Disney is cutting back on where fans can stream Wonder Man, another demotion for a series it already canceled over the summer. It's been a rough road for the MCU Hollywood satire since it debuted on Disney+ earlier this year, even though it won over critics and fans alike. That acclaim earned the show a Season 2 greenlight from Marvel... just for it to be snatched away from everyone only a few months later. Now, not only will the stories of Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) not continue, but fewer people will even get the chance to see Season 1.
Marvel Television made it official (or so one thought) on March 23, renewing Wonder Man for Season 2 at Disney+ less than two months after all eight episodes dropped on January 27. Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley were set to return, as were co-creators Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest.
That was supposed to make it just the third live-action MCU show to earn a second season, after Loki and Daredevil: Born Again. However, Disney and Marvel had other plans. On July 30, it was reported that Disney+ had reversed course and canceled the series before the writers' room had even begun its work.
Abdul-Mateen later shared the reason he was given, explaining the decision "had something to do with the viewership numbers," though he was never told the actual figures.
It was a brutal blow for anyone who had watched Season 1, as this felt like a one-of-a-kind experience of having the rug pulled out from under everyone after having the previous confidence to officially state that more episodes were coming.
Guest had previously shared back in June that Season 2 would have shown Simon and Trevor facing the legal fallout of their Season 1 prison break. The showrunner also teased that their friendship would become "more important to [Simon] as a person than any dream role."
He even floated to The Direct a possible trade-off with the Department of Damage Control (DODC), which would let Simon keep acting while his powers stay under wraps. Sadly, it's currently unclear if Simon or Trevor will ever reappear in the MCU following the finale's heroic prison break.
The punches keep on coming for Wonder Man. The show joined Hulu for a limited time on March 12, but has been officially removed from the Disney-owned streamer after about seven months.
It turns out, even the Marvel Television boss wanted more Wonder Man. Speaking on The Brandon Davis Show, Brad Winderbaum admitted he "fought for" Season 2 before it fell victim to "market forces" he doesn't even necessarily agree with:
"I fought for it, I don't know what to say. It's complicated. Sometimes you feel like you're invincible, and you can make whatever you want. Sometimes you don’t have leverage, it's subject to market forces that I barely understand."
He stressed that "everyone at Marvel wanted to see it happen," and he's still holding out hope for something "down the road:"
"I fought for the show. We all did. Everyone at Marvel wanted to see it happen. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I still have hope that, by some miracle, there's a way to do something down the road."
In a Vanity Fair interview, Abdul-Mateen was asked whether there's a problem with what does and doesn't get greenlit these days. The outlet pointed to comments about fans debating which stories get prioritized, and the link between the cancellation and Mahershala Ali walking away from Blade.
The actor didn't dance around it, noting that no company in Disney or Marvel's position would want to be "attached to these optics:"
"I think the optics are obvious. If I'm a big business, if I'm Disney, if I'm Marvel, I don't want to be attached to these optics. So it should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources."
In the star's eyes, Wonder Man already checked those boxes, producing "quality results" that viewers and Emmy voters "responded to positively:"
"I felt that our show did have quality story, did have quality resources, did have quality actors and people, and did produce quality results that the viewers responded to positively, that the voters responded to positively."
That's why he believes the show deserves "some real, hard information" about its fate, since it had "all of the ingredients" you’d want:
"So our show does deserve some study and some real, hard information about why a show like this did not continue forward, because it had all of the ingredients that one would want in a show."
It's been such a roller coaster ride of the creatives and talent involved with Wonder Man. But the beauty of the MCU can sometimes be that characters' stories can continue in other places. Take Trevor Slattery, for example, hiw three-part MCU journey has been spread across radically different projects.
Will Any Wonder Man Character Return to the MCU?
Marvel Television has yet to reveal any plans for Simon or Trevor, though the initial cancellation report noted the show's characters could still appear in other projects.
At least one of them already has a comeback lined up, as DODC agent P. Cleary (Arian Moayed) is set to return in a future MCU project. The actor made the promise in an Instagram post addressing the cancellation, writing, "And trust me, Agent Cleary is coming back!" Cleary has already bounced around the MCU from Spider-Man: No Way Home to Ms. Marvel before Wonder Man.
With his agency now a major player in the MCU's mutant stories, he could resurface anywhere from the X-Men to maybe even the new Zodiac series Marvel just announced.
Simon and Trevor's paths back are far murkier, and for now, they may need the "miracle" Winderbaum was referring to. Considering
