With the release of Ironheart, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has officially escaped its initial era of TV shows. This program was the last (as of this writing) live-action production from Marvel Studios/Television to not have a showrunner. A staple of the earliest MCU streaming projects, future projects like Wonder Man, Vision Quest, and further Daredevil shows will have showrunners guiding these endeavors from start to finish. The MCU tried to upend how all television shows are made, only to face endless difficulties in the process.
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It’s fair to say that, in general, the plan to hinge the franchise’s future on Disney+ streaming programming did not pan out nor did most of these shows end up functioning as successful artistic endeavors. However, that doesn’t mean the likes of Secret Invasion or Ironheart don’t have important lessons for both big and small screen MCU projects going forward.
1) What Works in MCU Movies Doesn’t Translate to TV
The biggest takeaway Disney and Marvel need to absorb from the follies of Phases 4 and 5 MCU shows is budgets. Spending $212 million on Secret Invasion, $225 million on WandaVision, and $200+ million on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (among others) is just unfeasible. Many of these shows cost more than recent MCU motion pictures like Shang-Chi or Thunderbolts*! The fact that these shows still often had laughable visual effects and drab backdrops befitting of low-budget B-movies just solidified what a waste it was burning money on these shows.
Put simply, it’s not as lucrative as spending movie-sized cash on a TV show. That dovetails into another lesson Marvel Television must heed: fans can’t keep up with all this material. Making Ms. Marvel required viewing for The Marvels, for instance, ruined the box office chances of a surefire financial slam-dunk like a Captain Marvel sequel.
2) Don’t Debut Major Superheroes on Television
Streaming programs blocked behind a paywall just aren’t as accessible or wide-reaching (save for the occasional Squid Game or Stranger Things) as something you watch in a movie theater. It’s important to remember that: don’t create programs that are prerequisites for enjoying a new motion picture. For that matter, characters like Kamala Khan or Moon Knight deserve to get their stories told in more compact feature film formats. If you’re not going to let these Marvel Comics fixtures inhabit television shows that lean into the novelties of episodic storytelling, then just give them straightforward movies.
3) Also, Don’t Debut Villains on Streaming
Speaking of character debuts, the bizarre decision by Marvel Studios/Television to debut so many major villains and characters (namely Kang and Mephisto) in the confines of streaming was a massive misstep. Back at the dawn of the 2020s, this was meant to suggest that all these shows were must-watches. You never know which Disney+ outing could debut the next Thanos. Instead, all it did was make the MCU feel too large and cumbersome to deal with. Premiere these new baddies and characters on the big screen, where they can have some impact.
4) Bring Back the Special Presentations and Embrace Multi-Season Shows
Then there are the kinds of stories that these TV shows should embrace going forward. For starters, multi-season productions need to be a mandate. Do not stretch out a two-hour origin movie into a six-hour miniseries. Lean into these being TV shows and create characters, worlds, and fun weekly plotlines that audiences would want to explore each week. Agatha All Along, WandaVision, and Loki got some of the best reviews of any MCU Disney+ show by leaning into episodic storytelling. Take some cues from these shows and not The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Similarly, those Special Presentations need to make a comeback pronto. 45-minute productions in the vein of Werewolf By Night could offer more breathing room to get to know new Marvel characters and allow filmmakers a chance to inject new sensibilities into this franchise. There’s so much potential in there that it’s bizarre that it’s been years since audiences were given one of these projects (which could also be made far more cost-efficiently than a six-hour TV show). Build upon Werewolf by Night’s legacy and give the world more cool Special Presentations!
5) Make Sure These Shows Are Ready to Roll Before Filming Begins
Perhaps most importantly, though, is that future Marvel shows have to be ready to go with fully fleshed-out scripts and coherent creative visions before cameras start rolling. In the realm of movies, Marvel Studios is always tinkering with its projects up until the last minute. Key scenes get added into reshoots, or critical post-credits scenes are filmed days before a movie’s debut. Leaning excessively into that concept has already hurt many Phase 4 or 5 MCU movies. However, going this route with television proved to be staggeringly miscaulculated.
For one thing, television shows are such bigger beasts than movies. WandaVision, for instance, was approximately 350 minutes long (nearly double Avengers: Endgame’s run time) and spanned nine episodes. Daredevil: Born Again started shooting with the ambition of delivering 18 episodes. Diving into these massive entities without finished scripts or constantly adjusting the tones of these shows led to countless problems. Programs like Born Again, Echo, Secret Invasion, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had infamous production problems that could’ve been avoided with steadier creative visions from the get-go.
Before any further Marvel Disney+ shows get green-lit, everybody needs to be on the same page regarding the project’s creative ambitions, the scripts, visual sensibilities, and more. Marvel Television’s divorcing itself from Marvel Studios and leaning more on showrunners already indicates that this outfit is learning from its past mistakes. Still, despite spending so much money and an endless deluge of publicity, the current track record of the MCU Disney+ shows is more discouraging than enthralling. Hopefully, that at least provides a template for improvement when further Marvel characters make their way to the small screen.
All episodes of Ironheart and Secret Invasion are now streaming on Disney+.
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Image courtesy of Lionsgate
