Wonder Man

Created by: Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Guest

Starring: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ben Kingsley

What is it about? Simon Williams is an actor struggling to find his breakthrough role. Trevor Slattery is an actor who became famous for the wrong reasons—he pretended to be a supervillain. Simon has a secret. He has super-powers, but super-powered beings are barred from being employed in Hollywood after a past incident. Trevor has a secret, too. He must spy on Simon to avoid jail time. Will their encounter be the best or worst thing to happen to them?

I like pretty much everything about it. The chemistry between the two lead actors is perfect. Ben Kingsley proves once again that he's one of the best actors around. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II proves that he deserves to become an A-lister, which he may well become one of these days. Even better, Marvel has finally realized that to avoid superhero fatigue, they must stop making superhero movies and TV shows exclusively. Several times with TV shows, we thought they had finally decided to try something new. But every time, despite the originality of the show, the final act was always the same superhero vs. supervillain trope (WandaVision, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel). Finally, they are fully moving away from it (they did it a bit with She-Hulk and Agatha All Along, but not enough). Wonder Man is simply not a superhero TV show. It's a comedy. It's a buddy movie. The main protagonist just happens to have super powers (which he tries and mostly succeeds in not using), and the other main protagonist just happens to have been involved in super hero/super villain matters in the past. But the story revolves around their friendship, and there is no bad guy to defeat. It's so refreshing!

I don't like... Nothing. I don't dislike anything. As I mentioned before, I found several Marvel shows to be truly original and interesting, but I was disappointed by the big battle at the end that the producers felt was necessary. This one is original and interesting from beginning to end. It's 100% focused on its characters, who are both amazing and likable. In my opinion, it's a complete success.

With that being said, I've been a fan of the Wonder Man character since I was a kid. Hopefully, we'll see him again in the future. It'd be great to see him kick some butt in an Avengers movie. It'd actually be awesome to have a TV show about Simon Williams and Trevor Slattery having down-to-earth adventures while also seeing Wonder Man be a superhero on the big screen.
Now that I think about it, one of my favorite comics involving him was a scene in which he simply played poker with the Thing and some other superheroes. Those kinds of scenes were almost always among my favorites.

In the meantime, check out this show if you haven't yet.