Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Tori Preston | TV | January 28, 2026
Disney+ went ahead and dropped all eight episodes of Wonder Man yesterday, which surprised me until Mike Redmond reminded me that’s how they released 2024’s Echo (which also surprised me because I could have sworn Echo came out sometime in the previous decade, not TWO YEARS ago). Apparently, the “Marvel Spotlight” banner that both series fall under doesn’t just mean “grounded and character-driven shows” but “shows that are so inconsequential to the MCU, there’s no point in trying to build excitement around them week-to-week.” Marvel Spotlight: The Shows We’re Gonna Dump Some Icy January When Nobody’s Looking! Which is a shame, because I’d happily tune into Wonder Man every week - precisely because it is so far removed from the larger MCU machine.
Wonder Man is a refreshingly minor story, and the setup is simple. There’s a struggling actor, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, HBO’s Watchmen), who hears about his dream job: a big studio remake of an old action movie called “Wonder Man.” His path crosses with a veteran actor named Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who is a familiar figure in the MCU as the man who was hired to pose as a terrorist called the Mandarin (until eventually the real Mandarin captured him). The two men, at different points in their careers, come to rely on each other as they navigate life as gig actors in Los Angeles, hoping for their big break. And along the way, Slattery tells some truly unhinged “inspirational” stories about his interactions with other great actors of his time (“John Gielgud used to have me whip him with a belt across his bare ass every night before curtain up, and that was before we were friends. Then things got weird.”).
Or at least that’s what I’ve gleaned from the first two episodes. So far, Wonder Man is more akin to other inside-Hollywood shows like The Studio than Daredevil: Born Again (which also dropped a season two trailer yesterday - hello Jessica Jones!). The second episode, titled “Self-Tape,” followed Simon as he attempts to find a quiet place to film an audition tape, eventually winding up at Trevor’s nemesis Joe Pantoliano’s house. Joey Pants, as himself! Who cares if the reason Simon needed a place to record his tape in the first place was that he got a teensy bit upset, then his eyes glowed purple and he wrecked his apartment somehow. I certainly don’t care! JOEY PANTS!
That’s the mental math Wonder Man asks you to juggle, and it’s telling that though the positives so far outweigh the negatives, the negatives are basically all the Marvel connective tissue. Arian Moayed returns as that random Damage Control agent (Cleary, I guess?), and it turns out he’s blackmailing Trevor into connecting with Simon and finding evidence that Simon is a dangerous superpowered individual. He’s great, and it’s a nifty little layer to realize that Trevor is once again playing a role, to get out of the remainder of his prison sentence. And yet, after seeing the chemistry between Kingsley and Abdul-Mateen, everything else feels like a distraction pulling you away from the weird little two-step of these characters and their dreams.
At first, I approached Wonder Man with low expectations. I’d already been burned by Moon Knight, another “refreshingly inessential” MCU show that seemed to be uniquely character-driven and yet ultimately got bogged down by the same CGI fisticuffs of all the other comic book shows. Instead, I’m sitting here excited that Wonder Man seems to be filling the She-Hulk-sized hole in my heart. Here’s Marvel attempting to introduce a new character who is struggling to balance his career with his powers and all the baggage that comes with them, while telling that story in a different television format. I’m sure the rest of the season will ramp up all those MCU connections, but I’m cautiously optimistic that Wonder Man may avoid getting bogged down by them, largely because of the creative minds behind the series.
The show was created by Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Andrew Guest, who was a producer on Hawkeye but, more importantly, was a writer on Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Guest’s sitcom chops are promising, but it’s Cretton’s involvement that gives me hope. I don’t think Shang-Chi gets the credit it deserves for being not only a genuinely fun movie, but a softly revolutionary one in terms of superhero origin stories as well. It ticked all the MCU boxes and still delivered something more: more action, more comedy, more interesting casting. Like Wonder Man, it took a character that only die-hard comics fans even recognized and made them someone everyone could enjoy. Cretton has earned his spot in the Marvel fold, not by reinventing the franchise wheel but by showing how much more ground that wheel can cover.
Am I afraid I’ll be eating those words of optimism in a few days when I’ve finally plowed through the rest of the episodes? You bet I am. But if nothing else, at least Wonder Man only clocks in at around 30 minutes per episode, which is a breeze. And whether Simon Williams ends up having real staying power in the MCU or not, at least we know Trevor Slattery does. Who expected that guy to low-key be a Marvel MVP when he first showed up in Iron Man 3?
