DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN to end after its third season on Disney+

Disney have decided to end Daredevil: Born Again after its third season airs in early 2027. The show completed shooting several months ago.

Daredevil, starring Charlie Cox as the titular Man Without Fear and Vincent D'Onofrio as his arch-nemesis, Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk, originally aired three seasons on Netflix in 2015, 2016 and 2018, with the character also playing a key role in The Defenders in 2017. With the Netflix-Marvel deal ending in 2020, it was assumed that was it. However, the character made a low-key comeback, still played by Cox, in the film Spider-Man: No Way Home, followed by brief guest shots on She-Hulk and Echo (whilst Fisk also appeared in Echo and Hawkeye).

The entire Netflix Marvel-verse was made canon to the proper MCU with the release of Daredevil: No Way Home's first season in 2025, and then a second season this year, which continued the story from the original run. Both seasons were well-received critically, but the second season saw a significant drop in viewership. The closing moments of the Season 2 finale was also criticised for being decidedly implausible, even by normal MCU standards. A third season was confirmed and started shooting shortly after Season 2 concluded, with it being confirmed that many of the other Defenders will also be returning for a grand finale.

The decision was apparently made only after shooting was completed, with showrunner Dario Scardapane subsequently departing, before post-production was completed. This makes it sound like the original plan had not been to end with Season 3, and leaves open the question if there will be reshoots or edits to make it work better as a conclusion to the whole saga.

Although this is the end for Born Again specifically, it is possible the characters will live on. Jon Bernthal's Punisher, who originated in the Netflix show's second season before getting his own two-season spin-off, recently appeared in a Disney+ special before playing a key role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It's possible that Marvel may promote Daredevil to the movies, either a supporting role or leading his own picture. Future shows in the same continuity also cannot be ruled out.

Still, Disney is definitely winding in its slate of Marvel TV shows, having felt it made too many, too fast in the period after the pandemic, leading to quality issues. It recently un-renewed Wonder Man after an excellent first season, whilst the upcoming VisionQuest is expected to end the loose series of Scarlet Witch-and-Vision-affiliated TV shows which began with WandaVision .

Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2

Wilson Fisk's reign as New York mayor continues, but Daredevil is determined to expose his criminal connections and bring him down, with the help of allies including Karen Page and Jessica Jones. With Daredevil on the run and Fisk protected by mechanisms both legal and illicit, the odds are stacked against the Devil of Hell's Kitchen as never (well, rarely) before.

After Daredevil's original four-season run (including his turn on Defenders) came to an end and Disney+ took over control of Marvel characters on the small screen, fans could assume they'd seen the last of Charlie Cox's take on the character. That decision was reversed twice, first by bringing him into the mainstream MCU through cameos in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, and then by reversing a decision to reboot the character at the eleventh hour and retroactively canonising the entire Netflix-Marvel run of shows (including the characters of Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage).

Although welcome, this decision was only made after production on Daredevil: Born Again had started, so the first season was a little hamstrung in having to incorporate the material shot for the original, reboot version of the story with the new material acknowledging the prior canon. Season 2, happily, is free of such restrictions and the show can try to achieve the potential of what it wanted to be.

There are basically two main storylines here. The first is a political story as Wilson Fisk - Kingpin - tightens his control over New York's political life as well as its criminal underbelly, a balancing act he is initially very successful at but soon threatens to unravel, as his impatience cannot deal with the slow-moving wheels of bureaucracy. His own allies and workers start developing doubts about his brutal methods, but are too scared or feel too powerless to act. Daredevil is keen to take down Fisk, but is losing the battle of public opinion and the relentless surveillance state makes it hard for him to move around the city and do his normal thing. The actual US government smells a rat with Fisk, but is constitutionally bared from intervening...unless Fisk can be exposed.

The tension of the show is driven by these competing plotlines. Daredevil can't just track down Fisk and beat him up, and Fisk can't just unleash the full force of his brutal methods whilst his every move is being tracked in the full glare of media and political scrutiny. Both characters are constrained, and have to work within those constraints, which is much more interesting.

The show is also strengthened by the expansion of the cast. After only fleeting appearances in Season 1, Deborah Ann Woll returns in a key role as Karen Page. Woll is an extremely strong (and underrated) performer, and imbues Karen with a lot of charisma and dangerously impetuous energy without ever making you lose sympathy for her. It's a remarkable balancing act and having her back is great. Jessica Jones also gets a key role in several episodes, and Krysten Ritter brings her world-weary cynicism as usual, but here tempered with more empathy, hinting at off-screen character development. 

Not all the cast are firing on top guns. Matthew Lillard is possibly the least convincing CIA agent in screen history, and there's maybe one or two many identikit political movers or criminal gang lords wandering around the story. A bit of sprawl can be a good thing, and this season at least feels like events are happening on a big scale, but not so much when you start forgetting which minor criminal gang leader is supporting Fisk, which is opposing him, and which is apparently supporting him but also willing to backstab him.

There's a lot going on here, for a nice change, as it fills up the eight-hour runtime quite well, with a lot of subplots to go around. Cox is possibly at his very best as a Daredevil constrained by the system he swore to uphold and with his pool of allies rapidly thinning out, whilst Vincent D'Onofrio gives an outstanding performance as Fisk has everything he ever wanted - power, respect, influence, a beautiful and intelligent wife - but finds it still cannot fill the hole in his soul. There's always been a tragic, operatic element to Fisk's story and character, especially this version of him, and D'Onofrio plays that to the hilt.

An excellent season of television which, at times, threatens to be the best thing Marvel has put on the small screen, unravels towards the very end with unexpected rapidity. The trial of a main character turns into a trial of Wilson Fisk, his motives and his measures, and it's extremely tense and well-written. But the show goes too far when the tension breaks and we end up with a situation which gets very implausible (bordering on the idiotic) very quickly. The season's cliffhanger ending is so contrived that it will have your eyebrows halfway to Mars before the end credits are done. I know Marvel are aware they have a good villain deficit (especially since Thanos bought it, twice) and D'Onofrio is one of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal, but they are also at risk here of over-using him and eliminating his menace and power.

This is frustrating and disappointing, as up until the last half-hour or so, Daredevil: Born Again's second season (****) and the sixth season overall to feature Cox as Daredevil in a leading role, is outstanding. As it stands, the in-production third season is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the ending of this season seem less disappointing. The show is currently streaming worldwide on Disney+.

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Wonder Man: Season 1

Legislation has barred people with special powers from working in Hollywood, a rule enforced by the Department of Damage Control. When they suspect that up-and-coming actor Simon Williams has secret powers, they recruit ex-Mandarin actor Trevor Slattery to befriend him and learn the truth. Slattery is at first keen to help in return for money and his freedom, but as he gets to know Williams and sees things in him that remind him of his own career at a younger age, Slattery starts to have second thoughts.

It's probably fair to say that the Marvel TV explosion of the early 2020s did not pan out as hoped. Whilst we did get several good shows - WandaVision and Loki were the highlights - and several okay ones (like Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk), we also got Secret Invasion, easily the weakest project the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe has delivered to date. Marvel made the decision to pivot back to the big screen, leaving the fate of Wonder Man, filmed back in 2023, unclear. Eventually Disney put it out in early 2026 with relatively little fanfare.

Almost predictably, the show ends up being superb. The series is focused on the relationship between Simon Williams, played with gravity, presence and humour by the talented  Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Slattery, played with sly irreverence and occasional tragic pathos by Ben Kingsley. Producer-showrunner-director Destin Daniel Cretton, who made this shortly before starting work on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, was inspired to make the movie after shooting Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) and realising that Marvel had an untapped powerhouse in its hands with Ben Kingsley, one of our greatest living actors.

The eight-part series opens almost as a standard drama, with Williams trying to make it as an actor. He's gotten as far as having mid-ranking recurring roles on TV dramas, but his obsession with making each character have integrity is grating on time-minded directors. Williams's family is also divided on his ambition, his mother being supported but his brother, a successful businessman, is frustrated at his lack of ambition and progress. This is all quite compelling thanks to some good writing and outstanding performances. The arrival of Slattery and the references to his past as the Mandarin (from Iron Man 3) ties events into the wider MCU, but it's done with a relatively light touch. A Damage Control agent recurs from Spider-Man: No Way Home and Ms. Marvel, but there are almost no references to his previous escapades, so newcomers need not be put off.

Because the show works so well as a serious drama with bursts of comic fun (including a great interlude with Joe Pantoliano playing an unhinged version of himself), the fear is that its further integration into the MCU and exploration of Williams's powers will dilute the premise. But the show does a good job of using those elements to explore Williams' character, as well as giving Kingsley more meat to chew on. Kingsley's charcter has mostly been used so far in the MCU for comic relief, but Wonder Man gives him much more range and, obviously, the actor rises to the occasion. The eight episodes are perhaps a little too much for the story on offer here, but this is offset by the fourth episode Doorman, an effectively self-contained mini-movie explaining why Hollywood has barred superhero actors. More wildly inventive in its hour-long runtime than most of the last dozen Marvel movies, the episode is a terrific, fun time as well as providing much-need exposition.

But ultimately the show is about the relationship and friendship that builds between Williams and Slattery (somewhere between mentor-student, father-son and bromance), and how that factors into their life choices. The show builds up an impressive emotional weight missing from too many recent MCU projects. In short, it makes you care about the characters, an important rule of scripting that too many modern projects have forgotten.

The show does falter a little. Even with the excellent flashback diversion, the story isn't enough to completely fill the runtime, and the low-key, low-stakes nature of the story may not appeal to everyone. But others will enjoy what is possibly the best look we've had so far at what living in the MCU is like for ordinary people, and for people with powers but who aren't the Hulk or Spider-Man.

Thoughtful and witty in turn, Wonder Man (****½) is one of the best slices of the MCU on the small screen with outstanding performances by its two leads. It is available to watch worldwide now on Disney+.

The show was renewed for a second season a few months ago, but this decision was abruptly reversed a few weeks ago. However, given that Cretton has just delivered Marvel the highest-grossing opening movie of all time, maybe he can convince them to change their minds again.

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Daredevil: Born Again - Season 1

Matt Murdock hangs up the mantle of Daredevil after a personal tragedy and so he can focus on his work as an attorney in New York City. The unexpected election of ex-convict and former crime lord Wilson Fisk to the position of Mayor brings Murdock - and Daredevil - back into play.

The Netflix-Marvel collaborative series Daredevil (2015-18) was a huge success, a premium TV show featuring one of Marvel's most interesting and conflicted characters. Superb casting, including for-the-ages performances from Vincent D'Onofrio, Charlie Cox, Jon Bernthal and Deborah Ann Woll, rewarded it with a committed fanbase and a whole slew of spin-off shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and team-up mini-series The Defenders, though the quality of these shows became increasingly questionable. With Marvel's parent company Disney launching a rival streaming platform, these shows entered a canonical limbo, with Disney reluctant to commit to them being official in the Marvel Cinematic Universe even after they regained the rights to air the shows on Disney+ and started using Cox and D'Onofrio in other projects.

Daredevil: Born Again, insanely, started off as a reboot of the previous show using some of the same actors (but randomly recasting others) in a new continuity. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and the entire Marvel-Netflixverse was moved into the mainline MCU canon. Less fortunately, this decision was made only some time into the show's production, resulting in substantial reshoots, some actors replaced by their original counterparts and a lot of work needing to be done to have the resulting story make sense.

Your view of Born Again's first season will likely depend on your appreciation for the above. On the one hand, that the season is as cohesive and well-acted as it is, is nothing short of miraculous. On the other, there's a distinctly off-kilter feeling in the season as it moves between newly-shot material (mostly book-ending the season) and trying to incorporate the original concept of a more episodic series with stand-alone cases. In practice this really only survives with an episode about Murdock trapped in a bank (without his  Daredevil gear) during a robbery, which ironically might be the best episode of the season. Other storylines feel a bit all over the place, with Vanessa Fisk's infidelity feeling particularly like a storyline that eats up time without bringing much of value to the series.

The disjointedness can also be found in the casting: Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page is the heart, soul and sometimes common sense of the series, but she spends most of the season benched in San Francisco. Jon Bernthal's Punisher also makes a welcome return, but has little to do. More successful is the introduction of serial killer Muse and his pursuit of therapist Heather Glenn (Murdock's love interest for the season), resulting in a morally murky, emotionally conflicted storyline that is quite successful.

Elsewhere the season's biggest success is Wilson Fisk. That Vincent D'Onofrio has made this character his own, imbuing him with menace but also a rough charm and a romantic (ish) heart, was well-established a decade ago. Here he has to play Fisk with restraint and political savvy, as his go-to solutions of violence and terror may have worked as Kingpin, but cannot fly as Mayor. There's a whole bunch of subplots about Fisk's staff, who are won over by his charm but also scared of his reputation, which work surprisingly well. Putting constraints around Fisk and watching him try to operate within those constraints is a clever move which helps overcome the vague feeling that Marvel know what they have here and are risking over-using it (a much bigger problem in the subsequent season).

The integration of the sub-franchise into the wider MCU is also a mixed bag. Bringing in characters like Swordsman and Ms. Marvel's family are interesting moves, but with the show now fully integrated into the wider universe, questions like, "where the hell is Spider-Man?" (especially since Murdock met Parker in the last movie) feel more germane than they were during the original show, without many good answers.

The season finale is pretty strong, seeing Fisk finally deciding how he is going to use his newfound status and power, and Murdock calling on his full array of allies for help, setting up a potentially more interesting second season.

Daredevil: Born Again's first season (***½) is not the slam-dunk, home run fans of the Netflix original series may have been hoping for, with some messy pacing and side-plots that don't feel well-developed. That a large chunk of the original cast is missing is also frustrating. But some of the new characters are interesting, D'Onofrio and Cox's formidable charisma are always fun to watch on-screen and some great groundwork is laid for future seasons. The season is available on Disney+ now.

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RIP Jim Shooter

Legendary - or perhaps infamous - comics writer and editor Jim Shooter has sadly passed away at the age of 73. Shooter was best-known for his divisive stewardship of Marvel Comic as editor-in-chief from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, and his involvement in the creation of the Transformers franchise.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1951, Shooter started reading comics at age eight, but fell off quickly, feeling the stories were uninteresting. Whilst recovering from surgery at the age of twelve, he started reading Marvel Comics and became a huge fan. He realised that DC Comics were looking boring in comparison, and resolved to "help." Shooter started writing stories for DC characters and teams and sent them in sight unseen. To his surprise, DC replied positively and hired him as a freelance writer at the mind-boggling age of fourteen. Shooter created a variety of minor characters (including the Superman villain Parasite) and set up the idea of Superman and the Flash having occasional races to see who was faster. Shooter briefly worked for Marvel in 1969 but found the renumeration did not cover the cost of living in New York and returned to Pittsburgh. A brief second stint at DC led to an editorial job at Marvel in 1975, this time on a more reasonable salary.

High turnover in Marvel's top ranks saw Shooter rise rapidly through the ranks, becoming Marvel's new editor-in-chief in 1978. He oversaw such projects as Chris Claremont's run on X-Men (though that was already underway), Frank Miller's take on Daredevil and John Byrne's work on Fantastic Four.

Shooter developed a mixed reputation. On the one hand, he stringently imposed deadlines and made writers and artists work to them, sometimes ruthlessly pruning those unable to do so. Marvel's reputation for missing deadlines and sometimes skipping entire months had become quite acute in the mid-1970s, but this ended under Shooter's reign and predictability returned. Shooter initially won over artists and readers by insisting that artists be treated with more respect, paying for them to travel in better conditions to conventions, and giving them a wide leash of creativity. However, after a few years Shooter developed a more restrictive attitude, insisting that comics be written and draw according to his design. Some of the biggest-selling books were left alone, but middling ones saw greater editorial oversight or intervention.

Many writers and artists at Marvel claimed that Shooter's downfall was caused by the runaway success of his Secret Wars storyline in 1985, which he ascribed to his own writing and planning rather than the massive commercial appeal of seeing almost every Marvel character combined into one mega-saga. Shooter became less tolerant of other writers' ideas after this point. With grumbling about Shooter's policies reaching fever pitch, despite his commercial success (Marvel's market share grew to an estimated 80% under his watch)w, he was fired in 1987. He subsequently founded Valiant Comics in 1989, Defiant Comics in 1993 and Broadway Comics in 1995. He returned to work for DC in 2007, and then Dark Horse Comics in 2009.

Shooter also played a key role in the development of Transformers. Hasbro struck a deal with Takara Toys in mid-1983 to bring their Diaclone and Microchange lines of transforming robots to the international market, but found that the Japanese toy lines had little or no expository fiction about what these robots were or what they doing. Some of the toys appeared to be mecha (complete with little pilots), but others did not. Hasbro themselves came up with the names "Transformers" (after some minor controversy worrying about if kids would confuse the name with real-life electrical transformers and somehow fry themselves), "Autobots" and "Decepticons," but realised they didn't have time or storytelling expertise to develop more ideas. They contacted Marvel, noting their successful toy-comic-cartoon collaboration on GI Joe several years earlier.

Shooter looked for a Marvel writer to work on the project, but an early collaboration with Denny O'Neill resulted in little more than the name of the Autobot leader, "Optimus Prime." Shooter himself then briefly took over, developing a design document that contains the first mention of the name "Cybertron" (Shooter himself is often credited with creating the name). Shooter also developed the basic idea of the Autobots and Decepticons fighting a war over resources, particularly energy, and coming to Earth to find more energy, only to crash into Mount St. Hillary (originally Mount St. Helens, until he realised the real-life recent eruption might make that in poor taste) and lie dormant for four million years. Shooter's treatment also features the first appearances of the name "the Ark" for the Autobot ship, and "Aunty" for its computer (Aunty was originally the name of the ship itself but moved to the computer when Shooter decided it was too whimsical). Shooter himself didn't claim to have created all of these ideas, noting some came from conversations he'd been having with O'Neill, and maybe some early conversations with Bob Budiansky. Budiansky then took over the day-to-day work on the franchise, coming with the names of almost all the other Transformers from Shockwave, Megatron and Mirage, right through the 1989 line of Micromasters and Pretenders. Budiansky also became the main writer on the Transformers Marvel comic, which began publication in May 1984, with Shooter editing.

Shooter was something of a divisive figure, respected for his practical trouble-solving skills, his recognition of talent, and fighting for better recognition of Marvel Comics within the wider industry (noting a screaming match with one of the people involved in the Transformers animated series who was trying to pass off Shooter's original design document as his own, since he thought nobody would care about the comics people) but derided for his top-down and sometimes micro-management approach to editing. Secret Wars was enormously popular - and is serving as the primary inspiration for the upcoming next two Avengers films - and may have firmly cemented the idea of the "big crossover mega-event" which would go on to dominate the comics industry (for good and ill).

RIP Peter David

News has sadly broken of the passing of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and comic book writer Peter David, at the age of 68.

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland in 1956, David became interested in comic books at a young age, through comics left in a local barbershop and TV shows like the Adventures of Superman. David's parents did not approve of his interest in superheroes, especially Marvel, forcing him to read them in secret. David stopped reading comics in his teens feeling he'd outgrown them, but was drawn back in by the Chris Claremont run on X-Men in the 1970s. David also developed a fandom of novels and short stories from reading Harlan Ellison, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

David started his writing career by covering the Washington WorldCon in 1974 for The Philadelphia Bulletin, and then started writing shot fiction in the 1980s which appeared in venues such as Asimov's. He switched to working in publishing, making his way into working for Marvel in the sales department. Switching to editorial was unconventional, but David managed to do it and his first Spider-Man story was published in 1985.

Peter David made his name with his 11-year run on The Incredible Hulk, starting in May 1987 and continuing to August 1998. David's run on the title was acclaimed, with him introducing or popularising many concepts, including the Grey Hulk.

David was keen to keep a toe in the book publishing world and published his first novel, Knight Life, in 1987. David wrote both original series under his own name and the pen-name David Peters, and tie-in fiction. He eventually wrote 101 novels in total, a colossal figure.

Outside of his Marvel association, David was best-known for his work on the Star Trek franchise. In 1988 he started writing the DC Comics Star Trek series (meaning he was working for Marvel and DC simultaneously) and also penned his first Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Strike Zone, for publication the following year. He eventually wrote 41 issues of Star Trek comics and 48 Star Trek novels.

He was particularly acclaimed for his nailing of the voices of the different Star Trek crews, and his sense of action and humour, as well as paying attention to continuity. His most beloved Trek novels were Strike Zone, Q-in-Law, Imzadi and the Borg epic Vendetta, which a lot of fans believed should have been made into a movie. Some of his later novels were more daft, including at one stage having a Borg "supercube" consumed Pluto "ending the debate once and for all." David was also notable for creating the New Frontier series and penning a remarkable 27 books in the series.

In 1994 David was contacted by J. Michael Straczynski, a fan of his comics work, and invited to work on his television series Babylon 5. David penned the episodes Soul Mates and There All the Honour Lies for Season 2, the former notable for introducing Londo's three wives and the latter for mocking Star Trek's focus on merchandising. The latter episode also sparked a friendly war with Straczynski after he pretended to get annoyed by a teddy bear David's wife bought for him and had the bear blasted into space in the final edit. David, who was friends with B5 actor Bill Mumy, collaborated with him on a TV show called Space Cases, in which the bear is recovered from deep space. David later wrote an episode of the ill-fated Babylon 5 spin-off show, Crusade. He later diversified into video games, working on Shadow Complex and Spider-Man: Edge of Time.

David later returned to the franchise to pen the very well-received Legions of. Fire novel trilogy (which tells the story of the fall of the Centauri Republic after the events of the show) and adaptations of the TV movie In the Beginning and Thirdspace.

Through the 1990s, David worked on other comic series including Aquaman, Supergirl and Young Justice, as well as his own original properties Soulsearchers and Company, and Sachs and Violens. In the 2000s he returned to Marvel to pen Captain Marvel, She-Hulk and Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, as well as working on comics for other franchises including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as Marvel's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.

David would eventually win a whole slew of awards for his comics work, including a much-coveted Eisner for his Hulk run.

David started suffering from ill health in 2010 when he suffered a herniated disc. In 2012 he suffered a stroke but made almost a full recovery. He was subsequently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. In 2022 he suffered an additional series of strokes, a kidney failure and a mild heart attack. These complications contributed to his sad passing away at too young an age.

Peter David was an exceptionally prolific writer, simultaneously juggling multiple comic book series and penning multiple novels a year. What was remarkable was that he combined a prolific output with a strong sense of quality control and sly humour. His Star Trek novels are among the very best ever published for that franchise, his contributions to Babylon 5 may be third only in importance to Straczynski and Larry DiTillio, and he was a noted supported of many charities and good causes. He could be irascible and opinionated, and a lot of his time in the comics field was spent arguing with other writers and creators (including Todd MacFarlane) over various issues.

Peter David's popularity wasn't just down to his work, but also his attitude, constantly giving the impression that he was a massive fan of science fiction, fantasy and superheroes and constantly showing enthusiasm for the field, its writers and its fans. He will be immensely missed.

Robert Downey Jr., the Russo Brothers and Stephen McFeely to return to the MCU in AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY

Confirming earlier reports, Marvel has successfully lured its most successful directing team, Anthony and Joseph Russo, back to their Cinematic Universe. The two directors will tackle the next two Avengers movies. The first of these has been retitled Avengers: Doomsday and will be released in May 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars to follow in May 2027. But the Russo Brothers and Kevin Feige also confirmed an old friend will be returning.

Robert Downey Jr., who previously played Tony Stark/Iron Man in nine Marvel movies, is rejoining the MCU as iconic supervillain Dr. Victor von Doom. The announcement was made at the San Diego Comic-Con yesterday.

The role of Dr. Doom, the ruler of Latveria who wants to bring about global order under his rule, was previously played in live action by Joseph Culp in Roger Corman's 1994 movie, Julian McMahon in the 2005 movie and its sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Toby Kebbell in the 2015 film.

The Russo Brothers' longtime writing partner, Stephen McFeely, is also taking over scripting duties on both new films. He previously co-wrote Captain America: The Winter Solder, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the four films previously helmed by the Brothers.

The move represents a near-inevitable pivot by Marvel Studios once actor Jonathan Majors was convicted of misdemeanour assault and harassment in December 2023. Majors had played the villainous Kangs and various alternate timeline versions of the same character in numerous projects leading up to the next Avengers face-off. Marvel had mused recasting, but, given his last appearance in Season 2 of Loki acted as a good pause point for the character, they have instead decided to move to a different story. It may be they return to the Kang storyline with a new actor at a later date, although perhaps they could be forgiven for just writing off the whole thing as a bad idea and moving on.

Speculation will now be rife that Doom - primarily a Fantastic Four villain before appearing with other Marvel characters - may appear or at least cameo in the 1960s-set The Fantastic 4: First Steps (as it was recently retitled), which is due in cinemas on 25 July, 2025 (although the main villain has already been confirmed to be Ralph Ineson's Galactus). It was also confirmed at the Marvel panel that the Fantastic Four will be (similar to Steve Rogers) travelling to the present to fight Dr. Doom in the two new Avengers films.

Given Marvel's recent creative woes, you can't fault them for turning back to their "dream team" to drag them back to the glory days, although some may also feel it's a shame they could not find a firmer footing with new talent to drive them to new levels of success.

Marvel tries to lure the Russo Brothers back to the fold

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Disney and the Russo Brothers are in talks about a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Russo Brothers have apparently been offered the job of directing both The Avengers 5 and 6 (not the final titles), due in 2026 and 2027 respectively.

Anthony and Joseph Russo initially made their name as directors in television, helming episodes of Arrested Development (2003-06) before achieving critical acclaim as frequent directors on Community (2009-14). They established themselves in film directing Welcome to Collinwood (2002) and You, Me and Dupree (2006) before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe and directing Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), as well as working on the TV series Agent Carter (2015).

The directors are credited with being instrumental in the success of "the golden age" of the MCU, running roughly from The Winter Soldier to Endgame, when the franchise's critical and commercial success were both at their height. Endgame was the highest-grossing movie of all time shortly after release, although it was subsequently pushed back down by a re-release of James Cameron's Avatar and then the release of its sequel.

The Russos decided to get out whilst the going was good and have focused on developing other projects, directing Cherry and The Gray Man and producing shows including Amazon's expensive flop Citadel. They are currently in post-production on a new film directed by them, The Electric State, for Netflix.

The MCU has carried on into a new era, but one that has been decidedly patchier than what came before, with both critical and commercial performances dropping significantly from the Russo era.

With both sides' post-Endgame performance being questionable, them joining forces once more makes a lot of sense. Marvel needs the Brothers' proven ability to shape complex stories with large casts into box office gold.

However, the move may be seen as desperation on Marvel's part given the chaos that has recently engulfed their plans. Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy apparently turned down the gig after reading the draft script, whilst Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi) had previously been announced in the role of director but then withdrew to focus on a Shang-Chi sequel that has still not materialised. The two movies were being developed as one project, under the titles The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, culminating a story arc revolving around the character of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). This plan had to be shelved quickly after Majors was arrested for assault and subsequently found guilty; Marvel terminated their contract with him. The two films are now apparently being rewritten to revolve around a new threat, with the intervening projects (such as Captain America: Brave New World, due in early 2025) being rejigged to set up this new storyline.

The Russos are not believed to have accepted the offer yet, and negotiations are in the early stages, but there seems at least a reasonable chance this might come to pass. If it does, expect the timeline to be changed and the movies probably dropped back whilst new scripts are put into place.

Marvel changing plans to recapture the zeitgeist

In an in-depth article for the Hollywood Reporter, it has been revealed that Marvel Studios is pivoting hard as it tries to overcome a series of recent obstacles to recapture the zeitgeist it imperiously commanded for over a decade.

In 2008 Marvel Studios launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an interconnected series of superhero films which shared a single continuity, canon and cast of characters, who could pop up in one another's movies and occasionally team up for big "event" pictures. From 2008's Iron Man to 2019's Avengers: Endgame, a mind-boggling run of twenty-two films, the series rarely put a foot wrong. It dominated the box office and the cultural discourse of the time. Even its weakest entries, like Thor: The Dark World or Iron Man 2, remained watchable.

Since 2019, the franchise has faltered. Box office receipts have fallen - The Marvels became the first Marvel movie to definitively lose money at the box office in November 2023 - and critical acclaim has also dropped off sharply. Eleven further films have been released since Endgame and only a few of these - particularly Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) - have garnered the type of critical and commercial success the franchise once wracked up almost automatically. There has been much discussion over why the franchise has suddenly started faltering so badly, with several problems identified:

• The loss of the franchise's most charismatic and best-written characters and the actors going along with them, most notably Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) in Endgame.
• The failure of most of the succeeding new heroes in making an impression that they can pick up the slack moving forwards.
• An increasingly tiresome inability to break free from the "Marvel format," namely a lot of quips, some action, some moderate character development and then a large setpiece CGI battle at the end, which is rarely outstanding. The few films which did experiment with this, such as Eternals adopting a more serious tone, ended up doing poorly with audiences.
• The conclusion of the mostly straightforward and well-defined Infinity Stones storyline with a well-realised villain (Thanos) and their replacement with the much murkier, more confusing Multiverse storyline and a lower-key villain (Kang) who has not resonated as strongly.
• Simple superhero fatigue: thirty-three films and ten TV series (sixteen, if you include the recently canonised Netflix series) in sixteen years is a lot, not to mention dozens more films and TV shows about superheroes from rivals DC and numerous other studios and streamers.
• An over-expansion into television as part of the streaming wars and then during COVID, bombarding audiences with new shows every few months.
• The increasing feeling that keeping up with the MCU requires having to do "homework," watching shows and films that don't appeal to you because they're going to be referenced in the next Spider-Man movie that you do care about.
• Plans to use the always-popular Spider-Man as a lynchpin for the next generation of movies hit a snag with the Sony/Marvel legal disagreement of a few years ago, which means Marvel can't use Spider-Man as a key character moving forwards when they can lose access to him at almost any time.
• The relatively rapid transition of films from the cinema to Disney+ now means that people can sit out films that look uninteresting or middling until they hit streaming, rather than having to see them in the cinema or risk falling behind the curve.

Marvel has also had to contend with a major problem from one of its tentpole actors for the next slate of films. Actor Jonathan Majors had debuted in the TV series Loki as Kang, a charismatic villain who exists in millions of different incarnations and versions across the Multiverse, a multitude of parallel universes and different timelines. The development of the Multiverse has been a major focus of the films since Endgame and has allowed Marvel to rule that other movie series using their characters - such as the X-Men and Deadpool film series from Fox and the Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man films from Sony - exist in the same Multiverse. Kang was supposed to be the lynchpin of this story moving forwards, as different versions of the character appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Loki's second season, setting up a confrontation between Kang and the Avengers in two big movies coming down the pipe.

But in March 2023 Majors was arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, whom he had met on the set of Quantumania. Marvel refused to take any action whilst legal action was ongoing. In December he was found guilty of two misdemeanour counts of assault and harassment. Marvel quickly confirmed they had terminated their relationship with the actor. Despite initial speculation that the character would be recast - previous different versions of characters across the Multiverse had been portrayed by different actors, with three versions of Spider-Man showing up in No Way Home to great success - it now appears that Marvel is moving away from the character and storyline altogether, minimising him in future projects and pivoting to another villain (speculated in other sources to be Doctor Doom) to be the "big bad" in the next two Avengers films coming down the line.

According to the HR article, Marvel are taking a number of further steps to address their issues. The first is a reduction of output: 2024 will see the release of just one Marvel movie, Deadpool and Wolverine, which will introduce the Merc With a Mouth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and also cement the Multiverse connections between the older X-Men films and the MCU. Only one more TV show is expected this year, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries. 2025 is expected to focus hard on the arrival of Marvel tentpole characters the Fantastic Four in the MCU, with Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn recently announced in the starring roles for the film. Marvel is hoping that the integration of the Fantastic Four into the MCU, followed later by new versions of Blade and then the X-Men, will give their franchise new legs as it - improbably - heads towards its third decade of production.

Whether these steps are going to be enough to right the ship remains to be seen, or whether at some point Disney and Marvel will have to accept that the MCU's time has simply run out and it needs to be rested for a few years before the inevitable reboot with new actors playing Iron Man, Thor and Captain America.

Marvel casts the Fantastic Four

Marvel has announced the casting for their forthcoming new Fantastic Four movie. Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones) will play Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) will play Sue Storm / Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) will play Ben Grimm / The Thing and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) will play Johnny Storm / The Human Torch, in a film directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision).

The film, apparently titled The Fantastic 4, introduces the team to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the first time. It will, however, be the fifth movie to feature the characters. Roger Corman directed the ultra-low-budget The Fantastic Four in 1994 as a rights-holding exercise. 20th Century Fox released Fantastic Four in 2005, starring Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Susan Storm, a pre-Captain America Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm. Despite mixed reviews, the film was financially successful and spawned a direct sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), which was less successful.

A new version of the team appeared in 2015 as Fantastic Four, starring Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Susan Storm, a pre-Killmonger Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm. The film was poorly received both critically and commercially.

Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige confirmed in 2019 that the team would be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Marvel's parent company, Disney. Originally Jon Watts was going to direct, but he was later replaced by Matt Shakman.

The team are iconic because they were the first superhero team created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in November 1961 as part of a revamp of the company's lines, designed to compete with DC Comics' Justice League of America (which saw Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and other characters joining forces). Lee and Kirby created the Fantastic Four as a similar team out from scratch. Lee, with Kirby and other artists, later added new superheroes to the same universe, resulting in The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Falcon and Daredevil. He also resurrected characters Marvel had the rights to from years earlier, resulting in the comics Sub-Mariner and Captain America. Periodically these heroes would team up to fight greater threats, in a run known as The Avengers.

Fantastic Four was also notable for debuting many other characters who would go on to have huge success for Marvel Comics: Namor the Sub-Mariner, Doctor Doom, Black Panther, the Kree and Skrull, Adam Warlock, the Inhumans, Silver Surfer and Galactus. The comic ran almost without interruption until issue #645 in 2015. The comic was rested, although the characters would appear in other titles; fan speculation at the time was that Marvel was downplaying those characters whose movie rights they did not control, as they felt they were giving free advertising to competitors. However, the comic relaunched in late 2018, fans again cynically noting that the 20th Century Fox/Marvel deal was in the wind at the time so it was assumed that Marvel Studios would shortly gain control of the film rights, as was proven to be the case.

The Fantastic 4 will be released on 25 July 2025. It will be one of four Marvel movies scheduled for the year, following Captain America: Brave New World in February and Thunderbolts on 2 May and preceding Blade in November. This will mark a return in force for Marvel, who only have a single film out this year: Deadpool & Wolverine on 26 July.

Marvel finally, officially canonises the Netflix Marvel-verse

After many years of speculation, Marvel has updated their websites and Disney+ pages to confirm that the six television series which aired on Netflix from 2015 to 2019 are now officially counted as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As originally spotted by CanWeGetSomeToast here.

The six TV series have been unofficially called the "Netflix Marvel-verse" or some other derivative, due to Marvel's prior reluctance to rule on their canonical status. The shows aired as part of a deal between Marvel Studios, ABC and Netflix, but which did not include MCU guiding light Kevin Feige as part of the decision-making process. The line of shows did not stick around for very long - just four years - but produced a stunning amount of content in that time: 161 episodes airing across 13 seasons in six distinct shows. Although each season stood alone, there were some shared characters and motifs which culminated in the event mini-series Defenders, which saw Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist join forces against a mutual threat. The Punisher, which had not been originally planned, spun out of the character's well-received guest role in the second season of Daredevil.

With Disney planning to launch its own rival streaming service to Netflix in the shape of Disney+, the deal was cancelled in 2019. The contract required Disney to wait two years before developing their own versions of those characters, but when the time came they intriguingly used the same actors. Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his role as Kingpin in Hawkeye, whilst Charlie Cox reprised his role as Daredevil in the film Spider-Man: No Way Home and then the Disney+ series She-Hulk and Echo. D'Onofrio, Cox and John Bernthal as the Punisher will all reappear in Daredevil: Born Again, currently in production.

Despite this, some believed that these actors were nonetheless playing "new" versions of the characters, not necessarily the same ones we saw on Netflix. Fortunately, it appears that Marvel finally realised that was too weird and confusing. By officially canonising the shows and moving them into a more prominent slot on Disney+, they may also be hoping to pick up some fresh views. This also possibly opens the door to Krysten Ritter reprising her role as Jessica Jones, as well as Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple, Finn Jones as Danny Rand (I mean, if you really want to), Mike Colter as Luke Cage and Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing.

The other pre-Disney+ Marvel TV shows which aired on ABC are still not listed in the official timeline, including Agents of SHIELD, Runaways and Inhumans (in the last case, that may be for the best). Their fans may hold out some hope that they may yet be reunited with the main timeline.

The Netflix Marvel-verse in Release Order

1. Daredevil: Season 1 (2015)
2. Jessica Jones: Season 1 (2015)
3. Daredevil: Season 2 (2016)
4. Luke Cage: Season 1 (2016)
5. Iron Fist: Season 1 (2017)
6. The Defenders (2017)
7. The Punisher: Season 1 (2017)
8. Jessica Jones: Season 2 (2018)
9. Luke Cage: Season 2 (2018)
10. Iron Fist: Season 2 (2018)
11. Daredevil: Season 3 (2018)
12. The Punisher: Season 2 (2019)
13. Jessica Jones: Season 3 (2019)

Secret Invasion

More than thirty years ago, Skrull refugees on Earth reached a deal with Nick Fury and SHIELD that they would work undercover for the organisation, using their amazing shapeshifting skills, in return for SHIELD's help in locating a new homeworld for them. Unfortunately, some of the Skrulls are unhappy with the length of time it has taken Fury to deliver on his promise, and instigate a new plan: to take Earth as their new home. Fury and his old Skrull friend Talos join forces to defeat the rebels' plan, but find fighting an army of shapeshifters is incredibly hard, even with shapeshifters of their own to help.

Secret Invasion is, in almost all respects, a television series. It is six episodes long, and features sequential events that build to tell a story. If this sounds like a very dull and overly pedantic description, that's because Secret Invasion is possibly the ultimate example of Extruded Franchise Product: something that exists to make money and to keep fans ticking over until the Next Thing in the franchise appears to take their money. It does not dare to innovate, say or do anything interesting. It simply exists, without much in the way of passion or engagement.

Exactly how you make this premise the most boring entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date is a matter for conjecture. You have an outrageously good cast, including Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Coleman, Don Cheadle, Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman (in a much smaller-than-expected role), Emilia Clarke and a bunch of promising newcomers. The most notable of these is Kingsley Ben-Adir who shows some fire as main antagonist Gravik but is let down by the indifferent writing. Everyone else phones their performances in, apart from Olivia Coleman who is having more fun than everybody else on the show combined, and Don Cheadle, who gets a few great scenes as the sarcastic Skrull-disguised-as-Rhodey. Perhaps a sign that Cheadle should get more villainous roles in the future.

The show also has a remarkable air of topicality: the rebel Skrull plan is to trigger a third world war by undertaking attacks on Russian and NATO soil and getting them to blame one another. In one decidedly bonkers moment, we learn that Russian forces are moving into Ukraine (the show was written and partially filmed before the February 2022 invasion, but completed shooting and post-production afterwards). There is also a lot of commentary on how to handle refugees and deal with displaced populations. However, any potential for the show to speak to our current moment is lost by the writing resolutely steering away from such things, presumably because it just wants to be escapist entertainment (which is a bit hard when the show leans so hard into modern-feeling issues).

Still, you could still have a good show if anybody felt like they were actually invested in this idea. Much has been made of the opening title sequence, which was partially generated by artificial intelligence. I'm surprised there hasn't been more attention paid to if the script was written by artificial intelligence as well. It feels like a greatest hits of Marvel and thriller tropes thrown into a blender and the results fired at a wall to see what sticks, but with almost no passion or excitement about the ideas in play.

The show's biggest mistake is wasting Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson is a fantastic, charismatic performer, but here he is depicted as filled with self-doubt. On one level, it's great that the show allows Jackson's Fury to be human and flawed, and weighed down in the latter part of his life by everything he's done. But that would require an outstanding pedigree of writing and direction to pull off, which is not the case here. Jackson instead often comes across as bored, with flat line deliveries. He sometimes sparks into life, and the show is at its best when he and Mendelsohn are exchanging quips or he and Cheadle are engaged in dramatic face-offs. But these moments are relatively few and far between.

Secret Invasion (**) should be a home run: one of the most popular performers in the MCU in a (relatively) grounded, near-future thriller, packed with interesting and - if inadvertently - topical ideas. Instead it feels tired, bored and out of gas. There are flashes of quality, a few good performances, a couple of solid character scenes, some nice action beats, but these are separated by yawning voids of mediocrity. Easily the weakest MCU TV show to date and a strong claimant to being the weakest instalment of the MCU as a whole.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

The nation of Wakanda is in mourning after the unexpected death of its king, T'Challa, from illness. The destruction of the herb that is needed to create a new Black Panther has left Wakanda leaderless, with an interim council led by Queen Ramonda trying to hold the nation together. T'Challa's younger sister, technical genius Shuri, sets out to recreate the herb, but faces a rising threat in the form of the underwater kingdom of Talokan, lead the charismatic Namor. Conflict between the two nations appears inevitable, and Wakanda has never been more vulnerable.

2018's Black Panther was a breakout, smash success for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Excellent performances and direction overcame traditional MCU issues (a weak finale, overreliant on CGI battles) to deliver one of the strongest films in the series. The continuation of some of these storylines through Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame confirmed there was a great deal of potential in the continued adventures of T'Challa and the Wakandans.

Unfortunately, Chadwick Boseman unexpectedly passed away from cancer in late 2020. The lost of one of his generation's most promising actors was a tragedy. It also - and far more trivially, of course -  created a major problem for Marvel, as they spent weeks agonising over whether recasting the role (an idea supported by some of Boseman's family) or proceeding in a different direction. Ultimately concluding that Boseman was irreplaceable, the decision was made to mirror his passing in the film series, and make the sequel about a completely different story, more about Wakanda itself and the quest to find a new Black Panther.

It's therefore hard to undersell the conditions under which Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was written, shot and released. Boseman's shadow hangs over every second of footage and I can only imagine the sheer difficulties faced by director Ryan Coogler and his team as they tried to course-correct in the most unpleasant of circumstances.

Unfortunately, those difficulties are discernible across most of the film. The general story arc feels a little muddled, as it wanders back and forth between internal Wakandan problems, issues with its relationship with the USA (there's a subplot about tensions in the CIA which feels detached from everything else) and, slightly randomly, France, and the rising challenge posed by Namor (a grumpily on-form Tenoch Huerta Majia) and Talokan. There's also the problems faced by Ramonda (an imperiously impressive Angela Bassett) in retaining authority. The film also ill-advisedly decides to do some setup work for later projects by also introducing Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams (aka Ironheart) and furthering the machinations of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which feels like the movie was putting more weight on its shoulders than it could really manage.

The film's biggest challenge is elevating Letitia Wright as Shuri to the role of the main protagonist. Wright was superb in a supporting role in Black Panther and the Thanos duology, but here the writing doesn't seem to be up to the task. The film tries to mine some tension over whether Shuri is going to become the new Black Panther, which is pretty much obvious from before you even start watching, and then over whether this would be accepted by other Wakandans and so on, none of which manages to be particularly interesting.

Better-handled is the personal relationship between Shuri and Namor, which moves from respect to enmity and back again. The film's problem is that everyone knows that Namor (aka the Sub-Mariner) is one of Marvel's longest-standing heroes, so he is clearly going to do a heel turn to becoming a good character at some point. This removes some tension and jeopardy, and the attempts to reinstate it (such as a fairly brutal attack on Wakanda's capital) only makes Namor's character arc less plausible. The idea is fine but I'm not sure I really buy how it unfolds.

The movie even manages to fumble its naval battle ending, with some of the worst CGI I've ever seen in a professionally-made modern feature film. The last time I saw CG this bad in a major release was in The Mummy Returns, a film now twenty-two years old, and hints at a horrendously rushed production schedule.

Again, it's easy to forgive Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (***) for some of these problems given the huge cloud under which it was made. It has many great performances (with Angela Basset having the finest, and Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke being great in reduced roles), many of the ideas are excellent and the notion of making a film where the central character passed away before it even begins is powerful. But the writing is confused, the pacing is uneven, character motivations are not always clear and the effects are risible. The result is a film that is enjoyable, but you have to overlook a lot of issues along the way.

The film is available now via Disney+ worldwide.

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