A villain-lover's guide to Marvel, Phase Four – the TV series, part one (from WandaVision to Loki)

Phew, there certainly have been a lot of Marvel TV series, haven't there? And I'm not even counting all the ones outside the MCU phases featuring various Marvel characters (I do watch Agents of SHIELD in stages on Disney +, and it's enjoyable – but very long, so I'll take my own sweet time finishing it). Even if I limit myself to the miniseries that have been part of Marvel Phase Four so far, I'm starting to realise that I still have to divide my overview to two posts (sorry). I'll also only discuss the live-action series – I have seen the animated TV series What If... and liked it, but I don't have that much to say about it.

The TV series, I believe, are meant for a wider audience than the movies. As they're on Disney +, Disney are naturally hoping to bring new viewers in, not just the die-hard superhero fans who will watch anything Marvel (within reason). They try to achieve this by connecting their MCU TV series to other genres as well as the superhero genre. As I was reeled into the MCU in spite of superhero scepticism and appreciate the characters and inherent nerdiness of the MCU films more than the large action set pieces, this tactic works quite well with me, but I can understand why truer Marvel fans feel a bit short-changed when it comes to the actual superhero-ing. Also, the genre mix often leads to conflicting tones and story beats within a series. 

WandaVision

Series set-up: Wanda Maximoff is living an idyllic life with her beloved android-husband Vision in the small town of Westview. But wait: isn't Vision dead? And why does the married couple's married life resemble episodes of old sit-coms? Something is very wrong here.

Additional genres channelled: Sit-com, mild supernatural chiller.  

Overall impression: As I mentioned in my Loki review, I think this is my favourite of the Marvel TV shows. I do love "something's wrong with this picture" set-ups, and the revelations about what's going on are cleverly paced out: instead of explaining everything at the end, which could lead to an anti-climax as the explanation is seldom as fascinating as the mystery, the series gives us a number of reveals half-way, with some mystery remaining until the last episodes. Wanda and Vision are a sweet couple, and you keep hoping against hope that there will be a way for them to be together – but not at any cost. I liked the side characters too – among them the rookie FBI agent who was tasked to supervise Scott Lang in The Ant-Man and the Wasp and Monica, the daughter of Captain Marvel's flying buddy, now all grown up and somewhat directionless after her mother's death and five years of being dusted out of existence.

Any interesting villains? YouTube being YouTube, the catchy jingle "It was Agatha All Along" is difficult to avoid. It's hardly a twist that Wanda's friendly if nosy neighbour Agnes turns out to be fishy: in fact she's a rival witch, Agatha Harkness, seeking to boost her powers. At the same time, the jingle actually lies. Agatha is in for the ride, but she is not the one controlling events. So is she really the main villain of the story?

On the one hand, I understand comic-book fans' frustration when Agatha's boss from the comics failed to materialise, as they had every reason to believe he would. On the other, I'm personally relieved, as I don't like when stories get too sulphur-y. On the third hand, there is something of av evil-mastermind-shaped hole in the story. Is Wanda the villain of her own show? Later developments would suggest yes, but there's someting unsatisfying about this conclusion. On the plus side, whether she's a big deal villain-wise or not, Kathryn Hahn's Agatha was hilarious and I enjoyed her very much. The standard Government Agent Threat is barely worth a mention, though he does prove to have a case.

Can I watch it without having seen all the MCU movies? Strangely enough, seeing that it's so different in tone from the movies, this makes for an awkward jumping-on point for MCU content. Because if you share Thanos's lack of knowledge about Wanda ("I don't even know who you are"), how much are you going to care about her and Vision's love story?

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Series set-up: Sam Wilson aka Falcon was handed Captain America's shield by Steve Rogers at the end of Endgame, but he feels it's impossible to fill his friend's shoes and donates the shield to a museum. To his consternation, however, a new Captain America is chosen by the government soon afterwards. Meanwhile, Bucky Barnes is trying to come to terms with his past as the brain-washed Hydra agent the Winter Soldier. The two team up against a terrorist group called The Flag Smashers. 

Additional genres channelled: Buddy-cop movie, political thriller.

Overall impression: Look, I like Sam. I like Bucky even more. But this was a preach-fest of a series. The revelation that there was another super soldier besides Steve Rogers, Isaiah Bradley, who ended up behind bars because of racism (he's black), felt very forced, and I didn't like the implication that Steve had it easy because he was a blue-eyed whitey, because he didn't. I understood why Steve gifted the shield to Sam in Endgame – Captain America has to be pure of heart, and Sam fitted that bill better than Bucky – but if Sam was going to get all weird about it, I agree with many fans that Bucky would have been a better choice.

And that's not all. We're meant to dislike the ersatz Captain America John Walker, but he seems a nice enough guy, and when he loses his temper and kills a Flag Smasher (with the shield – not the best PR) I for one could fully understand him. Sam and Bucky seem intent on feeling insulted by him when no insult is meant. On the other hand, the series tries to make us sympathise with the leader of the Flag Smashers, as Sam seems to do, but I wasn't on board for it (see below). In the finale, Sam downright lectures a group of senators for having failed to handle the re-appearance of half the population in a correct manner, but all the advice he has for them moving forward is "do better". Ugh. This is why superheroes should stay out of politics.

Any interesting villains? Well, Zemo returned, and was the saving grace of this series besides Bucky. He managed in his unobtrusive way to forward his goal of reducing the number of super-enhanced individuals in the world quite a bit, though why he has a grudge against super soldiers and the like rather than big human-hating robots is still a mystery to me.

But Karli Morgenthau, the girl-leader of the Flag Smashers, was really annoying. I have very little sympathy with self-righteous young girls whose wrong-headed efforts to make the world a better place according to them mean making it worse for a large chunk of the population who are not "on message". Karli rightdown kills people, but Sam is still irritatingly soft on her. In the side cast, we have the introduction of the Power Broker, but seeing as there was only one suspect who could possibly be the Power Broker it led to the biggest villain non-twist since Incredibles 2.

Can I watch it without having seen all the MCU movies? When it comes to the returning characters, I think it's possible to become engaged in Sam and Bucky without having seen the previous movies where they star. The political context is very MCU-specific though, so viewers who want to start their MCU viewing with this series probably need some sort of primer to realise what the conflicts are about.              

Loki

Series set-up: In Endgame, Loki managed to escape with the Tesseract (containing an Infinity Stone) when the Avengers travelled back in time. But he wasn't supposed to do that... Therefore, he's apprehended by an agency policing the timeline, the TVA, and threatened with "pruning". But a TVA agent saves him as he thinks that Loki could prove useful in stopping another, more dangerous, Loki variant.

Additional genres channelled: Buddy-cop movie; quippy, geeky sci-fi à la Doctor Who.

Overall impression: I'll refer to my review of the show here. In some ways, I was disappointed – my expectations were probably too high – but it was still an entertaining watch with plenty of Loki in it. I'm glad there will be a series two, and I might rewatch series one soon.

Any interesting villains? He took his time in making an appearance, but I really liked He Who Remains (actually a variant of the Marvel comic book villain Kang the Conqueror), played with a lot of verve by Jonathan Majors. A variant of Kang might actually turn out to be the next Big Bad in the MCU after Thanos, who knows? It will be hard to connect him to all the other stuff going on within Phase Four at the moment, though. The side-villains Judge Renslayer (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Martha's sister in Doctor Who) and the scarily up-beat animated Miss Minutes were also good.

Can I watch it without having seen all the MCU movies? I'd recommend watching at least the Thor movies and the first Avengers movie before tackling this series. For a more detailed answer, see the end of this previous post.

Next time I dip into Marvel, I'll write about Hawkeye, Moon Knight and Ms Marvel. Preferably before She-Hulk airs.          

A villain-lover's guide to Marvel, Phase Four – the movies (up to and including Multiverse of Madness)

It's lucky I decided to catch up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe when I did last year, before their content output exploded. Now, it's hard enough to keep up in real time. The TV series on Disney + keep coming in a steady stream, and there have been quite a number of films (or movies – maybe a more fitting word as there's nothing more American than the MCU) as well. When you compare with the relatively modest scope of, say, Phase One, you start to wonder just how long Phase Four will be going on for, and just what will decide which movie goes into which phase now. Earlier, each phase was topped off with a big Avengers team-up movie: now, some of the Avengers are dead and the rest are scattered. Will the end of Phase Four be sealed with a new hero line-up? And what are the new phases building up to exactly? So far movies and TV series seem to be going in all sorts of directions, and if there's a new Big Bad on the horizon after Thanos, we haven't had a glimpse of him (or her) so far.

Generally, I've enjoyed the TV series of Phase Four (which I'll get to in a separate post) more than the movies, which have been a bit hit and miss. Another problem with the movies for me is that I don't have the endurance to watch them in the cinema, without loo breaks: they tend to be really long, and then there are always post-credit scenes which force you to wait around for ages while everyone remotely connected to the movie rolls past. (If it's so important that we watch the credits, how about making them shorter? We really don't need to know who did the accounts.) As a consequence, I wait until the movies are released on streaming, which means I'm still behindhand most of the time and have to look out to avoid spoilers (usually unsuccessfully). After all the wait and all the hype, it's easy to become disappointed. I'm getting this post out now, just before the cinema release of Thor: Love and Thunder, so I have an excuse for not having seen it yet.

Anyway, time to get down to it. I'll not pretend to think Loki might be in every film, because he's not:

Black Widow

Overall impression: I don't know what I was expecting – probably a straightforward origin story for Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow which would explain some references in earlier films, for instance how she and Hawkeye became best buddies. Instead we got this: an underwhelming action adventure awkwardly placed timewise between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Natasha's fake family from an undercover mission way back (she does get a little back-story) are interesting and sometimes fun, especially her "sister" Yelena and "father" Alexei aka The Red Guardian (I found "mother" Melina's motives bewildering). This whole storyline had a lot of potential, but the whole setup of female agents ("widows") who are being mind-controlled by a drug held no interest for me. It would have been much more fascinating if they had been simply brainwashed, and had to be talked down and reasoned with, with remorse (hopefully) following. But no: the mind-control drug acquits the widows of any responsibility for their actions (it was all the fault of the nasty men) while their kick-ass abilities can still be highlighted. Convenient.

Also, I can well imagine Natasha regarding a kid as collateral damage while she was still a widow-agent, but not when she is trying to break free from the network and wipe the slate clean. And are they implying that Hawkeye (who never shows up in the movie, by the way) was in on a bombing which would claim the life of a child? Surely not.

How was the villain, then? Terrible. You'd be hard pressed to find an evil mastermind with less of a menacing presence or charisma than General Dreykov. He was obviously not meant to be interesting in his own right, but merely a symbol for the oppressive patriarchy – hence the obvious parallels to a certain former Hollywood producer. Who thought this was a type we needed to see as an MCU villain?

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Overall impression: So, there's this hot villain, who with the help of magic artefacts gets special powers and immortality. Eventually he falls in love, and decides to put away the magic artefacts and live a normal family life. But then his beloved wife dies, he backslides, and the magic artefacts come back into play. Blinded by the wish to somehow be reunited with his wife, he can't be fully redeemed until he realises that there are others worthy of his consideration, and finally he gives his life for someone else, even at the risk of putting his soul in peril... Wait, don't I know this story?

The probably purely coincidental parallels to Once Upon A Time played a part in my liking of this film, but there are plenty of other things to enjoy as well. It's well-paced and often funny, the hero's sidekick Katy is endearing, and it wasn't always obvious what was going to happen next. I appreciated the reappearance of Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) from Iron Man 3 and the cameo from Wong (who is perhaps a little overused in other MCU movies, but fun here). Shang-Chi himself comes across as a little bland compared with the colourful side cast and his impressive pa, but I imagine he'll have plenty of time to build up more of a presence in coming films. At least he's more of an asset than his sister Xialing, who, feeling neglected by her crimelord father as a girl, trained herself to be a just as good – or even better – fighter than her brother. This was really contrived, and what's worse, Xialing doesn't have much in the way of a personality except being good at fighting and not having any sense of humour. Personality beats kick-ass abilities – how many times do I have to say it? All in all, though, this is my favourite MCU Phase Four movie so far.

I take it by all this gushing that the villain was good? Ooh, yes. Wenwu (played by Tony Leung) is all a villain should be – intelligent, charming, complex, with a believable motive and ruthless when required. And did I mention that he's hot? My only quibble is that he objects to being called "The Mandarin" by ignorant Americans. That he didn't like Trevor's role portrayal is understandable, but there's nothing denigrating in the title The Mandarin – Wenwu wasn't being named after "a fruit", but after the European designation of a high Chinese official, whose orange/yellow robes then gave name to the fruit. It's no more offensive than to have a European criminal mastermind be called The Chancellor (could we make it happen, please?). Don't be a snowflake, hot stuff.

The Eternals

Overall impression: You will by now have heard a great deal about how boring this movie is. And guess what? It's true. A host of new superpowered characters are introduced, who supposedly arrived from space thousands of years ago and have helped humanity on its way ever since – but only when it serves the plot. The large cast of characters and vast time frame proves too much for the movie to bear, especially as the tone is what Germans would call bierernst (the solemnity that comes from drinking too much beer). Also, the MCU mythology that is set up where planets are created by giant celestial robots is just too ridiculous for me to stomach. I can take alien or interdimensional Odins, Zeuses and Osirises, but I can't swallow this. 

Having said that, if you have a severe cold (I watched the movie when I had covid), this is the ideal movie to watch: it goes on forever, makes no demands on your brain, and you can have a chuckle over how seriously everyone takes themselves. Also, I liked Kingo, the Bollywood star Eternal, and there were some nice scenes, like Kingo's and Sprite's conversation about Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.

How are the villains? Don't hold your breath. The CGI critters set up as the Eternals' arch-enemies, the Deviants, are obviously a side show, and the real threat is revealed to come from those giant celestial robots I mentioned. The infighting between the Eternals themselves is more interesting than big robots in the sky, but only just. Bring back Dormammu.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Overall impression: Yes, I watched a Spider-Man movie! And not just one: in preparation for No Way Home, feeling something of a chump, I watched not only the two other MCU Spider-Man films with Tom Holland but also the Spider-Man trilogy directed by Sam Raimi, the two Amazing Spider-Man films and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That's an awful lot of Spideys. 

The homework paid off, though. With characters and callbacks from both the Raimi trilogy and the Amazing Spider-Man films, No Way Home makes a lot more sense and is more emotionally satisfying if you know the back-story not only of Tom Holland's Peter Parker, but Toby Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's versions as well (Into the Spider-Verse isn't really relevant here, but it was fun, so I don't regret watching it). Knowledge of their foes is also useful, as enemies of Peter Parker from other universes gatecrash MCU New York after one of Doctor Strange's spells goes wrong (he blames Peter).

But should you really have to watch a ton of Spider-Man films in order to be able to enjoy a movie like this? That's the question: if you've only watched the previous two Tom Holland movies, I think you'll be able to follow the story fine, but it will be less rewarding, if still entertaining. This movie is one for the fans, and for my part I'm not that keen on Spider-Man yarns, if I'm perfectly honest. Of course I like Peter Parker – he's a sweet boy/man in all the universes. But he also has the most rotten luck in all universes, which can be hard to watch. Plus we have the whole vigilante and secret identity thing, which were two reasons I was sceptical towards the superhero genre in the first place.

But the villains, are they any good? Yep. One of the reasons I made it through so many Spider-Man films is that the villains tend to be first-rate. I'm especially fond of Doc Oc and the Green Goblin from the Raimi films, but I also have a soft spot for the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man (perhaps partly because he's played by Rhys Ifans). With the exception of Electro, who's given a bit of a make-over in No Way Home, the villains tend to be more impressive in their original films than when they're guest-starring here. However, if you haven't watched all the Spidey films yet, the villain cameos can serve as a taster to help make up your mind whether you want to go deeper into the spider's web with non-MCU films.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Overall impression: I was really looking forward to this one. I love the whole concept of parallel universes and what if... scenarios, where sometimes tiny choices can lead to an alternate reality. If you've spent some time with structuralist historical theories, you appreciate world views – even fictional ones – where the power of the individual is given its due. Even so, perhaps it's harder than I imagined to make a good movie out of this promising concept. We end up not seeing a lot of the Multiverse, except in one fast montage. We only spend more time in two parallel universes – one that's already melting away, so we don't learn that much about it, and another which, if you scratch the surface, is not that different from ours.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a boring film. Benedict Cumberbatch gamely impersonates a few different Doctor Strange versions, including a sinister one who's quite fun; Elizabeth Olsen gives an intense and heartfelt performance as the troubled Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch who's searching for family bliss at any cost; the pacing is brisk and you're kept on your toes. But it wasn't the alternate-reality trip I was expecting, and the story, while connecting to the events of the TV series WandaVision, didn't pay any attention to Wanda's character arc in the series. It would appear she learnt nothing from her Westview experiences, and while I felt sorry for her at the end of WandaVision, there were so many other ways her character could go which would have been more satisfying than the one shown here. The side characters are usually used as cannon fodder (the death count is high and some of the death scenes gruesome) and America Chavez, a girl who has the ability to open portals between universes and whom Doctor Strange tries to protect, is more of a plot point than a character.

Any interesting villains? Um... Let's just say that if you're waiting for a new Big Bad to appear, you'll be disappointed. It's someone we already know and, while an interesting character, I'm not convinced by the character's turn to villainy. I'm not sure the villain reveal is really meant to be a twist, but if it is, I've probably given away too much.