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It felt a little bit like jumping the gun when all the upcoming Marvel TV shows coming to the Disney+ streaming service were announced ahead of Avengers: Endgame’s release. Would the mere concepts of the TV shows spoil some aspects of the film? As it turns out, no, knowing about the new Marvel TV shows didn’t spoil the film at all, but I am about to COMPLETELY spoil Avengers: Endgame for you in the rest of this article, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen the film yet, because it may shed some light on what the Marvel TV shows could contain.
Disney+ have currently confirmed three shows, with one, centred on Hawkeye, remaining in the ‘heavily rumoured’ category. So let’s break down what we know about the shows, and what we can assume/wildly speculate about the plot now that we’ve seen where Endgame leaves the shows’ stars.
WandaVision
WandaVision is already the show that we know the most about, as news is already beginning to come out about this Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany starrer. Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige described the show as "unexpected and surprising", which was confirmed when Olsen let slip some recent tidbits about the show being set in the 1950s, and being around six hours long in total. Jac Schaeffer, one of the screenwriters for Captain Marvel, will be showrunning.
This is a tricky one because, as of the end of Endgame, Vision is still very dead. There’s a chance that this show could be a prequel to Infinity War, set during the time period where they were on the run from US authorities. But the fact that it’s at least partially set in the ‘50s suggests that other options are more likely. One option is that Shuri managed to download a fair amount of Vision before he went off to fight Thanos in Infinity War, and that his consciousness still exists in the Cloud somewhere. Wanda could be spending time with him in a VR world.
The other option – and the one perhaps more in tune with the comics – is that Wanda’s powers go a bit haywire in her grief, and she creates a happier world for herself, one in which she and Vision are able to live that domestic 1950s life. There’s precedent for that in the comics, with the House of M arc about Wanda creating an alternate reality following the death of her and Vision’s children. Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Vision maxiseries also told a story about Vision attempting to live a normal, married-with-kids life, with disastrous results, so that could be an influence on the show too.
The MCU has always depicted Wanda’s powers as something more like telekinesis, rather than the reality-warping chaos magic they are in the comics, but if Marvel Studios was ever going to explore what her powers are really capable of, then this miniseries would be the time to do it.
Loki
Feige has said that this one is ‘history-spanning’, and the sort of story that could only be told in a long-form format. Tom Hiddleston is returning as the God of Mischief, and Marvel has brought Rick and Morty writer Michael Waldron on board as showrunner.
Due to Loki’s pretty definite death in the opening ten minutes of Avengers: Infinity War, everyone assumed that this series would be from Loki’s vast, and still unexplored, past – and it still could be. This could easily be an anthology show about Loki’s various misadventures throughout history.
But then in Endgame, Loki got out of there alive. Not the Loki that was killed in Infinity War – that Loki, with his perfectly completed redemption arc, is dead and gone. But the megalomaniac Loki from Avengers Assemble is loose in the timestream, having managed to swipe the Tesseract and make a run for it in a moment so throwaway as to almost go unnoticed. The Loki series could quite easily follow this Loki getting up to all manner of shenanigans across time and space, the loveable little git.
Falcon & Winter Soldier
Now, the announcement of this show was a bit of a spoiler, because it meant that both Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) had to survive Avengers: Endgame, because there is no place in their shared history when this show could be set. Feige teased that the show will focus on what these two get up to outside of the Avengers, and Empire writer Malcolm Spellman has been rumoured as an unconfirmed showrunner on the series.
But, despite the show’s logo already being revealed, we might expect a name-change pretty quickly, seeing as Captain America passed on his shield to Sam at the end of Endgame. Captain America & Winter Soldier, maybe? Or perhaps the show will cover Sam’s transition from Falcon to feeling confident enough to fully adopt the mantle of Cap. It will also be interesting to see how Bucky feels about his old buddy Steve passing the shield on to Sam instead of to him, and how both characters cope with the loss of their friend, and the new five-years-later MCU.
Hawkeye
This one still hasn’t been confirmed by Disney. Maybe it’s simply not a done deal yet, and Jeremy Renner hasn’t signed on the dotted line. Or maybe Disney are reluctant to announce it before Endgame, seeing as confirming Hawkeye’s survival really would be a major spoiler (seriously, who expected that guy to make it out alive?).
This series is rumoured to centre on Clint training up Kate Bishop, the comics’ other Hawkeye, who has been sharing various self-titled comics with Clint since Matt Fraction and David Aja’s brilliant run. Endgame showed Clint teaching his daughter how to use a bow and arrow, so the series could substitute her for Kate, but fans would kick up quite a fuss over that, given how beloved Kate is. After Endgame, Clint’s due a good redemption story, and training up his replacement could be the perfect one.
Want more Avengers: Endgame gossip? Why not listen to our discussion on all the biggest questions that remain after the Avengers: Endgame ending below:
