Simon Williams is Marvel's latest leading man, with actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II bringing the semi-obscure Avenger to life in the Wonder Man streaming series. Though Wonder Man's Marvel Comics history goes all the way back to 1964's Avengers #9, making him one of the earliest associates of the team, the show's creators Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Young were given carte blanche to develop their own version of Simon for the show.
"When it came to Simon Williams, they gave me kind of free rein. There wasn't necessarily a run of Wonder Man that they wanted to look at. They wanted to make a show about the entertainment industry," Young tells GamesRadar+. "And so for me, it was really figuring out Simon's relationship to Hollywood and his relationship to his superpowers."
In comics, Simon Williams is a superhero turned actor, whose abilities allow him to actually return from the dead. Though he finds success as a longtime member of the Avengers, it's his acting career that matters to him most, a theme that the Wonder Man streaming series runs with, becoming less a show about a superhero than it is a show about a person with superpowers.
"It occurred to me, reading a lot of profiles of really incredible actors, that if you gave one of them superpowers, and they're just trying to be Daniel Day-Lewis, they wouldn't care," Young explains. "They wouldn't fly. You know, it means nothing to them. They're trying. The truth is, Simon Williams is an artist, and Trevor Slattery is an artist. And we somehow made a show about two artists for Marvel and they were on board with it, and it was really, really fun to do."
Indeed, while Simon's powers are central to his journey to resurrect his own childhood hero, Wonder Man (a twist on Simon's comic ability to bring himself back to life that doesn't go unnoticed), the streaming series avoids veering into typical MCU storytelling. And for Cretton, focusing on the relationship of the show's lead duo of Simon Williams and Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery on their own terms is the key to its success.
"Truthfully, if you are going in to watch this show expecting a superhero show that is typically like something you've seen before, I think you will not like the show, if that's all you want," Cretton says. "But I also think you'll probably, if you watch it all the way through, surprisingly, fall in love with these characters and find that this show, even though it's not a typical superhero show, to me, uses the genre in a way that is so much more exciting and interesting than just watching two people fight.
"Seeing Simon's powers manifest in a way that helps you understand the pain that's inside there, that's buried inside there, and what his triggers are, as a person, I find to be incredibly relatable, and that, to me, is the exciting part of directing a show like this."
One thing that Wonder Man leaves as a bit of a mystery is the origin of Simon's abilities, which go back to his childhood. That may raise questions among viewers as to whether Simon will be one of the MCU's growing number of mutants. However, it's a question that it seems Cretton and Young are leaving up in the air for the time being, both cagily saying "I don't know," when asked outright. "It's a good question though," Young adds, with a smile.
All eight episodes of Wonder Man premiere on January 27 on Disney Plus. For more, check out our review of Wonder Man and stay up to date on all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows currently in the works.
