Wonder Man is now one of Marvel Television's best-reviewed MCU TV shows and only the third series to be greenlit for Season 2 (following Loki and Daredevil: Born Again).
There's no word on when Simon Williams and Trevor Slattery will return, but we're expecting production to begin this year for a possible 2027 release. Yearly releases for these shows have become a priority for Marvel Studios, but there's been no official word on how far into development this second batch of episodes currently is.
During a recent conversation with Deadline, Wonder Man's creative team reflected on how the idea of pairing up Simon and Trevor started as "a joke pitch" on the set of 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
That movie featured Trevor's return after his previous appearances in Iron Man 3 and Marvel One-Shot: All Hail the King.
Exploring the former Mandarin's new status quo as Wenwu's prisoner saw filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton bring up the idea of following Trevor to Hollywood. That prompted producer Jonathan Schwartz to jokingly put together a mock poster.
However, when word reached them that a Hollywood-set Wonder Man project was in early development, the pieces started falling into place, as Cretton explains:
"The genesis of the idea actually sprouted when we were on the set of Shang-Chi and I just loved working with Sir Ben [Kingsley, as Trevor Slattery] and I really loved his character and I really feel like in every movie Trevor Slattery has been such a standout and underutilized. So I did a joke pitch to my producer, Jonathan Schwartz, and said, "We should do Trevor Goes To Hollywood."
"The joke pitch kind of escalated because [Schwartz], as a joke, made a poster with our art department of Trevor Goes to Hollywood with Trevor Slattery in a convertible and it looked 1980s. And I thought we have to do this show! So that’s how it began."
"Then when we were really pitching the show we found out that Wonder Man was also being developed around what would a show be like in the MC Hollywood. Those two ideas collided and that’s when Andrew [Guest, EP] came in and helped us create the real vibe of the show."
It may have all been fun and games early on, but as writer Andrew Guest reveals, things started looking bleak for Wonder Man during 2023's Hollywood strikes.
"This was a risk creatively for Marvel, and I think it was one they reexamined during the strike," he shared. "It’s been this underground project that the people at Marvel believed in."
Wonder Man isn't expected to appear in the next Avengers movies, and as the series falls under the standalone Marvel Spotlight banner, we're not necessarily anticipating that changing. As for where Simon and Trevor's stories go from here, chances are they'll be on the run from the Department of Damage Control when we next see them.
As a reminder, in our review of the series, we wrote, "Yahya Abdul-Mateen II steals the show in this delightfully original two-hander about friendship, acting, and being true to yourself. Wonder Man is the cure to superhero fatigue and the most original MCU TV series since WandaVision."
All eight episodes of Wonder Man are now streaming on Disney+.