I've been deliberately avoiding this, because honestly it's sort of too much of a commitment for me to keep up with the movies. I still haven't seen Love and Thunder, much to my ongoing deep sense of sadness. So when Wandavision first launched I committed to myself that I wasn't going to bother trying to review the shows. It's just too much of a commitment to try and stay on top of them enough to integrate them into the list.
That said, I'm actually caught up right now. So I figured I'd take my chance to rank the Disney + Marvel shows in their own tier list now, while I'm still caught up, before She-Hulk comes out, and I'm suddenly not. The pertinent caveats to this are as follows;
- This list does not include the broadcast TV shows from yesteryear. Lord knows I love Agent of Shield more than the average person, and the only reason I stopped mailing Disney boxes of rancid chocolate milk over the cancellation of Agent Carter is because of the introduction of Captain Carter to the MCU cannon. But I'm never going to commit to finishing Inhumans (it's terrible) or Marvel's Runaways (I have no interest in that thing).
- This list also does not include the Marvel animated shows that have nothing to do with the MCU. An argument could be made that the broadcast shows I just excluded are also not part of the MCU, but the fact remains that both Agents of Shield and Agent Carter were cannon when they launched, though AoS engaged in some time-travel nonsense that probably pushed the main cast into a different branch of the multiverse at some point.
- This list is not a part of the MCU list. Once again I say it's hard enough for me to keep up with the movies, let alone a never-ending stream of miniseries', so I'll just say this show list will get updated when I finish the shows and that will happen on a timeline dictated by the stars, alignment of the planets, and my infant son's sleep schedule.
- As with my other tier lists, this is entirely based on my personal estimation of re-watchability. I actually do not frequently re-watch shows. Basically if it isn't Star Trek, Stargate, The Orville, or Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I essentially never re-watch shows. Though my wife hasn't seen most of Agents of Shield, so I've committed to going through that again. But the rankings here are still based around whether I have any interest at all in re-watching these shows, as well as just generally how much I liked them.
Okay, caveats aside let's hit these all with a series of my own; mini reviews paired with an ordering.
#6: Hawkeye
I want it to be clear that my placement of Hawkeye at the bottom of this list is absolutely no reflection on the quality of the show. I love Kate Bishop, she's an amazing addition to the MCU and her rapport with an understandably jaded and tired Clint in this show is, frankly, brilliant. Just perfect. In every way. And the show was super fun to watch especially toward the end, not least because I also love Yelena Belova, who was also an amazing addition to the MCU, and her rapport with Kate Bishop is, also, brilliant.
Honestly Kate is just great with everyone. Almost like Hailee Steinfeld is an amazing actress and (heavy sarcasm) who would have guessed that?
The reason it's at the bottom is because the setting and surrounding events are very time-boxed. It works really well for the story, but the simple fact is I would probably only want to watch this again around Christmas time because, like Die Hard, it feels like a Christmas production despite, you know, everything else. And that's just a very specific vibe, meaning that the show isn't super re-watchable for me outside of a season in which I'm already constantly strained for time to re-watch all my Christmas favorites.
But I cannot wait to see how they add Kate to other MCU projects in the future.
#5: Ms. Marvel
Oh jeez, here we go. Look, I love the presentation of this show. It feels unique and fresh for the MCU, and that's always good. I also love the representation. A brown female teenage superhero? Heck yes. I also love the cultural diversity on display, as a generic white dude who hews a little too close to Spider-Man for him to be interesting anymore.
But it's a show made for teen audiences, and I'm over a decade past being a member of that audience these days.
Frequently with movies or shows I don't like I have specific notes of what could be changed so that I would like them. In this case, I do not. I don't actually want anything about Ms. Marvel to change. I love the simple earnestness of Kamala's character, I love the general silliness of her imagination and the whole technicolored-teenager-ness of her friend group. The fact is that I can see where teen-aged me would have absolutely died over this show. It captures the absurd relationship with fandom, emotion, and family that I had at the time, a decidedly immature but also visceral portrayal of what the world can look like to a teenager just trying to figure out how it all works.
So did I like the show? Parts of it, sure, but honestly I can't see me ever watching it again. But do I wish they'd done anything different? Nope. This show wasn't made for me, but that doesn't mean it's not perfect just how it is.
#4: What If?
This was a strange ride, even setting aside the strange Strange we got before Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness. At a conceptual level What If? really scratches itches I have for the MCU. The idea that not everything has to fit into a predefined cannon is actually really neat. On a less macro level there were story concepts inside of What If? that equally tickled my fancy. Marvel's Zombies is such a fascinating thing, but I don't think I ever would have wanted more than about 25 minutes of it on screen, Captain Carter is what I always wanted for both Peggy Carter and Hayley Atwell (still not over the cancellation of her show), and Chadwick Boseman is sorely missed, but I'm glad we got to see how unbelievably wholesome he really could have made the galaxy.
The whole Ultron thing was also super interesting, and I didn't even mind the way it turned into a macro story arc for the latter half of the series either. No, if I'm completely honest the reason this is number 4, and the reason I'll probably never re-watch season 1, is pretty simple; I can't stand this animation style.
It's technically fine, I suppose. Some stuff looks weird, but nothing looks outright bad. It's just that overall it feels like they're trying to recreate reality, as if this were a live-action production, in a medium that just does not jive with that vibe at all. The strength of animation is style, and this animation has none. It's boring, looks a little janky during high-octane action set-pieces, and quite frankly holds back the stories they're trying to tell. For season 2 I'd really love to see some style injected into the animation itself. Think Arcane on Netflix, or Into the Spiderverse. You know, style.
#3: Wandavision
Okay okay okay. We're into the front half of this list, otherwise known as "the shows I might actually re-watch at some point". I want it to be clear that I love Wandavision. I think the story is great, I thought the framing devices for the early episodes were outstanding, and I'm so glad this was the first MCU show they produced for streaming. It showed that they weren't scared to do something new and different, and while maybe the final episode was a little generic (final battle with different colored lights flying around, skybeam, the works) everything else was outstanding. The Quicksilver fakeout was also amazing. Still not over how good that was.
I especially loved Wanda's character progression, and the way this show set up her part in Doctor Strange-MoM was just *chef's kiss* perfection.
The reason it's number 3 is honestly just 'cause it's sad. Like, I cried a few times in the last couple of episodes, and the very end where the hex is collapsing is, just... agony. Like, well done production team and performers, but that last bedtime and scene in the house killed me in all the best ways. So I'll probably watch this again, but just... not for a while. And not frequently. Too many feels.
#2: Moon Knight
This show is here for two simple reasons; first, I really liked the portrayal of psychosis on display here, and the way it fits seamlessly into this piece of mass entertainment that might actually educate some people. Second, Oscar Isaac is a gem. Moon Knight is exactly as wacky as it needed to be to sell the concept of the hero to me, and in general the production is extremely high quality. Isaac is charming as hell in every iteration of the role he's given to play here, and I can't see this show working even half so well with literally anyone else as the titular character.
I thought the conflict was fun, I thought the integration of the gods was interesting and even believable, given everything else in the MCU, and the visuals and cinematography were excellent. I was especially fond of how the fight scenes could actually be, well, seen. And that's despite about half of them taking place either at night or deep underground. Everything about this was gold, and I can't wait to see more.
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| Huh, what's this doing here? |
#1: Loki
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The way they released new weekly posters for this show to build hype without spoilers was genius |
This show is straight fire, come at me.
No seriously though, everything about season 1 of Loki, and I mean everything, was great. The visual style is outstanding, the aesthetic of the TVA, the unique stylings of the worlds and timelines they visit. The story is outstanding, with compelling conflict, interesting characters, and a novel spin on a classic multiverse theory. I loved Tom Hiddleston's Loki, of course, but Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius stands out as the breakaway performance I wasn't expecting. The man did not miss a beat in making me like him.
What action there was was also fun, and the way they expressed Loki's MCU character development was beautiful, lending validity to what we saw in the movies while still letting the Loki of the show develop into his own version of that character in very real, sometimes extremely raw ways. There wasn't a thing about this show I didn't like, including the implications it set out for the direction of the MCU going forward. And as good as What If?, No Way Home, and Dr. St. 2 were at expanding on the MCU multiverse, I would submit that none of them did it as well as Loki.
Also, the music. I have such a strong emotional reaction to those two chords. I am in awe of the music in this show.
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