life began. Unlike its predecessor, the Infinity Saga, the Multiverse Saga began not on the big screen but on the small, with three TV shows dropping in 2021 before the films kicked up in earnest with Black Widow that summer. Unlike the Netflix shows and adjacent series like Runaways and Agents of SHIELD that preceded it, these new series could fully affirm their connection to the MCU anytime they wanted to, with the first handful of shows working as mini-sequels to Avengers: Endgame.
Our first foray into this multi-medium venture was WandaVision, which premiered January 15, 2021, and centered on Wanda Maximoff grieving the death of her boyfriend, Vision, who died in Infinity War. Marvel couldn’t have picked a better show to kick off this new experiment; WandaVision was flooded with acclaim and did the impossible in making its titular duo feel compelling on a week-to-week basis.
It probably didn’t hurt that after 2020 was completely MCU-free, this was allowed to be as much of a refresh for the audience as it was for Wanda and Vision themselves. Over that eight-week run, people laughed, they loved, they had their theories, they embraced Wanda’s love for ViShawn, and the show’s quotes became their new personality for a portion of the year.
Despite its finale, whose last moments openly undermined what came before, WandaVision might’ve done its job a bit too well. The shows that followed haven’t quite hit the same highs with critics, audiences, or both. That’s not to call Marvel’s TV output a complete debacle; shows like Ms. Marvel and Loki were fairly well-regarded, at least up until the point they were made to set up a movie that’s a year or more away. But it could be argued a pivot to TV hasn’t done the MCU any favors: if you thought catching up on the movies felt like homework, then catching up on TV must feel like double that, especially for the shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Secret Invasion that felt made in part to tee up future plot events that ultimately didn’t go anywhere.
We’ve covered the Multiverse Saga’s various problems time and again in the past five years, and one of its more understated ones is the release structure. Many of these shows and movies just didn’t come out in the right format: shows like Falcon or Moon Knight would likely have played better as films, while features like Eternals and Captain America: Brave New World might’ve been better served on the small screen. At least part of the problem early on was Marvel not wanting to make actual TV shows, something it didn’t want to address until it basically had to with She-Hulk and giving Daredevil: Born Again a creative refresh. Had Marvel not come clean with its flaws, it’s possible Born Again would’ve ended as a standalone run instead of getting a second and third installment.
This just applies to live-action, of course; save for Marvel Zombies, the animated series (including What If…? and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) haven’t pretended like they don’t know the landscape they’re in. It may only be happening on one side of the medium, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, particularly when some of Marvel’s strongest output in its multimedia history comes from animation. (Seriously, think about how good a character like Black Panther or Iron Fist would be in animation and without being shackled to this franchise or the multiverse.) Marvel being afraid to embrace the medium it wanted to dominate isn’t an isolated problem, and it’s something the larger industry has gradually tried to reckon with in recent years. So many of these shows were made in the shadow of prestige TV, and that likely won’t change anytime soon.
But with future projects like Nova, Strange Academy, or even the return of Jessica Jones, it’ll be interesting to see how (or if) those take after current mainstream darlings. (Consider HBO medical drama The Pitt, which is first and foremost a show of the 2020s made like a show of the ’90s that delivers competency porn on a weekly and award-winning basis.) Because of its rocky start, the MCU’s television enterprise is now in a position where it has to meet the medium where it’s at and play by TV’s rules rather than setting its own and getting everyone else to fall in line.
So here’s to five years of MCU television: hopefully, you know what you’re doing now and don’t get too lost in the weeds. Let us know your favorite MCU show in the comments below.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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