We’ve heard a lot about how the MCU is about to pull back on the sheer quantity of movies and TV shows it makes but… Come on, Bob Iger, we’re not buying it. Next year, there are four films scheduled to release and a trio of Disney Plus TV shows on the way: Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, and Wonder Man.
You remember Wonder Man, right? No, it’s not a gender-bent Wonder Woman show in an attempt to appeal to incels, although — funnily enough — it does star a veteran of the now-dead and buried DCEU. Wonder Man is due to be another Marvel comedy series, in the mold of She-Hulk, featuring Aquaman‘s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon Williams, a Hollywood actor who becomes a superhero.
While it might not have the legacy behind it of the Daredevil revival or Iron Man/Black Panther spin-off Ironheart, don’t sleep on Wonder Man as it turns out it’s set to break an MCU record.
Wonder Man is confirmed to smash an MCU Disney Plus record
While announcing Abdul-Mateen II’s casting in Netflix’s Man on Fire series, Deadline casually confirmed that Wonder Man will consist of 10 episodes. Despite the off-hand way we found this out, this quietly reveals that the upcoming series is set to be the longest live-action Marvel series Disney Plus has ever given us.
While animated series such as What If…? and X-Men ’97 have been allowed to cross the threshold into seasons with double figures, to date the lengthiest the studio’s live-action shows have been able to reach is nine episodes. This applies to both WandaVision and She-Hulk so far and will soon apply to Daredevil: Born Again — while that series was initially reported to be 18 episodes long, we now understand that was a two-season order.
Honestly, longer seasons — more akin to the structure of Netflix’s popular Defenders Saga shows — is something MCU fans have been demanding for years now, so this should hopefully be a good thing. Of course, as it’s a comedy show, Wonder Man will probably only have 30-minute episodes, so the runtime won’t be too much longer overall, but this is still a good sign.
Whether this is a strange fluke of the Marvel system — like the five-part Echo — or a sign of the future remains to be seen, but fingers crossed Wonder Man is well-received so it inspires a new trend for ten-parters.