Marvel Studios entered the world of television in 2021 with WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Before the Disney+ Marvel series, however, a separate division known as Marvel Television had already produced a multitude of Marvel shows. Most of these shows, including Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil, had taken place within the MCU, but due to studio politics at the time, the shows did not cross over with the films and were relegated to their own self-contained space. Marvel Television has since been folded into Marvel Studios, with greater connectivity between the films and television series being promised moving forward. What’s more Marvel shows on Netflix have moved to Disney+, raising questions of their canonical status.
Since the beginning of Phase 4 of the MCU, new television series have prominently featured key characters from the films. Watching a Marvel production that is a part of something much greater has been a major part of the Marvel fan experience. Unfortunately, that has led to many fans paying little attention to television series that did not have the “Marvel Studios” branding. There are hours and hours of Marvel content that fans have missed out on. Here are six Marvel television shows that MCU fans have forgotten about.
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6 The Gifted
20th Television
The first season of The Gifted launched a few months after the release of Logan. Like Logan, The Gifted was set in a world where the X-Men had disappeared, but did not take place in the X-Men movie universe. The series was centered on an ordinary suburban family forced to go on the run. The Strucker family joined the Mutant Underground in protecting mutants from the corrupt government agency, Sentinel Services. But another mutant resistance group, the Inner Circle, had their own way of doing things. Whenever the Mutant Underground made progress towards peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans, the Inner Circle made things a lot more complicated. The Gifted had a great cast and told an emotionally resonant story before it was canceled following the end of its second season.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
5 Legion
Professor X of the X-Men has been confirmed to make an appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Noah Hawley’s Legion for FX presented an alternate take on the professor, but Screen Rant has reported that Patrick Stewart was originally considered for Legion’s Charles Xavier. The show focused on Xavier’s son, David Haller, a powerful mutant suffering from schizophrenia. Haller was kept in psychiatric hospitals and hunted by a government agency called Division 3. Legion took the concept of an unreliable narrator seriously, with both the characters and the show’s viewers being challenged to piece together what was really going on. Stylistically, Legion was presented utilizing both 1960s and modern visual design. The cast was impressive, assembling the likes of Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, and Aubrey Plaza. Legion was based on a Marvel Comics character, but the series was truly its own thing. It was unlike anything Marvel had ever done, distancing itself from both traditional superhero fare and almost any other television series.
4 M.O.D.O.K.
Disney Platform Distribution
Patton Oswalt played the Koenig brothers in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Pip the Troll in Eternals. But the actor also co-created the stop-motion adult animated series, M.O.D.O.K., and played its titular character. M.O.D.O.K. even featured Sonic the Hedgehog voice actor, Ben Schwartz, as M.O.D.O.K.’s son, Lou. The show was a hit with critics, but received a more mixed response from Marvel fans. M.O.D.O.K. has been a character considered to be difficult to bring into live-action due to his gigantic head. His stop-motion series tried to be ridiculous and not take itself too seriously, attempting to emulate the Robot Chicken-style of adult humor. There was no grand overarching plot other than M.O.D.O.K. suffering a midlife crisis, acting as a strange father in a family of four, and struggling to manage his financially-troubled A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics).
3 Runaways
Hulu, Marvel Entertainment
Marvel initially developed Runaways as a feature-length film before it was shelved and became a Hulu television series. Six teenagers united upon discovering their parents were part of an evil organization. PRIDE, the name of the organization, was a charity in Los Angeles; a front they used to mask their criminal activities and dark secrets. Runaways dealt with real teenage issues as well as the fantastical, involving both aliens and magic. The series featured the Book of Spells known as the Darkhold, before Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. For a teenage series, Runaways sometimes got surprisingly dark. But it balanced that darkness with light-hearted moments and the occasional joy of being a teenager. It also was unafraid to get weird. One of the Runaways even had a genetically engineered dinosaur!
2 Cloak and Dagger
Walt Disney Television
Tyrone Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger) were two teenagers with a supernatural connection after a shared childhood tragedy. The event gave Tyrone the ability to teleport and see people’s fears. Tandy on the other hand, gained the ability to summon light daggers and learn about people’s desires. The two teenagers developed a strong friendship and discovered that they were stronger when they were together. Throughout the series’ two seasons, Tyrone and Tandy investigated the night that took their loved ones. They worked with Detective O’Reilly to uncover the corruption within her police department. Cloak and Dagger was a Marvel television series more geared towards teenagers and young adults. It was less a superhero show, and more of a mature teen drama.
1 Helstrom
Hulu, Marvel
Hulu’s Helstrom was based on Marvel Comics characters Daimon and Satana Hellstrom, but largely avoided marketing itself as a Marvel show. Daimon and Satana Hellstrom were renamed Daimon and Ana Helstrom. Originally, Helstrom was a part of the MCU and an entry in the now defunct Adventure into Fear franchise. This meant that Helstrom would have been directly connected to Gabriel Luna’s canceled Ghost Rider series. The Helstrom siblings were demon-human hybrids that hunted evil demons that threatened humanity. While there were some interesting ideas, the series was not particularly scary or engaging. Nonetheless, it successfully showed a corner of the Marvel universe that had never been seen before.
