While Netflix’s Marvel series claimed to tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the upcoming series on Disney’s own streaming service Disney+ actually will. They’ll have direct ties to the events of the movies and the movies will have direct ties to the events of the Disney+ series. Marvel Studios’ panel at this year’s Comic-Con brought us more information about the shows that we already knew were coming to Disney+, while Disney’s D23 Expo over the past few days has brought us even more exciting announcements about the shows we didn’t know were coming to Disney+.
Here are all of the MCU’s upcoming Disney+ series, explained.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
They began as adversaries in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but Steve Rogers’ two sidekicks, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, are now teaming up for their own Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. We’ll see Sam as he adjusts to life as the new Captain America and Bucky as he continues to shake his Hydra brainwashing and strive to do the right thing.
A handful of cast members from Captain America: Civil War – including Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carter (Peggy’s niece who dated Steve for a while) and Daniel Brühl as Helmut Zemo – have signed on to reprise their roles in the show. This one will premiere first, in late 2020, and it’ll have six episodes.
WandaVision
Wanda Maximoff and the Vision have, until now, been one of the most boring couples in the MCU. However, their Disney+ series WandaVision looks set to fix that. Captain Marvel co-writer Jac Schaeffer has been brought on as the series’ showrunner and it’s been described as a 50/50 split of Dick Van Dyke Show-style sitcom (complete with a nosy neighbor character) and typical Marvel spectacle.
The show will tie in directly with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which will be a horror movie that sees Scarlet Witch join the Sorcerer Supreme, and it will also somehow have to explain how Vision comes back to life after he was killed for the Mind Stone in Avengers: Infinity War.
Ms. Marvel
Most of the characters that get adapted for the MCU have been around for decades, like Captain America or Iron Man, but Ms. Marvel – or, rather, Kamala Khan, the version of Ms. Marvel that’s getting a series on Disney+ – has only been around since 2013. That’s a testament to how quickly this character struck a chord with comic book readers – even Barack Obama is a fan!
Kamala is notable for being the first Muslim superhero to get their own Marvel Comics series. She lives in New Jersey, she idolizes Carol Danvers, and she gets shapeshifting powers from her Inhuman genes (proving the MCU will still acknowledge the Inhumans and possibly reboot them following that dreadful Hulu series).
What If...?
So far, the Disney+ shows in the MCU (at least the ones that have announced their episode orders) will all consist of six episodes, except for What If...?, which will include a relatively whopping 23 episodes. Taken from the comic series of the same name, What If...? will explore hypothetical scenarios and see them play out.
Whereas the comics could take a concept as random as “What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?,” the Disney+ adaptation – which will be animated, by the way – will explore scenarios specifically drawn from the movies of the Infinity Saga (that’s why there’s 23 episodes: one episode per movie), and most of the A-list actors from the films are set to reprise their roles. A Watcher played by Jeffrey Wright will act as the sort of Rod Serling narrator of this anthology series.
Moon Knight
Kevin Feige has been promising to find a place for Moon Knight in the MCU for a while, so Marvel fans were ecstatic when this series was announced. Moon Knight is the superhero alter ego of Marc Spector, a mercenary who got possessed by the Egyptian moon god after being left for dead in a temple containing his spirit.
He gave up being a mercenary, invested his money, got rich, and adopted various personas (a chauvinistic millionaire persona to keep up appearances, a cab driver persona to keep an eye on street crime etc.), all the while moonlighting as the masked vigilante Moon Knight.
Hawkeye
When it was first announced that Hawkeye would be getting his own show on Disney+, some fans were skeptical. Kevin Smith, in particular, was vocal about his disdain for the idea. However, it won’t be what it sounds like. This isn’t just a show about a guy with a bow and arrow and a family out in the countryside. Instead, it’ll tell the story of Clint Barton training Kate Bishop to take on the “Hawkeye” mantle and replace him.
When the Endgame trailers showed Clint training a young girl, some fans suspected it was Kate. It turned out to be his daughter Lila, but Kate is still on the way to the MCU.
She-Hulk
Some fans have criticized the announcement of the She-Hulk series, with some calling it “pandering” to female viewers or an attempt to “squeeze out” the male heroes. But those fans fail to realize that the She-Hulk has been around in the comics for decades, and also, just because she’s getting her own series, it doesn’t mean Bruce Banner is getting squeezed out.
They co-exist. In fact, She-Hulk is Bruce Banner’s cousin. She’s a lawyer named Jen Walters who gets involved in a near-fatal shooting incident, necessitating a blood transfusion. Bruce provides the blood, but since it’s infected with gamma radiation, she assumes his Hulk-out powers.
Loki
Although Loki was “permanently” killed in Avengers: Infinity War, he managed to sneak back into the fold in Avengers: Endgame, because Earth’s mightiest heroes went back in time to the Battle of New York to steal three Infinity Stones, Tony Stark dropped one (the Space Stone), and Loki grabbed it and disappeared into an alternate timeline. His Disney+ series, which will consist of six episodes and premiere in early 2021, will follow this version of Loki and what he gets up to.
This won’t be the heroic version of Loki who redeemed himself in Thor: Ragnarok; this is the villainous version under Thanos’ thumb.