10 Marvel Characters Who Should Also Get Their Own Limited Series

With yesterday’s game-changing announcement that the Disney Play streaming service will launch original series based on Marvel characters and starring the actors who play them on the big screen, fans are already starting to wonder who might pop up after Loki and the Scarlet Witch get their turns.

This might spell doom for Marvel TV as it currently exists, but likely means a new and more exciting version of Marvel TV to build on as the universe enjoys its post-Avengers 4 soft reset and Disney doubles down on streaming.

Based on the actors, the characters, and their comic book source material, we have put together a short list of properties that seem primed and ready for a Disney Play miniseries, giving us a one-and-done (or more) tale of Marvel-ous proportions and helping advance both Disney Play and the characters to the next level.

You can check them out below, and feel free to name your favorites not mentioned here in the comments.

The Vision

Using Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, and Jordie Bellaire’s brilliant maxiseries as a blueprint, making The Vision a character unto himself, rather than just a reflection of Tony Stark or Scarlet Witch, seems like an obvious direction to go with one of these miniseries.

Not only is The Vision considered one of the best Marvel Comics in years, but Paul Bettany (thanks to his time as Jarvis) is one of a very small number of actors who have been around the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost as long as Tony Stark himself.

And, of course, the whole concept of King and Walta’s Vision was examining the nature of an artificial life in a world that has become increasingly virtual. Ruminating on his humanity takes away from The Vision’s character in the movies, as it makes him feel like a whiny and needlessly melancholic character who slows down the action. In a story that is about The Vision? And especially about a Vision who finds himself “rebooted” post-Infinity War? Well, that feels like an entirely appropriate theme.

War Machine

Like Paul Bettany’s JARVIS/Vision, James Rhodes has been with the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the beginning — and despite being a military hero before he ever put on the suit, and then playing the role of the first-ever legacy hero in the MCU, we have seen relatively little of Rhodey’s own story.

Don Cheadle is a phenomenal actor, and the way Rhodey was used as collateral damage in Captain America: Civil War raised a lot of questions that Infinity War did not have time to answer in between its two dozen plot threads. So any potential stand-alone War Machine story would be wise to examine not just what makes him tick, but how he dealt with his paralysis, how he came back from it, and what it means to be the best friend of someone who has to be the center of attention in every situation.

…and, best of all, maybe it can explain how he went from looking like Terrence Howard to looking like Don Cheadle.

Hawkeye

With a Black Widow movie on the way, Clint Barton will be the only member of the original Avengers who has never had a solo project dedicated to him (we are counting Hulk, even though it was a different actor, because elements of that film have resurfaced, cementing it as a part of Marvel’s official continuity).

Meanwhile, he has something many of the Marvel superheroes are lacking, but which make serialized (read: TV) storytelling interesting: a supporting cast. With a family outside of his heroics, and a role at SHIELD, Clint has a whole lot of people counting on him, and there are a lot of directions you could go with that.

Of course, it is almost a shame he has a family, since the ideal way to tell a Hawkeye solo story would be to either explore his romance with Mockingbird (a key component of the first Hawkeye comics miniseries) or use the tone and/or content from the Matt Fraction/David Aja run from a few years back, which is generally accepted to be the best solo Hawkeye stuff ever done.

Maybe Renner’s Hawkeye could step to the sidelines and train his replacement, Kate Bishop, who could do a version of the Fraction stuff?

Valkyrie

The Asgardians have had a rough go of the last few years, and if — as many assume — Chris Hemsworth’s days are numbered as the God of Thunder, it may be difficult to provide closure for a story that big within the context of Avengers 4.

Enter Valkyrie, an alcoholic deserter turned savior and war hero, who presumably made her way off into space with half of the remaining Asgardians while Thanos slaughtered the other half and set the stage for Infinity War.

As an endangered species and de facto head of state, Valkyrie would already have an interesting story to explore even if she wasn’t played by Tessa Thompson, one of the most compelling performers in Hollywood and a fan-favorite in her MCU role.

The hardest part of this might be getting Thompson to do a TV series given how in-demand she is right now.

Moon Knight

Since part of the rumor is that these Disney Play series will be reusing the existing cast members from the Marvel movies, we are mostly going to lay off of suggesting new characters who have not previously appeared onscreen.

Here, though, we are making an exception for a character whose appearance on the Hell’s Kitchen side of the MCU has been long-rumored and feels overdue. With Netflix and Marvel seemingly having a slow-motion breakup in the time between now and when Disney’s contract with the streaming giant expires, it seems unlikely that any more Defenders-verse shows will be introduced on Netflix.

That opens the door to expanding that corner of the MCU with Moon Knight, one of the most marketable street-level characters in Marvel’s library, in a show that could establish the more grounded side of the Marvel/Disney Play TV while also giving Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and the rest a potential soft place to land if someone wanted to port the Netflix characters over.

Rocket and Groot

With the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise in a state of flux folowing James Gunn’s firing, it seems unlikely that most of the actors will want to reprise their roles on Disney Play.

Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, though, are never onscreen and rarely on set, leaving open the possibility that they may be more open to it than others.

Also, in case Disney still plans to attempt Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 at some point and does not want to step on that movies’ toes, the series could presumably take place before they met up with Star-Lord and company in Guardians of the Galaxy. While prequels using the same actors who have been in the roles for years are usually pretty dicey, it would work in this case since both characters are fully CG.

Deadpool

There are X-Men shows all over the place right now, and they are good and generally well-received.

Why not bring the most successful solo X-movie of all time to the small screen on your own terms, since it appears to be Disney’s competing vision for the property that killed Donald Glover’s animated Deadpool?

This would be a difficult one to swing, since Disney would likely want to make the show a bit more family-friendly in order to cater to the audience it wants for the app, while the brand itself is raunchy. Still, in the weeks and months after the Fox deal is finalized, we fully expect the company to be looking around for some ideas on how to incorporate some of that IP into the larger MCU, and this could be an “in.” Meanwhile, the character is tonally different enough from other Marvel projects to keep them all from feeling too homogeneous.

Nakia

An award-winning actress playing a badass super-spy with access to Wakandan tech? There is literally no downside here.

Black Panther was a revelation that breathed some fresh air into the MCU in a way that no single movie has done outside of Guardians of the Galaxy, and in the North American market which will presumably be ground zero for the Disney Play subscriber base, the film has grossed more money than Avengers: Infinity War at the box office.

There is, obviously, a market for this brand, and a Nakia stand-alone could easily serve to replace Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD by presenting a look at espionage in the world of Marvel. In fact, it almost feels like a natural evolution of the idea, since so much of the first three phases of Marvel were built on Stark Industries technology, while Iron Man seems poised to give way to Black Panther as the biggest figurehead of the MCU going forward.

Agent 13

Speaking of espionage, and SHIELD, and follow-ups?

While we might not ever see much more of of Hayley Atwell’s Agent Peggy Carter, it could be fun to see (especially in a miniseries format where there is no looming axe of cancellation) a little more about Sharon Carter. 

“Agent Thirteen,” seen briefly smooching with Captain America at one point in the MCU timeline, is a huge and important character to both SHIELD and Cap in the comics, but so far has been basically a cool “hey! I understood that reference!” kind of cameo for hardcore fans in the movies.

Give her a little more to do and the talented Emily Van Camp could knock it out of the park.

The Fantastic Four

Another current Fox property that we would love to see come to the miniseries format? The Fantastic Four.

It is unlikely to happen, since the First Family has enough mainstream name recognition that Marvel will likely want to get a movie out of them first…but anything is possible. And frankly, the FF have enough mythology to draw from, and enough great stories in their first few years of publication, that a TV show almost makes more sense than a movie.

Just one thing: lay off the origin story. Give us the broad strokes and fill in the blanks once audiences are already invested in the main plot.