Movies & TV Marvel Cinematic Universe Wonder Man Brings a Cozy Hollywood Bromance to the MCU Wonder Man offers the freshest take on the MCU since WandaVision By Ben Francisco | Published on February 2, 2026 Image: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Marvel Studios A comics fan since age seven, as a kid I was a big fan of the West Coast Avengers—a scrappy LA-based wing of the team that I found more compelling than the original—and which featured Wonder Man as a core part of the line-up. I’ve also become a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) but have felt the quality has been somewhat uneven in recent years. So I went into Wonder Man miniseries tentatively excited that it might offer something different from the standard MCU fare. It did. Wonder Man is the most distinctive MCU entry since WandaVision and among the highest quality Disney+ shows that Marvel has produced. It’s a character-driven story that focuses on the Hollywood corner of the MCU and on the rewards and tensions of one budding friendship. (Spoilers ahead, particularly for the first few episodes.) When the series opens, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a struggling actor. He gets written out of American Horror Story for thinking too much about his character’s choices and deferring too little to the director’s vision. He returns home to a small apartment, a stack of unpaid bills, and a girlfriend who’s moving out. Simon copes with his rising stress by going to an old movie theater for a screening of Midnight Cowboy. There he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), best known for masquerading as the terrorist the Mandarin (see Iron Man 3), though Simon recognizes him from a more obscure television appearance. The two of them connect, geeking out about film and stage, and Trevor drops that he has an audition later that day for a remake of Wonder Man—a 1980s superhero movie that Simon loved as a kid, and which he thinks could be just the break he needs.  Auditions for Wonder Man have already closed, but Simon maneuvers his way around his agent (X Mayo) to get an audition. There, he runs into Trevor again, who gives him some impromptu advice about getting out of his head and into his body. Ultimately, both feel good about their auditions and continue bonding about their craft over drinks. By episode two, we learn that Trevor isn’t being nice to Simon just to help out a fellow thespian. When he had first returned to Los Angeles, he was picked up by the Department of Damage Control. Since he never completed his prison sentence (see Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), they give him an ultimatum: go back to prison or help apprehend Simon Williams, a superpowered actor who they claim is dangerous. Trevor chooses the latter. Meanwhile, Simon’s anxiety builds to the point where he causes a small explosion in his apartment, blowing out the windows and leaving a giant dent in one wall. Simon is concealing his powers, since Hollywood has banned superpowered individuals from performing. The heart of the series is the bromance between Simon and Trevor, and the show works brilliantly because it stays tightly focused on their relationship. Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley have amazing chemistry, and pretty much any time they’re on-screen together it’s immensely satisfying. They’re both adept at one of the hardest challenges for an actor: playing an actor performing a part within the show. In the hands of lesser talents, all the meta-acting might get dull, but Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley make every audition and rehearsal fascinating to watch. The two characters’ shared love of their craft is earnest and endearing. One of the most memorable scenes is when the two of them are hanging out and spontaneously start reciting their favorite monologues for each other. There’s also a sweet note of mentorship in Trevor’s coaching of Simon—often offering advice that actually seems useful.  Some of the best MCU stories have had a close friendship at their core, often between two male characters: Loki and Mobius, Bucky and Cap (both Caps!), Tony Stark and Peter Parker. Even in this good company, Simon and Trevor stand out—perhaps because the two characters are so profoundly lonely and so quickly come to depend on each other. And while other MCU bromances have been set against the backdrop of fighting to save the universe, the world, or at least the neighborhood, Wonder Man consistently stays grounded at the character level. Simon and Trevor are just trying to catch a break. Wonder Man is not only character-driven, it also has very few fight scenes for an MCU show. The stakes are low but the show is consistently suspenseful because the characters want things so badly that you can’t help but want them to succeed. The down-to-earth tenor might be an adjustment for some MCU fans but also could enhance its appeal for some audiences in an age when “cozy” is trending across multiple genres. Wonder Man is offering up the first cozy superhero show.  Possibly because the protagonists’ dreams center on acting, the miniseries feels a bit slower any time it strays from the core plot of the making of the Wonder Man movie. From the trailers, I had expected the bulk of the series to be about the making of the film, but it actually takes a while to get to that. There’s a chunk of episodes in the middle that feel slower, where we take several side-quests while Simon and Trevor wait to hear back about their auditions: a birthday party for Simon’s mom, a full-episode flashback explaining why superpowered people are banned from acting in Hollywood, and a long chase of someone who filmed Simon using his powers.  But even these relatively slow episodes are enjoyable too. They give the story time to spread out and make the growing connection between Simon and Trevor feel more real. Episode three, the birthday episode, brings us a deeper look at Simon’s Haitian family, a shift from the comic book source material that adds more contours to the character—and makes Simon the first Haitian superhero to appear on screen. Even the flashback episode works surprisingly well considering the core cast barely appears in it, partly because Doorman (Byron Bowers) is an interesting character with such odd powers, played by another skilled actor.  In episode six, we finally make it to the callbacks for the movie, with Zlatko Burić rendering a delightful performance as the director. The final three episodes are a fun and unpredictable ride that focuses on the intimacies and hurts of Simon and Trevor’s relationship rather than a CGI climax. As a comics fan, it took me a few beats to wrap my head around the fact that Simon Williams is not exactly Wonder Man, but an actor who wants to play Wonder Man in a movie. (In the comics, Simon is an Avenger before he becomes an actor.) The show is one of the MCU’s loosest adaptations of the comics; this Simon shares his ionic powers, his Hollywood career, and some cute lewks with his comic book counterpart, but not much more than that. While the character has been around since the 1960s, he’s only occasionally had his own solo book, so he has much less history compared to Iron Man and Thor and the like. Wonder Man reminded me a bit of Agatha All Along in that it created an interesting and fresh story inspired by a character who has never quite had a full chance to shine in the comics.  Another departure is the source of Simon’s powers, which came from Baron Zemo’s ionic radiation treatments in the comic. That’s not the case in the show; Simon himself says he doesn’t know how he got them. I’ve seen a lot of speculation on social media that this version of Simon might be a mutant, setting up a possible X-connection. Regardless of whether that’s Marvel’s plan, the character’s journey definitely has mutant vibes. Simon feels like he can only succeed if he hides his true self, a theme that will resonate with many LGBTQ people, immigrants, and anyone who’s had the near-universal experience of feeling different at some point in their lives. While the show doesn’t have a traditional supervillain in its cast, the Department of Damage Control is the clear antagonist and is increasingly showing itself to be a villainous force in the MCU. Damage Control agent P. Cleary (Arian Moayed) and his bosses are mainly motivated by having to justify their budget and the massive super-prison they’ve built—leading them to criminalize super-powered people like Simon even though they’ve done no harm to anyone. The motivation is more realistic and grounded than that of most MCU villains. It’s also resonant at a time when immigrants and peaceful protestors are being criminalized, and private prison companies are padding their profit margins. The series lives up to its Marvel Spotlight branding for stand-alone shows; you don’t need much background in prior MCU entries to watch it. The main point of connection to the MCU is Trevor Slattery. If you’ve seen Iron Man 3 and Shang Chi (plus the short All Hail the King for completists), then you may appreciate Trevor’s backstory more, but it’s not crucial. Slattery started as a workaround to get away from the extremely racist roots of the comic book supervillain the Mandarin, but in Kingsley’s able hands has grown into a complex character with an interesting arc across several appearances. The most fun cameos in the show are not from the Marvel Universe but from the “Hollywood Universe.” Josh Gad, Ashley Greene, Mario Lopez, and Joe Pantoliano all play fictionalized versions of themselves, giving the show some additional Hollywood flavor while demonstrating these celebrities’ ability to not take themselves too seriously. The show does have a few minor stumbles, though they’re so few that it’s barely worth mentioning. Simon’s quibbling with directors about his characters’ choices feels a bit overdone and too easy, though Abdul-Mateen’s deft performance mostly makes even those weaker moments work. Every episode opens with a flashback, some of which advance the emotional heart of the story, while others feel like they slow things down needlessly. That said, the flashbacks are fairly short and much tighter than they’ve been for some other MCU shows, which have tended to overuse that particular tool. But these flaws are relatively minor in a show that’s brilliantly executed overall. The ending hit the perfect note for me. It was so clear throughout the show that these two characters needed each other. The final episode brought that theme to a close in a way that felt satisfying and wonderfully unexpected for a comic-book show. Wonder Man was billed as a limited series but definitely leaves the door open for a second season. I’d love to see more of these two amazing actors playing these two fascinating characters, but part of me hopes there won’t be a sequel because the ending felt so perfect that I’d love for the two of them to stay that way forever in my mind, blasting off to the next challenge.[end-mark] The post <i>Wonder Man</i> Brings a Cozy Hollywood Bromance to the MCU appeared first on Reactor.