Marvel's TV output has long been the centre of major discussion – it's been a rollercoaster ever since the big push on Disney+ first started a few years ago, and has seen massive highs during lockdowns and some fairly awkward lows at times since then. Now, though, the MCU has its first big critical hit in a little while.
Wonder Man streams from today on Disney+ worldwide, and it's sitting on a hugely impressive 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, from advance reviews, with the Metacritic aggregate score at 75, making it one of the best-reviewed shows Marvel has ever made.
Of course, with the show dropping today, the pool of people who're able to watch it will massively, irreversibly widen – which means these review averages are likely to flex quite a lot as more and more critics who didn't get advance screeners give their take on the show. Whether that'll see the needle move up or down will doubtless be something the suits at Marvel watch very keenly in the next week.
Still, the early signs are enormously positive for a show that looks like it's very deliberately trying to subvert the usual genre tropes. It stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon Williams, an actor struggling to get by in Hollywood, as he vies for (and clearly lands) the role of a lifetime in a reboot of a vintage superhero movie.
Little does he know that the process of getting the part and playing it might just awaken actual, real-life powers in him, and that those powers could make his life much more complicated, rather than just solving all his issues overnight. One of his key personal supports, meanwhile, is Trevor Slattery, the cheeky actor played by Ben Kingsley to such comic effect in Iron Man 3.
This isn't Abdul-Mateen II's first brush with superheroes, since he's played Black Manta in a few DC movies, but it looks like his Marvel debut might go substantially better for him (at least in terms of reviews). Check the show out for yourself if you're a Disney+ subscriber, and see what you make of it – given outlets like Collider have called it "truly phenomenal", what's the worst that could happen?
