The Marvel Spotlight banner gets its second ground-level series in this winning MCU comedy-drama about an actor with superpowers trying to land a gig.
But that’s exactly what makes Wonder Man one of the most compelling, purely enjoyable shows in Marvel Studios’ roster. It isn’t aimed at same-old same-old hero-villain clashes, or at teeing up the next saga. Co-creators Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Andrew Guest (Community), operating under the “more grounded stories with less homework” Marvel Spotlight banner, offer up the rarest thing in the Marvel playbook: a story that’s unique, personal, character-focused, and designed to stand on its own.
Series star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has already done his time as a far more explosive superhero (in Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen) and a much more traditional supervillain (as Black Manta in Aquaman and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom). In Wonder Man, he isn’t super at all. His character, Los Angeles actor Simon Williams, is a struggling day player with a habit of overthinking and overrehearsing the small roles he gets. He’s obviously coming from a place of sincerity and anxiety rather than ego, but that doesn’t make him any less of a nuisance during productions, as he pins down directors and screenwriters to quibble over every minor aspect of his characters, from his word choice to his lighting to his props.
Simon’s other big issue is an uncontrolled talent for destruction. When he gets emotionally overwrought, objects around him shake and sometimes shatter. That isn’t particularly useful for a superhero, but there’s no sign that Simon has any interest in heroism. He just wants the career break every hustler in Hollywood is looking for, the audition that will finally make him famous enough to maintain a sustainable career. If he’s ever outed as having a superpower, though, his acting career will be over, due to a studio initiative called “the Doorman Clause.” (That title, and the reasoning behind it, doesn’t emerge until halfway through the series, in a raucous flashback episode that’s one of the show’s many highlights.)
While licking his wounds after his latest career setback, Simon spots disgraced actor Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) in a movie theater showing John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, and chats him up. Trevor, Wonder Man’s main nod to MCU’s larger continuity, was a down-and-out actor and addict himself when he agreed to impersonate a terrorist leader called The Mandarin as part of a scheme seen in 2013’s Iron Man III.
