The fact marvel now blaming wonder man cancellation on viewership shows that most of those “highest viewed mcu show yet!” Reports that pop out every time they drop a new show are str8 cap

He's a 1000% right but they don't care enough

wonderman getting cancelled while trash ass DD immediately got renewed for S2 and 3

oh this is nasty

everybody has a valid argument onna last page but ultimately i jus see a lot of rationalizing for wonder man's cancellation rather than calling it out as a rash/anti-Black/hypocritical decision thats at odds w the middling shows they've allowed to survive and this latest announcement for whats likely a plethora of more haphazard niche bs lol

allat money spent on a boring looking visionquest show whereas i cud've easily seen them doing more w yahya in a s2 written to be mapped into the larger goings on of the mcu

TO BE FAIR to at least Season 2, the show was originally ordered as one 18 episode season but that was split into S2 + the Punisher special

18 episodes was always the order

Honestly fair, it just sucks to see such a high quality and well-received show being canned like this

Period pieces are infamously very expensive because of set design and costumes

Need to rewatch Loki, such a good show

Just finished ironheart, not without its flaws especially with its writing, things just kinda happened. But I enjoyed this one more than alot of the other shows so far. Feels like it's actually a show and not content

damn
wat mcu shows r u referring to/did u like it better than wen u say this

ye old race switching a character that will never last as opposed to bringing an obscure black character to prominence (the way iron man, deadpool, GOTG, etc were) bait and switch

This will keep happening until we require they dont just race switch and actually boost characters who are black to begin with

To be fair, Marvel has done 13 live-action shows so far, and literally only 2 of them have received second seasons (Loki and Daredevil: Born Again). And like @mjpplus already said, Daredevil was originally filmed as one long 18-episode series that was split into two seasons.

I really don’t think Wonder Man’s cancellation has anything to do with the lead character being black when 11 of their 13 live-action shows have only received one season

So far from the order I'm watching them

I got it above she hulk, falcon, hawkeye, echo, ms marvel

Tied with moon knight, and then below loki and wandavision. Haven't seen the rest

man Jonathan Majors was lowkey overselling in all his Kang performances but he locked tf in for Victor Timely

He Who Remains was my favorite of his, but if he was gonna be doing whatever he was doing in Quantumani post credits

ah yes, more of the self soothing rationalizations i'm sure the execs probly did in board rooms when they axed the show.

but sure. let’s look at those 13 shows (solely 6 of which - wandavision, the falcon and the winter soldier, loki, hawkeye, moon knight, wonder man - share the distinction of being emmy nominated).


18 episodes (more than double that of wonder man) split in half is all well and good. the fact remains that born again was still renewed for an additional 3rd season and a poorly received punisher special was greenlit.



Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Viewership Drops Over 50% From Season 1: A 46% drop in views and a 54% drop in hours watched, though, falls well outside the range of normal seasonal decay. For additional context, Born Again Season 2 failed to chart in Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 streaming originals during its premiere week, a threshold that even critically polarizing MCU entries like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, Echo, Ironheart and Wonder Man cleared in their debuts.

-- ComicBook.com / Luminate

and even if we go by that “bifurcated media” logic, then agatha all along and visionquest are effectively seasons 2 and 3 of wandavision in all but name. falcon and the winter soldier gets its renewal in the infamously sabotaged brave new world, while ms. marvel serves as a direct lead up to the panned marvels feature film. renner as we know became a financial liability after his snowplow accident and multiple assault allegations so anything further was already an uphill battle, even though echo is considered to be a sequel spinoff of hawkeye. loki was also renewed for a second season and there even seems to be set up for an eventual defenders revival/heroes for hire series of some kind.

so what does that leave us with and what do we notice? she hulk, secret invasion, ironheart, moon knight and wonder man. all largely shows centered on POC or new characters - the former 3 of which are well known critical bombs and the latter 2 which were extremely well received. if fans of mcu shows have been clamoring for anything in the past 4 years, it’s a moon knight follow up and there's still no word on such a thing - but just as eagerly as a wonder man season 2 was announced (again, who signed off on this only to renege shortly thereafter?), it was quickly shut down:




The New York Times reported Wonder Man carried one of the lowest budgets of any Marvel TV project. Luminate estimates roughly {$70 million} for the season, against the $200 million-plus Disney spent on 2023’s Secret Invasion. Luminate puts the show’s cost-per-minute-streamed ratio at about 0.041 for its first 12 weeks. That is low by Disney+ standards, where expensive series like Andor, Ironheart and Secret Invasion scored 0.06 or higher. It is high for a show that cost a fraction of those. The comparison that stings: The Mandalorian Season 3 came in at 0.018 over its first 12 weeks on a budget Luminate pegs around $140 million. Twice the money, less than half the cost per minute watched.



Furthermore, an examination of Wonder Man’s retention rate — an estimated 52% of viewers who started watching the series made it to the finale, which again puts Wonder Man right on the bubble in terms of success: A Luminate a***ysis of streaming original slates found new Disney+ series typically need a retention rate of 53% or higher to be considered safe from cancellation.


 The show ahead of it, Daredevil: Born Again, went 0-for-17 on Nielsen across two seasons.

-- Cosmic Book News / Luminate


..then, why?

a single missed percentage point on a new show that's holding steady against a trend of falling viewership no different from one of their most popular and renewed shows?

all it does is remind me of the age old “Black people have to work twice as hard to get half as far”.

so yea, maybe when you isolate this to a single event you can play the whole apolitical, “just business” card --- but on the heels of a similarly offhanded Blade cancellation and the various manners in which several Black/POC characters in the MCU not named t’challa have been shafted (e.g., sam wilson, riri williams, rhodey, kang, shang chi, etc), i don’t find coy denial a compelling or believable argument anymore.

it’s also very telling whenever someone wants to focus on handwringing about race not playing a factor at all (if not a primary one) in something, before they acknowledge that the entirety of this rash decision is both bad optics and that even the halfhearted marketing/unceremonious binge release model is in large part to blame for proactively sabotaging the show’s chances of growing a larger audience.
 so while wonder man may never have gained marvel 'new' viewers, its dismissal is certainly another misstep in a pattern that jeopardizes their Black demographic.

i'm good off hearing what 'fair' looks like

Werewolf by night was a pleasant surprise. This was dope

Wanna watch this but cancellation news makes me sad

Herald with the investigative journalism

I’m rewatching Hawkeye rn and I’ve hit episode 5. Yelenas intro is so good here. Like now thinking about her arc with this show included I like where they took her a lot more now.

Yelena is so GOATED man. She’s underrated