What Hulu’s Adult Animated Shows Mean for Marvel’s TV Future

If Marvel fans don’t already have a Hulu subscription, they will soon. As the sun sets on Marvel’s partnership with Netflix, it looks like a new day is dawning with Netflix’s main streaming service rival. In addition to hosting the original series Marvel’s Runaways, Hulu now has a slate of adult animated series coming up.

Hulu announced that series starring Howard the Duck, Hit-Monkey, and M.O.D.O.K. along with a Dazzler/Tigra team-up are on the way. And after the four series premiere, there’ll be a one-off special cheekily titled The Offenders. While the character in question aren’t A-listers like Daredevil or Punisher, the characters Netflix is slowly letting go of, there’s still plenty that this announcement can tell us about the future of Marvel TV–a future that exists post-Disney/Fox merger. That’s a merger that will bring all of the Marvel characters owned by Fox back into the Disney fold, and it’s a merger that will give Disney two-thirds ownership over Hulu.

The biggest news coming out of this announcement initially seems to be the inclusion of Dazzler–an X-Man–in a Marvel TV series. This seems like a major deal since the X-Men (along with the Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and all of their supporting characters and villains) have been kept out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the past 10 years. The major fan appeal of this Disney/Fox union is the potential for the X-Men to join the big screen universe, for Rogue to fight Captain Marvel and Wolverine go on World War II adventures with Captain America and for Beast to join the Avengers. Dazzler’s inclusion as co-lead of an animated series alongside noted West Coast Avenger Tigra (yes, there’s a West Coast Avengers team) seems like a step towards the future all Marvel/X-Men fans want.

Dazzler is thoroughly an X-character. Okay, she was created as disco cross-promotion between Marvel Comics and Casablanca Records in an attempt to get Bo Derek to star in a superhero movie. But still, she debuted in the pages of X-Men (issue #130) and served as a member of the team for a big stretch in the late ’80s (post-disco). She is a mutant, she’s a pop star, she’s an X-Man. Two of those things previously precluded her from appearing in a Marvel Studios movie… until now!

Except, not really. The details of Fox and Marvel’s deal have always been gray in places; that’s how Quicksilver, a mutant speedster with strong ties to both the X-Men and Avengers, appeared in both a Fox X-Men movie and a Marvel Avengers movie. However, it’s been pretty clear for a while that Fox has never strictly owned the TV rights to any Marvel characters. The X-Men couldn’t appear in a Marvel Studios movie, but they could–and have–appeared in Marvel TV shows over the past decade, if they were animated.

Wolverine appeared in the 2010 Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon, and then popped up on a bunch of Disney XD’s Marvel cartoons (Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.). The same goes for Deadpool, who also popped up in an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man in 2013.

Marvel could have been making X-Men and Fantastic Four TV shows all this time–they just haven’t been. The Gifted and Legion are two very recent exceptions, and both of those shows are executive produced by Jeph Loeb, the same guy who always hits the red carpets to promote all the other MCU shows ranging from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to The Defenders. So Dazzler’s inclusion in a Hulu show isn’t that big of a deal, since Wolverine and Deadpool have been there and done that recently. What is a big deal, however, is her being the titular co-lead of a show alongside an Avenger. Could a Tigra & Dazzler show eventually lead to another X-Men cartoon, not just one-off guest appearances? Maybe??

It’s way bigger news that Marvel’s doing a slate of programming at Hulu at all, regardless of whether it’s animated or stars D-listers. The Netflix era is basically done for, after the cancellation of three series. This move also confirms that all of Marvel’s TV plans don’t involve Disney+, the all-Disney streaming service that’s coming sometime later this year. Tellingly, all of the Marvel shows rumored for Disney+–like the Loki, Scarlet Witch, and Winter Soldier shows–are all coming from Marvel Studios. The movie-makers are bringing the A-list stars to the small screen for Disney+. However, Marvel Television–the company that makes all of Marvel’s TV, ranging from The Gifted and Cloak & Dagger to Marvel’s Agent Carter and Marvel’s Runaways–is behind this animated slate. It’s interesting that the movie studio is making programming for Disney+ while the TV studio is making shows for Hulu. Could that be the way forward? It’s also possible that these animated adult shows fall out of the bounds of Disney+’s reportedly family-friendly plans.

As this slate was literally just announced, there are still way more questions than answers. But I think we all know what it definitely means: there’ll be an animated X-Men series on Hulu by 2020. I guarantee it. Sure, I do, why not?