MCU Recap

Well we can’t truly recap the MCU if we only discuss the movies so here we go we are going to recap ONLY the Disney+ MCU shows, this list will not include anything that happened on Netflix or networks. Though it is canon it doesn’t actually have any impact over the MCU as it stands now so Disney+ shows only.

Let's start with the best one…WandaVision, the way the MCU treats Wanda is terrible but WandaVision is the first time that she finally has some agency. The show expands her powers so that she is finally almost on par with her comic book counterpart. The best part of the show is the way that it explores grief and loss. After realizing that she lost Vision, Wanda’s grief induced state leads her to taking over a very run down town in New Jersey. Now at first she doesn’t realize that she is running this town; she truly gets lost in this happy life she’s created for herself. And as Agatha (a very special character from the comics) challenges Wanda’s powers Wanda’s mental state starts to break down. The other majorly important thing from this show is that just outside of this happy little magic bubble is the government agency SWORD that tries to take down Wanda and free the town. We get Darcy, Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeu as the second major storyline. Passing through Wanda’s magic barrier multiple times gives Monica her powers which we will get more of in The Marvels. The series ends with Wanda letting her family go and fleeing to a remote location so she can’t hurt anyone else. She also accepts the mantle of Scarlet Witch, takes Agatha’s powers and starts reading the Darkhold.

Next up is Falcon and the Winter Soldier, basically both Sam and Bucky are grieving the loss of Steve and coming to terms with the fact that he passed the shield to Sam. Sam and Bucky become a reluctant team having nothing but their mutual relationship with Steve and their trauma to bind them together. This show deals with race and mental health and the expectations of society. And of course we’ve gotta have a villain so enter John Walker, the most arrogant, irritating asshole in existence. He’s completely unhinged and he’s gonna continue to be a problem in the Thunderbolts so…yay. The other antagonist, I would not at all call them villains, is the Flag Smashers who are just trying to help people that were displaced and left for dead after the blip. They are trying to unite the world and of course the best way they could think of to do that was through violence. They were the catalyst for the government deciding that we needed a new Captain America. Sam gets put through the ringer and they really make him earn the mantle, though Steve giving it to him should have been more than enough. But he trains, gets himself a new suit and stands up for himself as Captain America and it was great.

Loki is so so skippable, really only relevant to introduce the multiverse but not really because how they’ve handled the multiverse since has been so aggressively inconsistent so it really doesn’t matter.

Hawkeye introduces Kate Bishop, who is an incredible comic book character. And I will say though the show is titled for him he is a footnote at best. It's really about passing the torch to Kate and introducing Yelena into the rest of the world of heroes. We got some good scenes with Yelena and Clint about losing Nat and I think that was perhaps the best part of the show because I know after Endgame we were all upset with Natasha’s ending.

Moonknight was a terrible adaptation but a decent show. The best thing to come out of that show was a new hero in the Scarlet Scarab and Lila, Oscar Issac is a brilliant actor but Moonknight is Jewish and should have been kept as such and they kind of just blow right past that fact in the show which is kind of worse then not including it at all. But basically Moonknight shouldn’t affect the greater scheme of the MCU as they kept it pretty self contained but if you want to watch a pretty decent depiction of dissociative identity disorder then it really is a good show.

Ms. Marvel is one of the most comic book accurate characterizations that we’ve ever seen. Iman as Kamala is amazing. She's bubbly and adorable and Captain Marvel obsessed, just perfectly casted. There were certain changes from the comics but they didn’t change her powers, she had the same powers they just added to them and made them more visual. Which was the correct decision because the comic book writers straight up said her powers would be difficult to adapt and they did that on purpose. But we heal some generational trauma and get some hints of mutants existing in the MCU.

Last up is She-Hulk, the show that pissed off the incels. Now I want to say upfront that they wasted Titania, but really that was the only major flaw in the show. It felt EXACTLY like the comics do. It adapted the origin well and it was a lighthearted and funny show. The criticism of this show largely misses the point as well are completely ironic because most of the things they are criticizing are things the show did to call them out.