Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: disney, hawkeye, loki, marvel, the falcon and the winter soldier, tv, WandaVision, what if

Are The Disney+ Shows Accomplishing What Marvel Needs Them To?

We are a year into the Marvel Cinematic Universe using television shows on Disney+ to expand on their universe. The shows have been hits [WandaVision, Hawkeye], pretty good but not great [The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki], and a massive letdown [What If…? (don't @ me)] so now the question becomes, is this experiment working? The Marvel Cinematic Universe idea of interconnected storytelling was an experiment in 2012. However, we're ten years into this thing, and people are much more willing to wrap their heads around the entire thing. It was another thing to ask people to get invested in television shows. The streaming numbers look pretty good for most of the shows, which means that people are watching them, but the real test is whether or not these shows are making audiences care about characters they didn't previously care about.

You really only need to look beyond the reaction to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer to see whether or not the shows are working. WandaVision was the first Marvel property out of the gate after the pandemic, and it took the world by storm. There were people watching it that didn't even like Marvel things. That show had massive appeal, and WandaVision brought in those people. They became fans over the course of the year, and when they are sitting in the theater after Spider-Man: No Way Home, they see Wanda in the trailer, and they cheer. There is a visceral reaction to Wanda turning up in the trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness because people watched WandaVision, and they started to care about Wanda Maximoff more as a character.

The shows are also giving some new characters breathing room so audiences can get attached to them before they come back in a big way. Monica Rambeau will get a big reaction when people see her in the trailer for The Marvels because the show got us invested in her already. When Kang turns up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel won't have to do quite as much explaining because he was in Loki. Hawkeye gave audiences even more time with Yelena after Black Widow, making them even more invested in her. Characters like Kate Bishop and Sylvie or Sam in his Captain America gear will get massive reactions the next time we see them in a trailer or somewhere else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's still a little early in this experiment, and it's unclear if all of the shows are going to lead to audiences having the impact that Wanda got when she first showed up in the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer. That shows that this new experiment is working on some level. There is a good chance that it will not work every single time, but seeing people react to Wanda showing up and hearing "Westview" was quite cool.

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