Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali has plenty of experience playing supervillains. He ruled Harlem as the crime lord Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in Luke Cage, was a key part of Miles Morales’ tragic backstory as Prowler in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and has manipulated Mark Grayson as Titan in Invincible. Ali was supposed to get his chance at superhero stardom by bringing Blade to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he confirmed last month that the film has been scrapped. While Ali may never get to fight vampires, you can still see him play a superhero in a largely forgotten TV series that’s free to stream on Tubi.
Ali’s breakout role was on The 4400, which premiered on CBS in 2004. He plays Richard Tyler, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who disappeared while serving in the Korean War. Richard then reappears in a ball of light in present-day Washington along with 4,399 missing people who haven’t aged a day.
Most shows would have kept that mystery going for longer, but The 4400 provides a decisive answer at the end of its five-episode first season. Turns out, a group of people from the future abducted the 4400 from around the world — with the first person taken in 1946 — and dosed them with a neurotransmitter called promicin to give them special abilities. They then sent them all back to 2004 to help prevent an upcoming catastrophe using their newfound powers.
Those powers emerge slowly, with only a few 4400 demonstrating any abilities in season 1. The show’s phenomenal second season reveals that Dennis Ryland (Peter Coyote), the leader of the government agency set up to handle this event, knew about promicin and secretly dosed the 4400 with an inhibitor to keep them from becoming a threat. The truth only comes out when the inhibitor turns out to have potentially lethal side effects, sickening many until a cure can be devised. In interviews at the time, Coyote said he believed Dennis was justified and that conviction made him an extremely compelling villain. I still regularly think of the scene where he addresses his idealistic subordinate Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch), saying, “If it comes down to a choice between the safety of the American people and the welfare of the 4400 – Tom – that’s no choice at all.”
The discontinuation of the inhibitor causes most of the 4400 to start manifesting powers, with Richard developing telekinesis that he struggles to use at first. Ali left the main cast at the end of the third season following a tragic arc where his incredibly powerful daughter, Isabelle (Megalyn Echikunwoke), became the show’s primary villain. When Ali returned as a guest star in season 4 with full mastery of his abilities and a questionable plan for Isabelle, he demonstrated the dark swagger that has made him such a popular choice for villain roles.
But while The 4400 occasionally delivers big superhero action, it really shines as an imaginative show about the impact people with superpowers would have on the world. Many of the 4400 claim to want to make things better for everyone, and some seem to have the ability to do that — like Shawn Farrell (Patrick Flueger), who has healing abilities. The charismatic leader Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell) first prepares for conflict with the government and then creates a city for people with powers to build a sort of utopia. Normal people start searching for ways to take promicin themselves, despite the fact that the drug kills half the people who use it. Other factions in the future and present try to figure out ways to kill, control, or neutralize the 4400. The show feels like The X-Men if it had fewer giant robots and more plots focused on the unintended consequences of niche superpowers like reading pheromones or creating enzymes that cause weight loss.
The 4400 is also a rare show with a perfect ending. Even though it was canceled after four seasons due to low ratings and the Writers Guild of America strikes, creators and writers René Echevarria and Scott Peters were able to bring all of its major conflicts to a dramatic climax. The world of The 4400 is not a fair one, and some good people suffer tragedy while those with far more questionable motives come out ahead. The finale shows a world truly transformed, with characters processing the wonder and horror of what that entails. It might not be the Mahershala Ali project fans were waiting for, but it’s well worth traveling back in time to revisit the series that made him a star.
The 4400 is available to stream on Tubi.