We live in a golden age of oversaturation for comic books characters. It’s a time when, if you don’t like a studio’s particular spin on a beloved I.P., you only have to wait a few months for the character’s next reinterpretation.
Still, thanks to its ubiquity and mass appeal, the MCU has a significance that’s hard to ignore, and it’s a special kind of hurtful when the pop culture monolith stinks up the adaptation of a character that we nerds hold dear. And so, doing like sweet papa Ultron told us to do and reconsidering things with the benefit of hindsight, let’s look back on some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s character whiffs, and how they could have been rectified by the simple addition of a $200 million streaming series.
Maria Hill
Our first hint that things were going poorly in the world of Secret Invasion should have been the show’s enthusiasm for ditching Cobie Smulders. After over a decade, mostly spent wearing a unitard while standing behind Sam Jackson, slightly out of focus, her tenure ended with a literal bang and a critical fart noise.
The enormous drag is that her character, Maria Hill, had some genuinely great stories in the comics. She has a storied history as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and as the division’s director, accidentally kicking off the events of the Civil War with her letter-of-the-law approach to leadership. Using that as a jumping off point, Smulders’ more subdued, steely-eyed interpretation in the MCU could have been an excuse to offer up the globetrotting, espionage-heavy adventures that Secret Invasion promised. More than that, a series focused on her would have been an opportunity to deliver on the premise that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. kept wussing out on with its Inhumans, robot arms, and demonic possessions: regular, un-super people, doing good, not out of a dramatic sense of destined purpose, but because they believe in it, and it’s what gets them dental insurance.
Taskmaster
Like any comic book character, there’s a lot of stupid in Taskmaster’s DNA – enough that you can almost understand why the makers of Black Widow decided to chuck almost everything about the guy in the bin and start from scratch.
Almost, but not quite. There’s also a lot to love about Anthony Masters, the mercenary with the gumption to dress up like a Halloween decoration and try to beat up the Hulk. More than that, there’s so much that would lend itself to serialized storytelling. His “photographic reflexes” give him the power to instantly replicate the movements of the heroes and villains he fights, which sounds like a great opportunity for him to go on a cinematic superhero safari through the events of the MCU, picking up new skills along the way. His gun-for-hire attitude opens the door for even more guest appearances from prospective clients like Zemo, the Leader, or S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. The more stuff he learns, the more he loses his own memories, adding the potential for an element of mystery.
Shocker
For a while, but especially since Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man stories, Shocker has been a born loser with a knack for getting kicked in the Quilted Northern solar plexus. Marvel could have made a killer series following his Pinky and the Brain-adjacent, street-level supervillain machinations and their inevitable failings. Instead, they killed one version and forgot about the other one by the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
War Machine
The widely accepted truth of the MCU’s streaming shows is that they’re generally the opening act for the movies that follow them – smaller stories, told as a way to set up for bigger ones. They’re basically what the Avengers in 2015’s Age of Ultron would have called “War Machine stories.” Maybe it’s not always end-of-the-world stuff, but there are stakes, and they’re fun while you wait for Thor to show up again.
Needless to say, Don Cheadle’s Jim Rhodes would have fit right in if his Armor Wars show hadn’t been reimagined as a movie that may or may not ever come out. It also would’ve helped if Secret Invasion hadn’t come out, but you can pretty much say that about anything.
M.O.D.O.K.
Put to one side Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt’s terrific Hulu series, and undream the night terror that was the version of the character from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Forget for the time being that M.O.D.O.K., for all intents and purposes, is a joke. Instead, go read Super-Villain Team-Up: M.O.D.O.K.’s 11 by Fred Van Lente and Francis Portela and remember, deep down, that he is, in order: a broken man; a calculating genius; a deceptive mastermind; a manipulative force for madness, fury, and revenge, and then – only after all of that – a joke.