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This post contains light spoilers for Wonder Man.
In the world of Marvel Comics, Simon Williams is about as high-profile as you can get. He inherits a munitions factory from his rich industrialist father, puts on green and red tights to become Wonder Man and battle the Avengers, and later becomes one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. He fully embraces the attention the Avengers gives him, regularly appearing on late night television (including David Letterman) and eventually becoming a Hollywood stuntman, all while showing off his Wonder Man powers.
The Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) of the MCU is the exact opposite. Over the eight episodes of the Disney+ series Wonder Man, Simon has to keep his powers a secret. It’s not just that using his powers would violate the Doorman Clause that prevents super-people from acting in major productions. It’s that he’s being hunted by Agent Cleary (Arian Moayed) and the Department of Damage Control.
The difference between the two takes may be more than just creative liberties. They may be the perfect way to bring the X-Men properly into the MCU.
Feared and Hated or Praised and Adored?
When Jack Kirby and Stan Lee debuted the X-Men in 1963, they were just another set of costumed heroes in a Marvel Universe already filled with them. The only difference was they were mutants, born with their abilities instead of getting them from a radioactive spider or a gamma bomb. Over time, mutation became a key part of the X-Men franchise, something to set them aside from the Marvel heroes. The X-Men fought to save a world that feared and hated them, following Professor Charles Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence between humanity and mutants and opposing Magneto’s vision of mutant supremacy.
That “Mutant Metaphor” allowed the X-Men to become remarkable commentary, with the X-gene serving as a stand in for all sorts of social differences, from race and sexuality to disabilities and citizenship. However, the Mutant Metaphor also posed a problem: why is it that citizens in the Marvel Universe love the Avengers and the Fantastic Four and hate the X-Men?
That problem has only become more pronounced in the MCU. Because the universe began with jet-setting Tony Stark revealing himself as Iron Man, the heroes of the MCU have always been celebrities, with even Spider-Man being viewed neither a threat nor a menace (save for the a couple of scenes in No Way Home) and instead as Stark’s scion. Heck, Ms. Marvel, the first official mutant in the MCU, is a superhero super-fan who attends an Avengers-based convention. How can feared and hated mutants exist in this kind of world?
The Cost of Power
Wonder Man points to an answer.
Even though the fourth episode “Doorman” changes the titular character from a mutant born with teleporting abilties to someone who gets them from interacting with some weird goop, it shows what can happen when a random person has powers they don’t understand. Moreover, series illustrates the government’s interest those types of superpowered people. While someone like Valentina Allegra de Fontaine can use her intelligence resources to use superpeople to her own ends, Damage Control—which basically functions like the Department of Homeland Security in the MCU—sees them as a threat. They’d rather hunt down these potential dangers and lock them away in prisons.
Much of Wonder Man shows how people live in such a reality. Simon’s superpowers have nothing to do with his acting abilities or his day-to-day relationships. Although one gets the sense that maybe the event that gave him his powers, some sort of accident that occurred when was a child, led to his father’s (Béchir Sylvain) death and to tensions with his older brother Eric (Demetrius Grosse), but the show doesn’t really spend time on that part. Instead, the series is about how Simon lives every day terrified that someone will learn what he can do. And when they do, he’ll, at best, lose his job, and, at worst, be thrown in prison.
Wonder Man does a great job showing how someone with powers can be demonized, even while Rogers: The Musical is still a Broadway hit. The depiction of Simon’s struggles makes us believe that Damage Control would go searching for, say, a guy who shoots concussive blasts from his eyes or a girl who can move things with her mind.
Make Way for the Mutants
Speaking of that last point… it’s no accident that Wonder Man is co-created by Destin Daniel Cretton, the man who is directing Spider-Man: Brand New Day. We know that Brand New Day will see Spidey (Tom Holland) team up with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), possibly against the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), but we also know it will involve Agent Cleary and Damage Control looking for Sadie Sink’s character. We don’t yet know who Sink is playing, and rumors have ranged anywhere from Frank Castle’s acolyte Rachel Cole to the wasp goddess Shathra.
But if Sink is indeed playing Jean Grey of the X-Men, then we understand why Damage Control would be looking for her. We understand the struggle that Jean and other mutants face precisely because of Wonder Man, not because it made Simon Williams a star, but because it made him an outcast.
Every episode of Wonder Man is now streaming on Disney+.
The post Wonder Man Is the Perfect Set-up for Marvel’s X-Men appeared first on Den of Geek.
