Wonder Man Review: A Harmless Hollywood Diversion for Marvel

This Wonder Man review contains no spoilers.

It’s been two years since Marvel Studios released its first TV series under the Marvel Spotlight banner, with head of streaming Brad Winderbaum hailing it as a platform to create more “grounded, character-driven stories” that didn’t require as much MCU knowledge to enjoy.

That first Marvel Spotlight series, Echo, was a shaky first step in that direction. For a start, it followed its main character heading back home after the climactic events of another MCU show! It certainly helped to know what the character had been through before, but you could still basically follow the plot if you hadn’t the foggiest idea. New Marvel Spotlight series Wonder Man is more successful at separating itself from the MCU at large, which you may find either a breath of fresh air or a little underwhelming, depending on what you hope to get out of it.

Created for Marvel by Destin Daniel Cretton (Spider-Man: Brand New Day) and Andrew Guest (Hawkeye), Wonder Man centres on Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling 30-something actor who also happens to possess mysterious, but clearly dangerous, superpowers.

Simon has felt different his whole life. He has no friends to speak of, his family finds him a worrying curiosity, and he can’t maintain a romantic relationship. When he finds out that a respected director is remaking Wonder Man, a superhero movie he enjoyed with his late father, he begins to fixate on landing the lead role and finds an unlikely ally in Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), a washed-up actor who portrayed the Mandarin terrorist in Iron Man 3 and popped up again in a pocket dimension during Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

The pair is an absolute delight to watch. Abdul-Mateen II’s neurodivergent-coded Simon is determined but hapless; an introverted guy who has set himself the goal of becoming a famous actor but keeps getting in his own way and undermines his natural talents as a result. Kingsley’s Trevor enters Simon’s life as the extroverted influence he’s badly needed for a while. It would be easy to imagine Trevor as Simon’s excitable imaginary friend if we didn’t already know he was real. He only adds to the feeling that Simon could lose control, pushing and exploiting his new friend in escalating, precarious circumstances as the duo trots around Hollywood trying to make their mark.

Meanwhile, Simon’s caught the eye of the Department of Damage Control (remember them?), who consider him a threat. His unexamined powers are truly a compelling problem across the board, because even though Simon genuinely couldn’t give a single fig about them, the MCU’s version of Hollywood has also banned people with superpowers from acting under something called “the Doorman Clause.” The question of how Simon can land the role of Wonder Man and keep a lid on his powers hovers over the series like a dark cloud – eventually, something will have to give.

For anyone concerned about making a weekly commitment to this story, the good news is that all of Wonder Man‘s episodes are arriving at once, and they average out to sitcom length. It will take less than four hours to get through the entire season, and most of the episodes (and their jokes) land perfectly well. There’s a standout episode in the middle that pushes the show a little deeper into its own lore, but there’s also a frustrating episode that feels like unnecessary running around and almost derails its momentum.

Luckily, it doesn’t. But for a while, it adds to the feeling that we’re stuck in a bit of an MCU segue. Wonder Man is indeed a character-driven project, so it is much less concerned with superhero fripperies. It takes place in a universe where Rogers: The Musical is still doing business, but audiences are still experiencing superhero fatigue, which is a meta approach from Marvel that may be part of its undoing – it’s rather unlikely that people who have become less interested in the studio’s output will see the show on their Disney+ menu and be thrilled enough by the premise to give it a go, while those who are still committed to the machinations of the MCU might find it charming but ultimately a bit forgettable.

If you’re looking for superhero cameos, CGI battles, and piles of easter eggs, this is definitely not the show for you, but if you feel like watching a wholesome, funny little show about friendship that happens to focus on someone with superpowers, you could certainly do a lot worse than Wonder Man.

All eight episodes of Wonder Man premiere at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 27 on Disney+.