In “Wonder Man,” the new Disney+ series, a small-time Hollywood actor named Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) tries to land a role as the next big-screen superhero. The only issue is that Simon is kind of a superhero already, with special powers he has to constantly keep in check. The series brims with charm and novelty in a sprawling franchise that has stretched itself thin attempting to regurgitate new multiverse-linked superhero tales.
Simon is half of a charismatic buddy duo with Trevor Slattery (that dippy Shakespeare-quoting actor from the Marvel Cinematic Universe played by Ben Kingsley). For a franchise whose bread and butter is CGI action sequences and clunky battles, “Wonder Man” focuses more on the relationship between these two oddball actors, and their relationship to the industry.
Halfway through the enjoyable series the show pulls away from the main action to deliver a one-off story about another would-be hero, DeMarr “Doorman” Davis. It’s this single episode that epitomizes how the series may or may not point the way for the future of the MCU.
The shift is abrupt — Episode 4 immediately dives into the stand-alone story with new characters. DeMarr (Bryon Bowers) is introduced as the doorman to a hip Hollywood club. While taking out the trash one night, he touches dumpster sludge that gives him the power to turn his own body into a portal to other locations. He uses that power to save a crowd of people locked in the club, a crowd that includes the actor Josh Gad. DeMarr becomes Josh’s personal valet, and then a movie and TV star in his own right. But when DeMarr’s popularity wanes his debts increase, and he pushes his powers too far, ending his career for good.
The episode has a sleek black-and-white aesthetic that, despite the modern setting, gives the story a nostalgic, archival feel. And a few stunning shots in the episode emphasize both the extravagance of Hollywood from a star’s perspective, and the isolation an outsider may feel in that same world. In a club scene, Josh stands in front of the DJ booth looking out into a crowd: lights spark overhead, puncturing the darkness of the room where throngs of people dance. It’s extravagant and — taking into account that he is drunkenly singing lyrics from the “Frozen” soundtrack — silly. By contrast, another scene shows when DeMarr first discovers his powers: He’s the lone body in a black void, luminous white doors suddenly appearing around him.
The infinite doors don’t appear inviting but foreboding; DeMarr himself looks overwhelmed by the sight. The scene is a subtle thematic nod to the magical Negro trope, and to the series’ overall racial consciousness. DeMarr is the happy-go-lucky sidekick figure who starts off in service of a white man, and his downfall shows what happens in Simon’s world (and our own) when an extraordinary Black man’s aspirations ruin him.
In other words, there’s an intentionality to the style and story of the episode — and the series — that stands out among the stronger entries in the MCU. Even “WandaVision,” for all of its protean style and cheeky parodies of American family sitcoms, eventually devolves into the same CGI-heavy spectacle that the MCU has glutted itself on.
Is this the same world where Thor flew down from the heavens? Where Steve Rogers led the charge against an alien invasion in New York? Though “Wonder Man” does have ties to the MCU, it never leans on the increasingly thinning, ever-lengthening branches of the MCU central narrative. It’s not just a matter of the show’s relative independence from the franchise, either; the show’s pointedly meta, more adult sense of humor grounds the action in our world, our Hollywood, our celebrities. Josh Gad, Mario Lopez, Joe Pantoliano — all play versions of themselves in such a way that recalls other recent TV satires of the motion-picture business, like “The Studio” and “The Franchise.”
After all, the most meta aim of “Wonder Man,” in the “Doorman” episode and in the rest of the series, is to position the superhero not as a moral paragon but as a product. Having enjoyed, then endured, several phases of superhero content over the years, we as audience members are already familiar with the superhero as product. We see the Superman Dairy Queen commercials. We saw the Deadpool/Wolverine popcorn buckets. We have the Wakanda sweatshirts. But it’s a different story for Disney to poke fun at the process at the heart of their whole franchise — the casting, the styling and the selling of new heroes.
After DeMarr achieves a certain level of fame, he scrolls through comments from fans and haters online. “Please tell me when his fifteen minutes are up #Doorman,” one commenter says, to his dismay. “Wonder Man” knows that even though superheroes have dominated the mainstream for the last two decades, they, like any other product, can be quickly outmoded and forgotten. “Wonder Man” knows that its characters, like the series itself, are fighting the scourge of superhero fatigue.
“Wonder Man” is a product of Marvel Spotlight, a new character-driven, reality-based sub-brand. To that end, the series lands at an important inflection point for the MCU. December brings us the behemoth cinematic event, “Avengers: Doomsday,” the first time since 2019’s “Endgame” that the franchise will amass all its separate story lines and heroes into one undoubtedly overstuffed film. “Doomsday” will reveal how the MCU can move forward narratively — whether some story lines will end, and whether others will branch off in new directions. It will also reveal whether audiences are still invested. Either way, the long-term health of the franchise depends less on the big narrative and more on the artistic merit of the individual stories and characters.
In another episode of the series, Von Kovak, the auteur director behind the new “Wonder Man” film that Simon’s auditioning for, says, “Our ideas about heroes and gods, they only get in the way. It’s too difficult to comprehend them. So let’s get past them. Let’s find the human underneath.” So far, between Simon and DeMarr, “Wonder Man” has shown that Marvel can succeed going forward if the franchise does just that. Whether we’ll get it, however, remains to be seen.
Maya Phillips is an arts and culture critic for The Times.
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