Wonder Man
Wonder Man is a really interesting TV show that has a lot to say and you will enjoy it.
Everything else I say here is just me thinking out loud about this show and its characters. There are spoilers.
Wonder Man is a superhero origin story, but this is not the point. Yes, Simon Williams, as portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, has superhuman powers and yes, he is flying by the end, but the superhuman stuff is all window dressing. This is a story not just about a person becoming a superhero, but about a person finding the thing that makes him a person. That thing is human connection. Empathy. The show tells us that it is about this in the opening scene.
Wonder Man is a supervillain redemption story, but that is not the point. Yes, Trevor Slattery, as portrayed by Sir Ben Kingsley, is a former supervillain with a guilty conscience. And yes, the Mandarin returns by the end, but the supervillain stuff is all window dressing. This is a story not just about a person repenting his time as a terrorist mastermind, it is about a person owning up to their mistakes, taking responsibility for them, and putting other people ahead of themselves. The show straight up tells us what it is about when Von Kovacs, the director of “Wonder Man”—the Hollywood blockbuster that Simon and Trevor are trying to star in—says the movie is about redemption.
Wonder Man is a story about friendship. But more than that, it is about friendship between two adult men. This “bromance,” as characters near the end of the show call it more than once, is a clear antidote to shows like True Detective, which are also about friendship between men but which portray that friendship as fraught and struggling through a mud field of misogyny, violence, and rivalry. Simon and Trevor avoid violence at every possible turn. They do not compete against each other, they share their experiences with each other, teach each other, and fall easily into a mentor/student role that doesn’t threaten their pride. They speak tenderly to and about their mothers. Simon’s girlfriend walks out on him in the first episode, but even she understands that her problem with Simon isn’t that he doesn’t treat her well, it’s that he doesn’t treat anyone well, something Simon himself acknowledges when she reappears near the end of the show, and which Trevor helps him work through.
Wonder Man is a story about acting, the difference between an actor and an acTOR, and the hazards of the occupation. It is a defense of the occupation. I make games about elves and wizards for a living, and during COVID—as we were celebrating doctors and nurses and emergency responders—I questioned my life choices and my career. Acting can be interrogated in much the same way, but Trevor—and through him the entire show—defend acting as a window to the human condition, a lens through which we see ourselves and thus learn about ourselves, “the highest calling” that a person can pursue. As a maker of games that bring people together and turn strangers into friends, I won’t claim making D&D is the highest calling a person can pursue, but I will settle for second place.
Wonder Man is a story about Hollywood. It’s willing to poke fun at blockbusters and the superhero genre but that’s not the point. Instead, it focuses on the lives of brave, hopeful, hard-working actors struggling to make it in a strange and difficult business. It takes 6 episodes for Simon and Trevor to land their roles in “Wonder Man.” In contrast, the entire production of the film is covered in episode 7, and episode 8 handles the film’s release and what happens after. This show has little to say about the parts of movie making that we have already seen, and a lot more to say about all the emotional labor and frustrations that precede the flashy stuff.
Wonder Man is about the Marvel Comics superhero Wonder Man, but adapts that character to serve the needs of the story. It is aware of the character’s history, but mines and remixes that history to shape the story it needs to tell. Simon’s Haitian heritage in the show is a rooted in the story that brought Wonder Man back to the Avengers, a story set in Haiti when Wonder Man, thought dead, returns as a “living zombie.” Wonder Man has a brother named Eric and so does Simon, but where Wonder Man’s brother becomes a supervillain, Simon’s brother Eric only appears to be a heel, and both brothers embrace by the end of the show. Wonder Man has had a 50 year crush on the Scarlet Witch, and Simon’s girlfriend looks a lot like Wanda, but when she reappears later in the show she’s cut her hair and is ready for her new role on Severance. The show’s original Wonder Man wears one of Wonder Man’s many terrible outfits from the comics, joining all the other MCU heroes who have temporarily donned laughable outfits from the comics, including Loki, Scarlet Witch and Vision. By the end, however, Simon is wearing Wonder Man’s coolest Avengers uniform, and for the release of the film he dons the red safari jacket that was Wonder Man’s distinctive ‘80s look. All of these are fan service deep cuts, but the show has actual things to say about nostalgia as Simon quests to wear the authentic sunglasses of the original Wonder Man, sunglasses he and his father bonded over before that father’s death. It’s not just a costume. They’re not just glasses. It’s not just nostalgia. The costume is a physical token of an important memory that Simon has built his life upon, just as fans of the character and of Marvel comics have built their lives upon beloved characters from the comic. The show acknowledges that, even as it remixes the original.
Wonder Man is great television. It’s as good as Andor, and as good as the first season of Daredevil, even if it is very different from both those shows and saying very different things. It is profound. It is funny. It is sincere. You are in for a treat.