Wonder Man isn’t a typical superhero show.
Though set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and featuring a main character imbued with superpowers, the show contains very little in the way of superheroics. It’s nonetheless an delightful and affecting dramedy that works simultaneously as a love letter to actors, the craft of acting, and creative dreamers of all sorts as well as an implicit riposte to the MCU’s own myriad critics.
Just like the rest of the MCU when it works, Wonder Man focuses laser-like on its main characters: Simon Williams and Trevor Slattery, portrayed respectively by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Sir Ben Kingsley. The former is a down-on-his-luck actor looking for his first big break, while the latter seeks a degree of redemption for an extremely checkered past that included heavy drug use and a stint as the faux terrorist leader the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. With their charisma-soaked performances, Abdul-Mateen II and Kingsley exude the quiet desperation of personal disappointment and dashed dreams as well as the euphoria of hard-won success when both characters are cast in a remake of a decades old superhero movie.
Wonder Man isn’t a paean to Hollywood; indeed, it’s something of the opposite. Instead, it’s tribute toward actors, acting, and creative types who doggedly pursue their own personal dreams even though the odds remain stacked heavily against them. It’s seen most clearly in Simon, who continues to chase his acting aspirations despite repeated rejections and pressure from his family to pursue a more normal career—to say nothing of the fact that his superpowers of thankfully unknown origin could see him blacklisted from the industry.
But it’s also apparent in Trevor’s bid for redemption after a life of failures, mistakes, and squandered potential. Hoping to finally make his mother proud and validate her faith in his own artistic ambitions, Trevor possesses a deeply romantic view of his chosen profession. As he recounts to Simon in the show’s first episode, “Nature, that’s our job. To understand the world around us, and ourselves within it. The real work isn’t digging for subtext or parsing a writer’s intent—the real work is living.” It’s a sentiment expressed most clearly in Trevor’s response to a fictional depiction of the actor Joe Pantoliano (aka Captain Howard from the Bad Boys films and Cypher from The Matrix), who claims that acting is just a job: “Acting isn’t a job, it’s a calling. It’s the single most consequential thing anyone could ever do with their life.”
These threads come together in a heartfelt monologue Trevor delivers to Simon amidst a bout of self-doubt during their callback for the lead roles on a new superhero film titled Wonder Man: “Mirror up to nature: that’s our job. When we share our pain, our grief, our joy—our audience less alone in theirs. We’re all less alone.” Simon then seamlessly transitions to the audition scene for their fictional superhero film, as if to proclaim that acting is acting—no matter if it’s for independent arthouse films or the big-budget superhero blockbusters made by Marvel Studios. Contrary to the allegations of prominent critics, the show asserts, such movies are not mere theme park rides that offer nothing more than cheap and ephemeral thrills. At their best, they’re “human and spectacular,” as the fictional film’s Academy Award-winning, Werner Herzog-esque director Von Kovak (Zlatko Burić) observes.
It’s hard to think of a shorter or sweeter defense of the MCU itself than that—or one wrapped up in a package as endearing and entertaining as Wonder Man.