This Is Why Your Favorite Marvel Disney+ Show Never Got a Season 2

Unless you’re a Loki fan, you may have at some point wondered why your favorite Marvel Disney+ show didn’t get a second season. Thankfully, Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Brad Winderbaum, has the answers.

The studio’s early Disney+ shows, from WandaVision to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, were clearly never intended to continue beyond one season. They existed in part to set up new Marvel movies. That’s why WandaVision directly led into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier set up Captain America: Brave New World, and Ms. Marvel paved the way for The Marvels.

From a business standpoint, that model occasionally worked, but from a fan perspective, it left us wanting more. Since we know Marvel will feed fan appetite wherever possible, there was another factor in play that stopped us from spending more time with some of our favorite superheroes and their inner circles: money. The budgets for those shows were already massive, and they had huge production values. The studio, its producers, and various other stakeholders all have to define how those projects are financed, controlled, and even how profits are shared, which is pretty tricky when you’re trying to extend a pricey project that was never supposed to be extended.

“The original shows were created as limited series with characters that could bounce back and forth between the movies and TV shows.” Winterbaum explains (via EW). “That made it challenging to make season 2s because the deal structure became really expensive, frankly.”

Although most key characters’s stories continued in subsequent movies or other Disney+ shows, Moon Knight’s lack of continuation in particular has often been a sticking point for fans who were left on that series’ cliffhanger, with none of those characters spotted in the MCU since.

The good news is that Winderbaum is aware of the situation. “We started developing shows that could last for multiple seasons. Daredevil, we’ve now greenlit the third season, that’ll come out annually. X-Men ’97, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, they’ll come out annually for a number of years. But there are shows that were caught in the middle.” 

This marks a major turning point in Marvel’s streaming strategy. Instead of one-and-done stories, we can expect ongoing character arcs and deeper world-building. Y’know, television! However, the shows still “caught in the middle” between the old and new strategies are Marvel Zombies and the upcoming Wonder Man which Winterbaum calls “one of my favorite things I’ve ever been a part of.” He says both shows could still get a season 2 if people watch them.

So, next time you finish a Marvel show, don’t assume it’s over when the final post-credits scene hits. The new MCU streaming model finally includes second seasons. Only audience numbers stand in the way of them materializing.