Marvel has recently cancelled Wonder Man season 2. According to showrunner Andrew Guest, the writers room was supposed to start August 2026. Contracts were signed. Schedules were cleared. So what happened? Apparently while it was a hit with critics, 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes as well as earning the star of the show, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, an Emmy nomination, its viewership was low. Is that all it is though, just low viewership numbers? It could be, but I think something else is going on, I think the MCU is going to stop putting new content on Disney+.
As of right now, VisionQuest is set to debut in October 2026, before the debut of Avengers: Doomsday and Daredevil: Born Again season 3 is currently in post-production, but beyond that, there's nothing else announced for Disney+. Kevin Feige has stated that after Avengers: Secret Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be "a streamlined, simplified, single universe that's easier for audiences to follow". Since Avengers: Endgame, the MCU has cranked out a lot of content. Loki, WandaVision, and Ms. Marvel are the three most connected to the movies, as all three shows have directly affected them.
Loki and the Multiverse
Loki brought the multiverse front and center with the Time Variance Authority and Kang, but then ripped the entire thing wide open. The show is probably more important to the Multiverse Saga than any movie released. It saw Loki go from beloved villain who escaped the Avengers' captivity to becoming Yggdrasil and the most powerful entity in existence.
Wanda and the Darkhold
WandaVision introduced Wanda's children in a nod to the House of M storyline from the comics. It introduced the Darkhold to the main MCU, though the book was featured in the Runaways as well as Agents of SHIELD, those are not considered canon. Wanda's villainous arc in Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness would not exist if it weren't for WandaVision.
Ms. Marvel and her Mutation
Ms. Marvel was the introduction of the character and the first time mutation is used in the MCU, also the first time the 90s X-Men theme song played. Without Ms. Marvel, Monica Rambeau would not be stuck in the X-Men universe that we saw at the end of The Marvels.
Before Avengers: Endgame you only had to watch the movies to understand what was happening. Agents of SHIELD loosely tied in, but you didn't need to watch it in order to know what was happening in the movies and while movie characters did show up on the show, the opposite never happened. Agent Carter was the only one that did have a character show up in the movies. In Endgame, Edwin Jarvis appears with Howard Stark when Tony goes back in time, but even then, the events of the show never mattered to the movies. If you didn't know who Jarvis was in the movie, it didn't affect it one way or the other.
D23 is Coming Up
During the Multiverse Saga, some shows matter more than the movies. Streamlining the MCU back to movies would certainly help make a simplified streamlined universe, but is that the ultimate goal? It sounds like Marvel is trying hard to finalize contracts for the X-Men movie before D23, which starts on August 14, so there's a good possibility that we will hear more about the plans for the MCU then. We will probably get a better picture of how Disney+ plays into the future of their universe in a couple of weeks.
