Marvel's shows on Disney+ are set to shake up the way superhero stories can be told on-screen.
Here's why these series might be different from previous Marvel TV offerings and how
all these exciting series are going to blow you away!
Beginning with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in 2013, which centered around Clark Gregg's character
from The Avengers, there have been a number of television shows that have spun off of
characters or events from the movies, making them officially part of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe.
However, even the Marvel shows with the closest ties to the primary MCU such as Agent Carter,
which focused on Hayley Atwell's popular character from Captain America: The First Avenger still
weren't considered part of Marvel's "phases."
"What'll it be?"
"Angie what are you doing here?"
"Bustin' my hump, working a double.
What about you?
Shouldn't you be working, English?"
The MCU has had three "phases" so far.
The first began with Iron Man and concluded with The Avengers, the second spanned from
Iron Man 3 to Ant-Man, and included 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the third began
with Captain America: Civil War and concluded with Spider-Man: Far From Home, which served
as a coda to the record-shattering Avengers: Endgame.
However, Phase Four will include not only five new films but also five new television
shows, making this the first time ever that TV shows will be considered an integral part
of the stories being told by the films.
Marvel's Disney+ shows won't be the first television series to pull in characters who
were first seen on the big screen.
Peggy Carter and Phil Coulson in Agent Carter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are the most obvious
examples of film characters making the leap to television, but Nick Fury, Maria Hill,
Lady Sif, and Howard Stark have also all appeared in Marvel's TV series.
"Nobody cares about the long game."
"Damn!
What am I doing wrong, Jarvis?"
But pulling in a supporting film character for a guest arc on a TV series is a far cry
from what Marvel will be doing with its inaugural crop of Disney+ shows, which will center not
on side characters from the films, but on actual Avengers like Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch,
and the Winter Soldier.
Recognizable faces from the MCU aren't an occasional perk for the Disney+ series.
Instead, they're the main attraction.
By building series around characters who've already had significant arcs play out over
multiple films, the first five Disney+ shows will not only be able to jump right into meaty
storylines, skipping over introductions and origin stories, but they'll also be able to
draw on the audience's existing attachment to these characters instead of needing to
take time to build up affection.
When discussing the Disney+ Marvel shows, Marvel Studios president and MCU mastermind
Kevin Feige told Screen Rant:
"We want to do something that's going to stand right alongside the MCU films and will be
completely intertwined, and the story and the characters will go back and forth between
Disney+ programming and the films."
This is exciting for a number of reasons.
Not only can we look forward to storylines that will jump between the series and the
films, making it a lot more rewarding to be a fan of both, but the Disney+ shows are already
set to introduce some popular Marvel Comics characters who fans have long wanted to see
appear on the big screen.
“Whatever you do Jen, try not to punch Fandral."
"The tall, skinny guy?
Why would I want to punch..."
"Well, hello tall, green and..."
Already announced are Kate Bishop, who will appear alongside Clint Barton in Hawkeye,
and Monica Rambeau a.k.a. Spectrum, who will co-star in WandaVision.
Then there are brand new characters like Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight, who will
each headline their own series.
That's sure to be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Marvel's extensive roster
of characters and which ones they aim to bring to the screen with their own Disney+ shows.
In the past, when Marvel shows have been made, they've been produced by Marvel Television
and overseen by executive producer Jeph Loeb, who's headed up Marvel's TV branch since 2010.
While some of these shows, such as Jessica Jones and Legion, were both popular among
audiences and well-received by critics, they've all existed mostly independently from the
films, which are all produced by Marvel Studios and overseen by Kevin Feige.
With two different captains at the helm of their respective ships, Marvel Television
and Marvel Studios each charted their own courses, which occasionally ran parallel to
one another but rarely intersected.
" … all around me, you people were raining down hell."
"So go after the big, green guy or the flag waver.
I wasn't even there!"
With the arrival of the Disney+ shows, however, all that changes.
Now, Kevin Feige is calling the shots for both the films and the TV series that make
up Phase Four and beyond.
This means that instead of an independent movieverse and a mostly unrelated TV world,
both the shows and the series will be folded into a single cohesive narrative for the first
time.
If the previous films are any indication, this means we can likely expect characters
from one show or film to unexpectedly pop up in another, storylines to begin in one
property and finish in a different one, and for clues for what's coming next in the MCU
to be sprinkled throughout everything.
With the arrival of the Disney+ Marvel shows, beginning in the fall of 2020 with The Falcon
and the Winter Soldier, Kevin Feige has promised "new and continuing stories" which, quote,
"will be on the same level of quality that you've come to expect from Marvel Studios."
Further, Feige has said that, quote, "these will be major storylines set in the MCU with
ramifications that will be felt both through the other Disney+ series we're producing and
our features on the big screen."
From the way Feige is speaking, it sounds as though Marvel Studios will be taking the
exact same approach to their Disney+ shows as they have with their MCU films, weaving
them all around one overarching central narrative.
However, while Marvel's films have to get through their storylines in a little over
two hours each, the shows will have six or more hours in which to explore their stories.
That means that the TV series can take the time to delve into some of the longer or more
complex narratives that may have been impossible to condense into a single film like the relationship
between Wanda Maximoff and the Vision, for example and can afford to finally devote a
significant amount of time to developing characters who've previously had to make the most of
a handful of scenes spread across multiple films.
Yup, we're talking about these two:
"I hate you."
Unlike previous Marvel TV series, which, like most television shows, have been fairly episodic
in nature, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany told MTV that WandaVision will be more like
a six-hour movie than a conventional TV series.
Or, actually… if Bettany's description of the script is anything to go off of, maybe
"conventional" isn't the right word for it.
He further dished:
"It's so avant-garde and weird and messed up, and then moves seamlessly into more familiar
territory … "
With the majority of the other live-action Disney+ series also reported to come in at
six to eight episodes per season and the TV series said to directly impact the world of
the films it seems safe to assume that WandaVision won't be the only show that feels more like
a movie.
If you're trying to picture what a six-hour MCU story might look like, just think about
all the ground that gets covered between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
Now, imagine that instead of two three-hour movies, the Infinity Saga was one six-hour
show, and marvel at the possibilities.
Nice to see you're still as pleasant as you ever were."
"And it's just as nice to see as you're still bulletproof, Stark."
Already, the showrunners for the Disney+ series are excited about the possibilities that a
new medium will allow them to explore.
Jac Schaeffer, the showrunner for WandaVision, admitted:
"We have these big, meaty questions that we get to spend more than two and a half hours
exploring.
So that's been the work, is making it exciting and intriguing and head-turning at every moment."
Captain Marvel producer Mary Livanos seemed to agree with Schaeffer on the expansive scope
of the Disney+ shows, telling ComicBook.com that the television format will allow Marvel's
shows to tell the equivalent of a full comic book-style event, or multi-issue story.
Typically in comics, one storyline following a single central character or group can play
out over multiple issues, each one filled with twists, surprises, and plenty of action
and emotion.
It sounds as though the Marvel team is eager to bring this sort of focused, extended storytelling
to the MCU, with the Disney+ shows allowing them to present satisfying, character-driven
stories in their entirety instead of parceled out one piece at a time over the course of
several movies.
Marvel has already announced that it will be using the Disney+ television format to
bring some fan favorites into the MCU fold; however, there are some other characters from
Marvel Comics who may actually fare better on TV than film.
Take, for example, teams such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, who've previously
faltered under the two-hour time constraint of a film.
But with the Disney+ series set to seamlessly transition characters from film to TV, and
vice versa, the streaming platform may be the perfect place for some of Marvel's most
iconic teams to make their debut before jumping into the films.
It may also be exactly the right venue to introduce individual members of a group over
several different shows before teaming them up for a film or a Disney+ series of their
own.
The first two phases of the MCU consisted of six films each, while the third contained
a whopping 11, three of which were "event" films which brought a wide group of characters
together from across multiple solo films.
This has meant that Marvel has typically been spending between eight to ten hours on stories
bridging the gaps between event films, introducing and developing characters, laying plot groundwork,
and tightening the links between its multiple ongoing storylines.
Previously, it has taken Marvel around three to four years to get through these ten hours
needed to set up an event film, due to the limitations of only releasing two to three
movies per year.
But with the introduction of the Disney+ shows, Marvel will now be able to get through 30
or more hours of story every year, as opposed to its previous four to six.
Such a massive increase in how much storytelling Marvel can fit into a single year may allow
them to lay the groundwork for bigger stories even faster.
Now, instead of ten years building up to the next Endgame-level event, we may get there
in half the time.
Although Marvel Studios has been dabbling in a number of genres for quite some time
touting Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a political thriller, Ant-Man as a comedic
heist film, Spider-Man: Homecoming as a John Hughes-esque high school comedy, and the upcoming
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a horror film there are still some genres
Marvel has yet to explore.
Television opens up the realm of possibilities, not just for which characters Marvel can introduce
and which stories they can tell, but how they can tell them.
For example, WandaVision will purportedly be a "sitcom," a genre which only exists in
television.
The teaser shown at D23 seemed to indicate that the series would take significant influence
from The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the most classic examples of the sitcom format.
And while we don't yet know how long each episode of the Jeffrey Wright-narrated What
If…? will be, its animated format and self-contained nature calls to mind the animated shows of
the '80s and '90s, including Marvel's own X-Men: The Animated Series, which had its
characters facing a different threat nearly every week and largely resisted serialization.
There's no telling what other genres Marvel will be able to explore through their Disney+
series even the ones that have already been announced are not genres anyone would've anticipated
a couple years ago but if the first three phases of the MCU are any indication, we've
only just begun to scratch the surface.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about the Marvel Cinematic Universe are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.