A filmmaker auditioning leads for his next project has a philosophical insight. “Our ideas about heroes and gods, they only get in the way,” the eccentric Eastern European auteur Von Kovak (Zlatko Buric) lectures the actors assembled in his home for a day of offbeat dramatic exercises. “It’s too difficult to comprehend them. So, let’s get past them. Let’s find the human underneath.” This might not seem like such a profound realization for a lion of the festival circuit. But it feels downright revolutionary when you hear him say it in the new Disney+ Marvel dramedy Wonder Man. The MCU isn’t exactly known for getting past lofty ideas about heroes and gods.
What is this guy even doing in this world, you might ask. In fact, he’s a key character in a show set not on a distant planet or in a grid of skyscrapers doomed to topple in a superpowered melee, but in a mostly realistic Los Angeles where the entertainment industry is still (and here you might have to suspend your disbelief) based. Wonder Man, whose first season will stream in full on Jan. 27, is not like other Disney+ Marvel projects. Nor is it like the other Disney+ Marvel projects that were hyped as being not like other Disney+ Marvel projects (see: Wandavision) but ultimately abandoned ambitious storytelling in favor of generic, VFX-heavy fight scenes and choppily integrated teasers for the next MCU movie. This alone might’ve made it the platform’s best Marvel show yet. But smart casting, witty writing, lively directing, and artful character development have also yielded the rare superhero riff that, as Kovak puts it, finds the human underneath.
Though its Hollywood is fleshed out with a big, delightful cast, Wonder Man is built on the skeleton of a classic two-hander. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, whose resume in this genre includes the Aquaman movies as well as HBO’s subversive Watchmen series, is our self-sabotaging would-be hero, Simon Williams, a struggling actor first seen getting fired from American Horror Story for overthinking a minor role. A cinephile obsessively devoted to his craft, he’s the kind of guy who makes notes about which books his single-scene character would be reading and expects everyone on set to care about it as much as he does. This same self-centeredness compels his girlfriend (Olivia Thirlby) to move out of their modest apartment without warning.
Drowning his woes in a Midnight Cowboy matinee, he spots a fellow thespian. Marvel fans will also recognize this character, whose sonorous British accent is audible before we see his face. It is Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery, who was introduced as an ostensible villain, the Mandarin, in a series of propaganda videos claiming credit for terrorist attacks in 2013’s Iron Man 3. You can read more than any reasonable person would want to know, on the internet, about the history of this character. But for our purposes, what’s important is that Trevor never masterminded any bombings. He was a pathetic, substance-addicted actor too high to comprehend that he was the frontman for deadly acts of terrorism—a performance he provided for the low price of free drugs.
The past decade, with its rampant conspiracy theories, has clearly taken its toll on the now-sober Trevor. “Whatever theories you’ve seen on Reddit are totally false,” he grumbles when Simon introduces himself. “I had nothing to do with Pizzagate, I’m not a member of the Illuminati, and I did not have my hands replaced by baby hands.” Simon’s surprising reply: “I always dug your performance as the Mandarin.” For both men, the play, as it were, is the thing. They speak the same culturally omnivorous language, savoring Pinter but also reminiscing about Trevor’s stint opposite Joe Pantoliano in a medical soap. (Wonder Man is the kind of show where a mention of Joey Pants reliably leads to a Joey Pants guest appearance.) They’re in similar positions, too, stuck at the fringes of their art form due to their own poor choices.
In a refreshing departure from so many impenetrable Marvel series past, creators Deston Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest expediently fill in viewers on the essential points of Trevor’s backstory. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to reveal that his and Simon’s meet-cute in the cinema is no coincidence; suffice to say that it isn’t so simple to extricate yourself from the grasp of law enforcement once you’ve been the face of a notorious terrorist organization. He isn’t the only half of this buddy comedy harboring secrets, though. In an industry that has reason to be wary of superpowered individuals, Simon’s career depends upon his ability to control his emotions.
Soon, he’s cajoling Trevor (or so he thinks) into admitting that he’s about to read for a role in a reboot of the 1980s superhero flick Wonder Man. Simon has loved the movie since he was a kid and will stop at nothing to audition for the lead. Pity his agent, Janelle, a kind but long-suffering truth teller played by the charismatic X Mayo. “You’re one of the most talented people that I know,” she tells her client. “But there’s a lot of talented people out here who are not pains in the ass.” This doesn’t stop Simon from lying his way into the casting. Trevor is, of course, waiting for him there, and their friendship develops through a series of adventures that feel authentic to the characters and setting. The Englishman tags along to a party at Simon’s childhood home, where a warm welcome from his effusive Haitian mom (Shola Adewusi from Bob Hearts Abishola) and judgmental comments from his more successful, square brother (Justified’s Demetrius Grosse) establishes the family dynamic that has made Simon so desperate to prove himself.
Wonder Man doesn’t just use Hollywood as a backdrop for a superhero story. Cretton, who broke through with the acclaimed indie film Short Term 12 before making his Marvel debut as the director and co-writer of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Guest, a network sitcom alum who scripted some of the best episodes of Community, demonstrate a genuine affection for the setting. As wonderfully portrayed by Buric, the Wonder Man reboot’s director is every European artiste absorbed into the American studio system cut with a dose of Werner Herzog’s gloom; his mansion could be a museum of Hollywood Regency decadence. The show is equally witty about the quirks of the 21st century movie business. Simon takes Trevor to record a self-tape audition at a janky, nautical-themed storefront studio called Ahoy Tapes. In a standalone episode that makes hilarious use of Josh Gad, guest-starring as himself (and recalls Guest’s Community highlights), a nightclub doorman (Byron Bowers) finds stardom when he touches a mysterious goo and his body becomes a literal door that people can pass through.
Judging by the glut of films and series set on studio lots, screenwriters have taken the age-old advice to write what they know to heart. Wonder Man might sound redundant the year after Apple gave us Seth Rogen’s excellent The Studio, which shares its fun guest casting and we-kid-because-we-love approach to Hollywood satire. (One of Simon’s rivals for the Wonder Man role got his start as “Paul Thomas Anderson’s surfing instructor.”) Marvel also feels a bit late to the meta-superhero show concept; Watchmen and Amazon’s The Boys both debuted in 2019. HBO’s dour, short-lived MCU sendup The Franchise came and went in 2024. What makes Wonder Man fresh despite all the competition is the care with which Simon, Trevor, and their fraught relationship are rendered by Abdul-Mateen, Kingsley, and the creators. Characters this vivid and enjoyable to spend time with are hard to find in any genre, let alone superhero fare.
That’s not to say the show escapes every Marvel (and particularly Disney-Marvel) pitfall. Most of the female characters are underwritten; I don’t see the point of hiring a talented actor like Thirlby when her presence is going to be confined to a few scenes spread out across an eight-episode season. A story adult enough to feature cursing still can’t muster the maturity to resist the old coming-of-age cliché of superpowers as an all-purpose metaphor for the innate differences that make people special. Yet this all feels very forgivable when you arrive at the season finale, and it’s an episode focused on advancing character arcs rather than having those characters shoot lasers at each other from high up in the heavens. More than any live-action Marvel show that Disney+ has produced before, Wonder Man accomplishes what Netflix did with Jessica Jones and FX did with Legion (while also creating a much lighter viewing experience). It gives people with no interest in superheroes for superheroes’ sake reason to watch—all the way to the end.
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