Marvel just posted the series’ first episode on YouTube
Marvel Studios and Disney Plus likely always knew the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Wonder Man was going to be a harder sell than some past MCU shows. It’s based on a fairly obscure character with nebulous powers. It’s part of the “Marvel Spotlight” series of more grounded, character-based stories with minimal contact with the larger MCU. And it’s more about an out-of-work actor trying to navigate his own anxiety than about city-threatening supervillains or effects-heavy battles. (Granted, part of the protagonist’s anxiety is caused by his uncontrolled superpowers…)
All that said, though, Wonder Man is a terrific self-contained series — a smart, emotional, sometimes startlingly weird, often really funny show, where co-creators Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Andrew Guest (Community) explore how flexible an MCU story can be, and lean into their characters’ human aspects as much as their superhuman ones. Which is why Marvel decided the best way to sell the series was to post the first full episode on YouTube, where it’s now free to watch.
Wonder Man stars Aquaman villain and Watchmen conundrum Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Los Angeles actor Simon Williams, whose habit of overthinking his characters and overstepping boundaries on sets has made him hard to hire. When he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the recovering alcoholic actor who became infamous worldwide for playing the role of a terrorist called The Mandarin (in Iron Man 3), the two underemployed actors form an awkward friendship. Their relationship is the heart of the show — but it comes with a lot of twists that make Wonder Man one of the MCU’s most colorful, least predictable shows.
But the series is stylish and strange enough that it’s hard to really speak for the unique color and energy Cretton and Guest bring to it — so pushing the pilot in front of the Disney Plus paywall and letting viewers try it out for themselves is a smart marketing ploy. Just be warned that you might get hooked: Wonder Man is a lot of fun, and the two leads in particular are terrific.