Random thoughts: Marvel TV

I already ranked Marvel’s pre-MCU movies, but what about the TV shows?

I won’t be covering the cartoons since I haven’t watched a ton of them. And before anyone asks no, I’m not doing this for the DC shows since I’ve barely watched any of them (many of them sound interesting, but time is what it is and they’re not always easy to catch in Italy).
Since this is in preparation of a ranking for the MCU movies, I am going to focus almost exclusively on the MCU series. You’ll see by the end why I’m doing this.
But I do have to talk at least a little bit about the Marvel TV shows that are not part of the MCU.

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Spidey Super Stories
Year: 1974-1977
Original network: PBS

This one barely qualifies, but as the very first live action Spider-Man I have to mention it.
I previously covered some of the absolutely bonkers adaptations, and I will definitely cover more in the future. But I can’t comment on the show itself since I’ve never seen it, aside from a few clips on Youtube.

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The Amazing Spider-Man
Year: 1977-1979
Original network: CBS

I did watch SOME of this one: the first two episodes were re-aired in Italy in the early 90s as part of Spidey’s anniversary. I must have worn out the VHS I recorded… because the episodes were preceded by a 30 minute special talking about the history of the comics.
I don’t recall much about the rest of the show except for it being unbearably boring.

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The Incredible Hulk
Year: 1977-1982
Original network: CBS

I have very vague memories of watching this one as a kid, back when my only other exposure to the Hulk were the very first comics I owned.
I’ve only managed to catch a couple of episodes in later years, and they seem to hold up pretty well… definitely more than most 70s TV shows for me.
Seriously, I have no problem getting into even older shows, but there’s something about a lot of the 70s that makes revisiting them a chore for me.
But this one deserves its fame, both for helping making the Hulk a household name and for being a good show on its own.
Even though as a Hulk adaptation it’s the most bare-bones version imaginable.

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スパイダーマン
Year: 1978-1979
Original network: Tokyo Channel 12

Eventually watching this is my bucket list. I have little interest in the tokusatsu genre, but I know Spider-Man is shockingly influential in its history and that this show is absolutely bonkers.

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Mutant X
Year: 2001-2004
Original network: Syndication

I have to imagine the pitch was “What if we made an X-Men TV show if we had no budget and couldn’t get the rights to the characters?”.
Despite sharing the name with a Marvel series and featuring mutants… they’re all original characters and “mutants” are the result of genetic engineering.
I only managed to catch one or maybe two episodes and spent them waiting for the show to do anything interesting… which it didn’t.
How in the world did this thing last three seasons and SIXTY-SIX EPISODES???

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Blade: The Series
Year: 2006
Original network: Spike TV

By contrast, Blade only lasted 1 season and 13 episodes.
I haven’t seen it and barely ever see it mentioned; from what I understand it has its fans but it definitely wasn’t a hit.

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Legion
Year: 2017-2019
Original network: FX

On the other side of the spectrum, I have only heard good things about this one.
I never cared for the comics character so I never bothered to look this up when it aired.
I still cannot believe they made 3 seasons dedicated to the son of Professor X, and from my understanding it’s mostly disconnected from any X-Men stuff.
I trust that it is a good series but everything I’ve heard is not picking up my interest.

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The Gifted
Year: 2017-2019
Original network: Hulu

After Mutant X, the pitch might have been “What if we made an X-Men TV show with an actual budget and the rights to some of the characters?”.
I’ve only watched two or three episodes, and to my surprise… this was actually good!
Had this thing aired a decade prior, it would have been a gigantic hit. But it does have a very 2005-to-2007 vibe to it, not just in terms of budget (which is serviceable enough) but in how little it believes in being a superhero show.
Not a whole lot of comics characters in this, but by the time Polaris will inevitably make it to the big screen it will be very hard for me not to think of Emma Dumont’s version… she was SO GOOD in this.

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Marvel’s Runaways
Year: 2017-2019
Original network: Hulu

I would have watched this one if I had any clue where it aired or streamed in Italy at the time.
People who watched it: should I make the effort to track it down?
Its position in this list is a bit questionable since it MIGHT be part of the MCU… it’s a bit unclear.

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Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger
Year: 2018-2019
Original network: Hulu

Same exact points of Runaways, but this one seems to have had a worse reception.
It seems poor Cloak & Dagger can’t escape being minor characters even in adaptations… too bad because the concept should be strong enough for a regular series in any media.

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Helstrom
Year: 2020
Original network: Hulu

The shortest entry so far, with only 10 episodes. It’s on Disney+ so I could potentially watch this one… but should I really bother?
And has ANYONE actually watched this show?

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Spider-Noir
Year: 2026
Original network: Disney+

I really don’t care for the character or the setting, but… it’s Nicholas Cage playing a period piece black&white detective with superpowers, I will eventually catch up with it.

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And with that, I am now proceeding with the rankings of the MCU TV shows; this will include the Netflix shows.
This time I will only give a single score per season… you will see later why… and it will only consider my general opinion of the series.

Also, getting something out of the way first: I have no problem admitting that I’m such a Marvel fan that I’m willing to overlook several flaws, and by all means do call me out in the comments if you want.
But any complain about the shows being trash because they’re “woke” (whatever that means this week) or “feminist M-she-U propaganda” or nonsense like that is a fast track to the comment not getting approved.

I normally don’t censor to this extent but I am absolutely fed up with the “anti-woke” crowd making any MCU discussion impossible.
You have been warned.

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Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
Year: 2013-2020
Original network: ABC

This is the longest-running Marvel show and I absolutely love it.
I even got my parents to watch it and they don’t even care about superheroes!

Too bad that it wasn’t integrated to the fullest with the movies: there were some behind-the-scenes tensions between the people in charge of the shows and people in charge of the movies.
The result is that the movies influenced the TV show, but the reverse never happened.

Which is a shame because there are A LOT of things to like about this show!
Agent Coulson is even better than in the movies, Ming-Na Wen is a national treasure and she gives a terrific performance as Melinda May, and despite not giving a crap about the comics character that she plays… Chloe Bennet as Skye is one of the best characters ever.
Plus I maintain that Fitz and Simmons are THE love story of the MCU, with nobody else coming close. I will fight you on this.

Each season has a unique vibe to it, with many of them even being divided into two different sub-seasons with a different overarching plot, so this is BY FAR the series that has to be evaluated in a season-by-season case.

Season One: 7/10
I fear that many dismissed the series because the first half of the season made it clear that movie characters would barely ever show up and, well, to be honest the first half isn’t spectacular.
It’s GOOD, but it’s basically “what if did X-Files with comics characters and actually bothered to explain the monsters and have a plot”.
But then the second half hits, and *spoiler alert for a 13 year old plot twist that everybody knows now* the Winter Soldier movie reveals that HYDRA secretly runs SHIELD.
So the series switches to having the main cast deal with a menace from within and becomes AMAZING.

Season Two: 9/10
Now the show REALLY kicks into gear. There are conspiracies, plot twists, character developments, the best Inhumans story ever told in live action (not a big competition, I know, but trust me this one’s good), and I maintain that this season has one of the tree best two-part finales of all the TV shows I have ever watched.

Season Three: 10/10
Because of the movie rights were still at Fox, Marvel famously tried its best to push the Inhumans to replace the X-Men in a lot of places. As much as I like the Inhumans, it was a disaster.
But two good things resulted from that move:
1) the new Miss Marvel
2) this season
Despite having Inhumans replacing mutants, to this day this is THE best live action depiction of mutant paranoia. It’s not even close and I will fight you on this.

Season Four: 10/10
This season has Ghost Rider, Life-Model-Decoys, and an android stealing the Darkhold and using it to create an alternate reality where Hydra rules the world.
Peak. Fiction.

Season Five: 7/10
Nothing beats Ghost Rider possessing Coulson to bring to Hell the alternate reality human version of a nazi LMD… which is something that happened in the UTTERLY BONKERS fourth season.
So season five brings in alien planets and a very long time travel story that lasted way longer than it had any reason to.

 

Season Six: 6/10
You can tell that Season Five was supposed to be the ending, because the sixth really drags its feet.
It’s half the length of the previous ones, and thanks to both being set between Infinity War and Endgame but also because of the time travel plot of the previous season… it’s a safe bet that the team is PROBABLY in an alternate reality now.
A needlessly complicated alien invasion plot that also involved alternate reality version of past of the cast… I think? … certainly didn’t help.

Season Seven: 8/10
Another short season, but they decided to go all-out with another (and much better) time travel story. Every episode is set in a different time period and it does an amazing job at taking advantage of each setting.
The plot doesn’t exactly make a whole lot of sense and you’d be completely lost without the previous seasons, but man did this ooze creativity.

As if you couldn’t tell, I’m a HUGE fan of this series and I just can’t wait for Marvel to finally acknowledge it in the movies in some shape or form.
Which will probably just be a Ghost Rider cameo or hopefully Daisy Johnson showing up somewhere, but that’s better than nothing.

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 Marvel’s Agent Carter
Year: 2015-2016
Original network: ABC
Season One: 8/10
Season Two: 5/10

The first season is an amazing period piece that manages to also be a good character study, plus Carter and Jarvis have an absolutely perfect chemistry.
The second season was a massive disappointment for me… it repeated several beats of the first season, but the main plot was overly complicated, and it completely wasted Madame Masque by introducing a villain with the same name and absolutely NOTHING in common with the comics.

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Marvel’s Daredevil
Year: 2015-2018
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 10/10
Season Two: 9/10
Season Three: 8/10

Season One is peak Marvel television. It’s a bit of a slow burn, but this is the one Netflix series that avoids the plague of most other Marvel shows on the platform: this time the plot does NOT slow down to a crawl in the second half of each season.
Season Two is ALMOST as good, with the only caveat that I didn’t care all that much about the Hand plot. But holy crap is the Punisher stuff perfect here.
Season Three was lacking a bit of the magic, and while Kingpin remains the best… I really wasn’t sold with Bullseye.
Boy will THAT improve.

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Marvel’s Jessica Jones
Year: 2015-2019
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 10/10
Season Two: 7/10
Season Three: 5/10

 I really, really didn’t like Jessica Jones in the comics before this.
Season One is a bit slow at the beginning but it becomes a great character study AND Killgrave is one of the best villains to ever haunt a show.
The first season was SO good that the second one struggled new stuff to do, but at the very least it continued the character growth for the cast.
Only for the third season to just wreck everything, turning it all into a VERY depressing story of a woman who tried to fix her broken life only to end ruining the lives of everyone around her.

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 Marvel’s Luke Cage
Year: 2016-2018
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 8/10
Season Two: 6/10

Had the first season stopped at the half-point it would have been a 10/10: Mike Colter is soooo good in this. But the second half is THE definition of a Netflix show falling asleep in the second half.
I’ve seen the second season described as improving over the first, but I disagree. Colter is still just as good, but I found the plot to be missing something.

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Marvel’s Iron Fist
Year: 2017-2018
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 3/10
Season Two: 5/10

This series was the first major misstep for the MCU at large, and as such attracted the attention of every hater of the franchise… and marked the beginning of when hating the MCU started to be considered a cool thing.
So Iron Fist ended up becoming the lightning rod for the worst part of the Internet… exacerbated by the fact that it was a bad show.
The protagonist has barely anything in common with the comics character, and overall the first season is extremely boring.
The one redeeming quality of Season One is Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing: she was REALLY good in the role, even when given little to do.
Season Two was a marked improvement… when it focused on Colleen, I actually found it quite compelling.
Too bad Iron Fist was still a complete idiot even in that season.

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Marvel’s The Defenders
Year: 2017
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 2/10

What happens when you take the only boring parts of Daredevil, the worst parts of Iron Fist and give Luke Cage and Jessica Jones nothing to do?
You manage the impossible and make SIGOURNEY WEAVER AS THE BIG BAD unbearably boring.
HOW DO YOU DO THAT!?!?

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Marvel’s The Punisher
Year: 2017-2019
Original network: Netflix
Season One: 8/10
Season Two: 8/10

To this day this is the worst Punisher of the MCU and it’s STILL amazing.
Jon Bernthal was just born to play Frank Castle.

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 Marvel’s Inhumans
Year: 2017
Original network: ABC
Season One: 4/10

 The OTHER punching bag from 2017, and another one I can’t fully defend.
I believe its biggest mistake is by making the first season about separating the cast and de-powering most of them… that’s a season two plot if you’re lucky! We don’t know these people yet!
This one does have one advantage over Iron Fist, because it has TWO actors that are doing an amazing job: Anson Mount as Black Bolt and Iwan Rheon as Maximus.
They’re not given anything to do but SOMEHOW they act the hell out of that.

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WandaVision
Year: 2021
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 10/10

Nobody had any clue about what this was going to be, or just how good and creative it would end up being. I still can’t believe they pulled off the mystery.

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 The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Year: 2021
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 9/10

 I’m not crazy with Sam as Captain America… not because he’s not Steve or because he’s black, I just don’t like the idea of Cap flying… he more than earned the shield with this one.
Great chemistry between characters, compelling mystery and great villains. Although I did find the ending a bit too rushed for my tastes.

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 Loki
Year: 2021-2023
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 10/10
Season Two: 10/10

Growing up with Stereotypically Evil Loki, there are several things that I found unbelievable in Loki’s later evolution.
Like how he became a complex anti-hero, or have one of the very best time travel shows of all time.

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Hawkeye
Year: 2021
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 9/10

I’m a HUGE fan of Hawkeye in the comics, but I never found his movie version to be particularly interesting. He’s pretty good here, but I don’t think he has other stories left to tell.
By contrast, I never cared all that much about Kate Bishop in the comics… but at this point just let Hailee Steinfeld keep the role in the movies or give her a whole show.
I even loved the Swordsman in this, and I don’t care about comics Swordsman AT ALL.

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Moon Knight
Year: 2022
Original network: Disney+Season One:
8/10

I lost track of comics Moon Knight ages ago… his lore has become absurdly complicated.
So I don’t really know how much this reflects modern Moon Knight, but I loved this version.
Then again I also love Egyptian mythology so I was biased.

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Ms. Marvel
Year: 2022
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 7/10

Protect Iman Vellani at all costs, because her enthusiasm for the character carried the show.
I’ve never particularly cared for series centered around teenagers… I didn’t even when I was a teenager… but there’s so much charm and youthfulness in this to be contagious.
Unfortunately this series has the reverse of the Netflix curse: those series tended to have too many episodes for the plot they wanted to tell, while this one has too much plot for its 6 episodes and ends up rushing a bit too much.
I’m not against changing her powers for the TV show… her shapeshifting would’ve been hard to translate… but they ended up giving her boring powers with little creativity in play.

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Werewolf By Night
Year: 2022
Original network: Disney+
10/10

I’m not even a fan of horror movies but the sheer love for the classics was contagious.
One of Marvel’s best projects that needs more exposure.
Also: watch it in black & white or YOU are the monster.

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 She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
Year: 2022
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 7/10

 I absolutely hate that the entire discourse around this show is dictated by insecure men who can’t grasp that the show is NOT saying She-Hulk is better than the Hulk because she’s a woman, AT ALL, or who can’t fathom a show can both denounce sexism and have an after credits joke scene where a woman is twerking with a friend. Please get a life.

Because if we COULD talk honestly about the show, it could absolutely be criticized for some underwhelming court scenes or some hit-and-miss CGI or not being able to commit whether it wants to break the fourth wall or not until the last episode.
This is a fun if imperfect legal comedy with a killer final episode. That’s it.
I can totally see the humor not clicking for you, but if you are offended by this silly little show or consider this the worst thing ever filmed… what a shallow angry life you must be living.

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The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special
Year: 2022
Original network: Disney+
8/10

It’s very, VERY hard to make me like a Christmas special. This had enough laughs and heart to do it.

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Secret Invasion
Year: 2023
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 6/10

Wildly unpopular opinion: I kind of liked this one.
I know the Internet consensus is that this series killed your grandparents and set fire to your dog, but… I think it’s fine?
Honestly, I found most of it to be perfectly fine. Not amazing, but fine with even some highlights… Ben Mendelsohn as Talos and Olivia Colman as Sonya just blew me away.
Shockingly, Samuel L. Jackson was kind of the weakest part of the show.
I even liked MOST of the final episode! You guys are too harsh on the Super-Skrull plot, it was okay. I do, however, hate the whole “the President declares open season on the Skrulls” that comes up in like the last fifteen minutes without any build-up or pay-off: I agree that it does leave a sour taste when that’s how it ends.
Hey I did tell you that I liked almost everything.

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Echo
Year: 2024
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 6/10

Another character I don’t care about in the comics, but Alaqua Cox was incredibly good in this despite never talking.
Unfortunately this one inherited a twisted version of the Netflix curse. Because the first half of the season was about this fighter who kicks all kinds of ass despite being deaf and with a prosthetic leg… and then the second half introduces a bunch of magic nonsense that is NOT part of the comics lore, AT ALL.
What, did they think they couldn’t have a Native American hero unless she had magic Native powers? Boy did that come out of nowhere, and it lowers the score at least a couple of points.

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Agatha All Along
Year: 2024
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 10/10

Agatha Harkness was one of the few things that didn’t blow my mind in Wandavision, so I expected this would fall flat for me.
But Kathryn Hahn playing Agatha and Aubrey Plaza playing *REDACTED* were great, and the script should be studied for how to do a great mystery.
The whole season guides you through a mystery that works just fine and is actually resolved… only for the series to give you a completely different perspective on what happened before, forcing you to re-evaluate everything you learned along the way.
And then it does it A SECOND TIME, without feeling forced and still making sense!!!
Now that’s just witchcraft.

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Ironheart
Year: 2025
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 6/10

I know, I know, I’m a Marvel shill and all that. But I don’t think this was bad either… with a caveat.
Riri Williams is not as bad as a protagonist as haters say, but she definitely wasn’t good either: this series just can’t decide whether she follows her own core or not.
And if the series was just centered around her, I would probably give this a 5/10 because she really was underwhelming.
However, continuing the trend: I really don’t care about the Hood in the comics, but he was the real star of this show for me.
Especially with the one-scene-wonder of Sacha Baron Cohen playing *GIVE MY YOUR SOUL AND I WILL SPOIL THIS* in the final episode.

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Daredevil: Born Again
Year: 2025-2026
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 10/10
Season Two: 10/10

 I remember all the talk about Disney+ giving a sequel to the Netflix show: “It won’t be as good! It will be crap! Nobody will watch this!”.
I think it’s better than the Netflix show, if only because at no point it slows to a crawl for no reason.
If possible I would give Season Two an even higher score simply because Bullseye is finally perfect, but then again the first season was already doing everything fine.

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Wonder Man
Year: 2026
Original network: Disney+
Season One: 8/10

This has barely anything to do with the Wonder Man from the comics, but… what a shocker, this one actually made me care about the character.
Heck it even has little to do with superheroes in general: yes there are powers, but this ultimately the story of an actor who has a secret past that is slowly revealed.
Would I have watched this if it didn’t have powers? Probably not. I’m still glad I did.

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The Punisher: One Last Kill
Year: 2026
Original network: Disney+
10/10

Do you like Jon Bernthal growling his way out of the performance of a lifetime?
Do you like the Punisher murdering criminals for the last 20 minutes straight in the most brutal yet horrifically efficient way possible?
Boy do I have the perfect TV special for you!!!

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Whew, that was A LOT.
Why did I even bother with this? Other than being a colossal windbag?

Because I want to track how the quality of the MCU has evolved over the years, and I think that the TV shows are something that is often overlooked when evaluating the franchise.
Granted, this comes from someone who likes basically everything.

But even to someone like me, the nosedive from 2016 into 2017 is still very noticeable, and the score doesn’t recover until 2020 after which it stays stable.
(click to enlarge)

This is also both due to the killing blow of Iron Fist, Defenders and Inhumans all coming out in 2017.
But the above are just the average scores, calculated by taking all scores and diving them by all the shows coming out each year.
Which as you can see peaked twice at 5 shows per year: in 2017 with the Netflix boom, and in 2022 with Disney+.
The latter is, however, not entirely Disney’s fault because Covid changed everyone’s plans.
Without Covid, the last season of Agents of SHIELD would not have been the only show of 2020 (aside from Helstrom which is not counted here), and some of the 2022 shows would have definitely been aired in 2021.
And as you can see the releases have stabilized at 2 shows per year, with 2026 reaching 3 only because of the Punisher special.
(click to enlarge)

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*whew* that was a lot.
Do you also like shows that are considered crimes against humanity by the fandom?
And where are my fellow Agents of SHIELD superfans?