‘Wonder Man’ Review: Dreams, Failure, and Friendship in the Marvel Universe

Within the Marvel universe, shows like Wonder Man are minor projects: small-scale series about characters who live on the outskirts of the franchise’s nerve center, far from where all the supposedly important things happen. And maybe that’s precisely why they tend to be the best ones—more independent, freer, less constrained by the now-standardized formulas of superhero cinema. Watching this series, created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, you get the feeling you’re discovering something that, if not entirely new, is at least genuinely original: a superhero story in which having powers is a relatively secondary aspect of the characters’ lives. Yes, at some point it will matter—but almost nothing essential actually revolves around it. In fact, if the protagonist’s conflict had nothing to do with special abilities at all, the series would work just as well.

In that sense, Wonder Man is to the MCU what A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is to the world of Game of Thrones: shows that take marginal, secondary characters, place them in relatively low-stakes adventures, and—most importantly—shift the epic tone of the major events in their respective universes. That’s exactly why they feel different, better: they give their “motherships” some breathing room, some life, and a dose of realism. The parallels run even deeper, since both series center on the relationship and misadventures of two very different characters, each hiding something, who team up in order to enter a risky competition.

In the GoT spin-off, the protagonist wants to compete in a jousting tournament. In Wonder Man, Simon Williams wants to land a role in a superhero movie. Well, really, any movie, TV show, or whatever will have him. Williams (an excellent Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an actor with very little work. He’s genuinely good at what he does, but he’s so rigorous—so intense—in his research and preparation that he insists on finding motivations and a backstory even for a tiny role with just two lines. As a result, early on we see him being fired from the set of a TV series (in this case, American Horror Story, one of many real-world titles casually dropped here), once again left without a job.

Simon, whose Haitian family lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles, always wanted to be an actor. As a child, his now-deceased father used to take him to see Wonder Man, a cheesy adaptation of the Marvel character—recreated here in charming scenes that evoke the look and feel of similar adaptations from the ’70s and early ’80s—which young Simon became obsessed with. Later came the studying, the discipline, the devotion to his craft. “He had his acting, his Criterion DVD collection, all those movie posters on the wall. Maybe he didn’t feel alone, but he was,” says his warm, funny mother as she recalls his adolescence. And that line points to another key element of the series: Simon was a lonely kid, with a strange tendency to make things explode whenever he got nervous or angry.

At least during the first few episodes, that trait remains a minor, secondary issue. The main axis of the story is his encounter, at a screening of Midnight Cowboy—a film built around a relationship not unlike this one—with Trevor Slattery (Sir Ben Kingsley), known in Marvel lore as the Mandarin. The story is well known by now: Slattery is actually an actor who once played a terrorist by that name (a classic comic-book villain) in a series of films. In this context, he’s relatively famous for that role—and often mistaken for the real thing. In reality, he’s a recovering alcoholic and addict with legal troubles, pressured into spying on Williams in exchange for his freedom. The authorities suspect Simon may have superpowers, something they’re eager to keep under control.

The series follows the adventures of this odd couple as they try to make it through the casting process for a new version of Wonder Man, the very superhero movie that enchanted Simon as a child. The meta-references are plentiful, but the premise is crystal clear: Williams is an actor who also, secretly, possesses unusual abilities that could turn him into a superhero—or a supervillain. That’s why he’s being watched. Simon knows—thanks to a reveal in the third episode, told through a funny yet melancholy black-and-white side story—that these “differences” could destroy his career. And so he’s forced to hide them. The question is whether, under all that pressure, he’ll be able to keep doing so.

Wonder Man—the series, not the movie they’re trying to get cast in—works as a dramedy set in the world of unemployed actors in Los Angeles. Somewhere between The Studio and an indie film, it’s about the obsessions, anxieties, and quiet suffering of performers trying to make a living in Hollywood. It’s a show about rehearsals, research, and devotion to a profession that remains somewhat mythical and mysterious even to those who practice it. Large portions of the plot unfold during auditions, camera tests, discussions about how to deliver a line, and—above all—different ways of understanding the job. In fact, one of the main driving forces of the first half of the season is the clash between Simon’s “method” approach (digging, researching, finding the character within himself) and Slattery’s more traditional British, theatrical style, which can be summed up as: «learn the lines and say them«.

The strength of the series lies in pushing superpowers, interplanetary conflicts (barely mentioned), and the MCU’s usual lore far into the background, where they remain—at least for a while—peripheral. And when those elements do start to enter the story, they do so organically, naturally, in the same way that a film like Sinners would still work even if you stripped away all its fantastical elements. That’s the logic Cretton and Guest apply here: operating on the margins, playing a different game, and only plugging into the Marvel machinery—with its explosions, chases, and limited action set pieces—when it’s strictly necessary.

Beyond how welcome a series like this is for a franchise that seems increasingly unsure of how to move forward with its ever more tangled universe, Wonder Man stands firmly on its own. It’s hard to say whether it will be a hit or whether Disney intends to continue it—there’s an obvious door left open for a second season—but much like The Mandalorian felt at the beginning (in another corner of the studio’s empire, the Star Wars saga), there’s a sense that you’re watching something different from the norm, something refreshing and special. Maybe it doesn’t need multiple seasons. Maybe telling this story—about friendship, dreams, and a love for cinema, acting, and adventure—is enough.