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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
That Marvel/Disney Super Bowl commercial has me amped up like Wanda Maximoff going up against Thanos. Marvelous energy is radiating off of me and I can’t control it. What we saw in that 30-second spot was exactly what I’ve been eager to see since it was first announced that Marvel’s stars were aligning on Disney+. Falcon slinging the shield, Bucky serving sternness, Scarlet Witch and Vision tripping through sitcom history, Loki delivering a threat through a cheshire grin—that’s all footage from movies I would be eager to watch, except all those moments are coming to my TV instead. After 12 years and hundreds of attempts, we are finally getting Marvel on the small screen. I. Am. Ready
None of this probably seems like a big deal to casual (re: not a Marvel maniac, like myself) fans. After all, there have been 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe TV shows across four networks over the past seven years. That’s a combined total of 363 episodes of television! Marvel on TV is not a new thing, yet… what Disney+ is doing is totally new.
It’s not just that these shows—The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki—are bringing movie characters played by movie stars to TV, although that is a big part of it. Actors from the MCU have popped up in previous TV shows before, most notably Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson and Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter. Both characters got their own TV shows that featured infrequent appearances from other Marvel actors (Dominic Cooper on Agent Carter, Jaimie Alexander and Cobie Smulders on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). But despite Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb repeating the phrase “#ItsAllConnected” regarding his TV shows’ relationship with Marvel Studios’ movies, the relationship was always one-sided. Millions of words have been wasted online trying to figure out how the Marvel movies lined up with the Marvel TV shows that they were purportedly connected to (including a thousand of mine), continually ignoring the fact that the movies were ignoring the TV shows (aside from one Easter egg).
Hell, the TV shows were ignoring the TV shows! As of 2019, there were at least three sub-universes within the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the ABC Marvel U, the Netflix Marvel U, and the Hulu/Freeform Marvel U. Characters from S.H.I.E.L.D. never appeared on Marvel’s Jessica Jones, the Defenders never bumped into Cloak and Dagger, and the Runaways never ran afoul of Punisher. There were enough inter-network team-ups to give the illusion of connectivity, but it never stretched to the big screen.
So yeah, seeing Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes get the kind of attention they were never afforded while playing wingman to Captain America feels rad. The same goes for Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany’s star-crossed Avengers. Even the omni-present Loki always felt like a lead trying to break out of a supporting role. But the Disney+ shows feel like the MCU in another way, one that doesn’t so much involve the characters: they look adventurous.
As a collection of nearly two dozen films, it’s hard to pinpoint one specific aesthetic between all of them. They certainly look like a collective whole, but there are outliers (the Guardians of the Galaxy films, Thor: Ragnarok, the trippier bits of Doctor Strange) that completely ignore the almost utilitarian, thriller vibe of the Russo Brothers’ through-line. Things get even wackier tonally. While every Marvel movie’s got jokes, there’s a bit of whiplash going from Avengers: Infinity War to Ant-Man and the Wasp, y’know? There’s a baseline of tactical uniforms and snark, but individual films are allowed to bounce off of that foundation. Because of all this, specifically the work of weird auteurs like James Gunn and Taika Waititi, the MCU feels unexpected.
Just going off a 30-second promo, that seems to be what Disney+ is delivering. In contrast, that’s not what Marvel Television’s gave us in those 363 TV episodes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. always felt stuck in the world of Joss Whedon’s Avengers, all plastic-y gray even years after the movies left that aesthetic behind. Cloak & Dagger and Marvel’s Runaways felt like teen TV, and the exact same kind of teen TV. The grittier Netflix shows were all, well, gritty, and they almost never experimented with style and tone (where was the swashbuckling side of Daredevil in that (brilliant) show’s 39 episodes?).
None of this is said to dismiss what Marvel Television accomplished with all those shows. Marvel’s Daredevil remains one of the greatest comic-to-TV adaptations ever, and Jones, Carter, Runaways, and Cage all blazed trails for representation. My point is, though, where are the Thor: Ragnaroks or Guardians of the Galaxies of Marvel Television? S.H.I.E.L.D. felt Whedon-y, Defenders felt Netflix-y, Cloak & Dagger felt Freeform-y, and it all felt TV-y—and there’s nothing inherently wrong with all of that, it’s just glaring now that we’ve seen what’s coming to Disney+.
That’s why the shows, WandaVision particularly, feel different. It feels like these three are as all-over-the-map as a phase of the MCU. WandaVision, a trippy journey through sitcom history starring a reality-warping, presumably grief-stricken superhero and her suit-wearing synthezoid soulmate, is not only the kind of story you would never see coming in a film, it’s also something you’d never expect to see on TV either. Contrasting shots of Wanda Maximoff in her Marcia Brady best with shots of Sam and Bucky in a pulse-pounding thriller, and capping it off with a bit of Loki’s simmering, maniacal glee? That feels like Marvel. And, y’know, they all look like the movies thanks to those huge budgets.
Because the Marvel movies are so successful, people write them off as artistic dead zones. The franchise does not get the credit it has long deserved for its consistent tonal diversity and, y’know, bringing a lot of weird into mainstream blockbuster filmmaking. No other film franchise can boast billion-dollar successes as different as Spider-Man: Far From Home and Black Panther. Finally, it looks like that same level of adventure is coming to the small screen—and it just so happens it’s a bunch of familiar heroes delivering it. Fall can’t get here fast enough.
