Joss Whedon’s comments about Marvel’s Hollywood superhero reflect Marvel’s biggest challenge with Wonder Man. Simon Williams a.k.a. Wonder Man is one of the only major Avengers from Marvel Comics who still hasn’t appeared in the MCU yet. However, Marvel’s plans for its future prove that’s about to change.
Months ago, it was reported that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton was working with Marvel Studios on an MCU TV show. Now, it’s been revealed that Cretton’s secret MCU show is a story centered on Wonder Man, a Marvel Comics powerhouse and a founding member of Hawkeye’s West Coast Avengers team. Thanks to an experiment conducted by Baron Zemo, Simon is a superhero powered by a vast amount of ionic energy. Years after sacrificing himself to save the Avengers in his comic book debut and having his brain patterns copied to create Vision, Wonder Man returned to life and became a mainstay of the team. Now, the character is best known for his role in Vision’s origin, his love story with Scarlet Witch, and his career as a Hollywood actor.
Despite his rich history and overall importance to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Wonder Man was singled out by Joss Whedon in 2012 as the one Avenger he had no interest in using. When asked about the Avengers characters he’d like to adapt, the Avengers director replied, “pretty much everyone but Wonder Man”. He claimed that he “never did figure out what he was for”. The impressive number of stories that Wonder Man has been a part of in Marvel Comics proves that in contrast to Whedon’s remarks on the character, Simon Williams does indeed have storytelling potential. That being said, his remarks represent the underlying issue facing his MCU introduction, which is his overwhelming lack of fan visibility.
Unfortunately for Wonder Man’s MCU future, Whedon is far from the only one who doesn’t see the appeal in his character. Even though it’s not fair to say that there isn’t a point to his character, it is true that Wonder Man doesn’t have any qualities that immediately make him stand out to general audiences, apart from his reputation as a superhero who moonlights as an actor. It’s hard to say if that will be enough to attract the attention he needs for his show to be a success for Disney+. He obviously doesn’t share the same advantages as other new heroes with their own shows, such as Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and Ms. Marvel, who are all much more popular characters.
The situation with Simon Williams makes Wonder Man a significant challenge for Marvel to overcome during MCU Phase 4, but certainly not an impossible one. After all, it’s managed to win before with smaller characters like Shang-Chi and can find a way to do so again. It can do that by looking beyond the surface and drawing on fun elements of Wonder Man’s character that can make this often-overlooked Marvel Comics Avenger into a highly-anticipated, new addition to the MCU’s library of heroes. His incredible power, frustration with his immortality, and friendship with the Beast made him interesting in the comics, and these aspects of his character could help do the same for his MCU counterpart.
