During all the precious high-value commercial airtime blocks on the Super Bowl LIV broadcast courtesy of FOX, there were plenty of ads from major companies, putting their best foot forward in the offering of their various products and services. From the latter, we have the recently-launched but highly upstart digital streaming service Disney+, giving their first-footage look at a slew of original programming content that they have promised but is taking time to produce: the live-action series tie-ins to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). True, the “Star Wars” tie-in media that premiered first was good, but Marvel fans have been waiting for these shows too.
Polygon has it that Disney’s highly audacious streaming platform has given the first teasers on their MCU-related streaming series for the coming months and years during the commercial breaks for the Super Bowl LIV telecast on FOX last Sunday evening, February 2. No less than three MCU tie-in shows were showcased in this short collected preview: “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” featuring supporting characters of Captain America, “WandaVision,” with secondary members of the Avengers, and “Loki,” starring the unpredictably aligned adoptive brother of Thor.
Plenty of either continuity points from previous installments of the MCU, as well as shout-outs to plot elements from the original Marvel Comics stories are seen in this Super Bowl teaser. The preview starts with Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) practicing with throwing the vibranium shield of Captain America, who had passed it on to him. The next scene sees Falcon in some mid-air action against a team of wing-suited grunts, while Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) confronts “Captain America: Civil War” hidden baddie Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) with loaded gun.
Next, the “WandaVision” tease showcases the weird and quirky side of the MCU, with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and the synthetic android Vision (Paul Bettany) living in seemingly blissful marriage…despite the latter being destroyed during “Avengers: Infinity War.” The strange thing is that their home – furnishings, atmosphere, everything – looks and feels like a stereotypical oldie sitcom, likely a result of Wanda’s nebulous powers expanding to warp reality itself, much like her original comic-book self. The series is also said to explain how MCU Wanda picks up her comic-counterpart’s alias of “Scarlet Witch,” so that is another thing to watch for.
Finally, “Loki” picks up on the further adventures of the alternative Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who escaped from his capture at the end of “Avengers” when the timeline was disrupted by the Avengers’ future selves in “Avengers: Endgame.” When MCU fans last saw this Loki, he had absconded with the MCU year-2012 iteration of the Tesseract/Time Infinity Stone for parts unknown. The teaser shows the trickster-god of late Asgard in prison garb with the initials TVA, probably referring to the Time Variance Authority from Marvel Comics, a trans-dimensional agency that ostensibly prevents drastic changes to alternate timelines but is notoriously inept. Given that Loki boasts he would be burning something in his scene, the MCU-TVA looks to be just as hapless.
All three MCU shows, six episodes apiece, will premiere for streaming on Disney+ from late 2020 to early 2021 (“Loki”).
Image courtesy of the Playlist
Morgan Magazine 