MCU Shows Ranked

MCU Shows Ranked

The first MCU show of the year, Secret Invasion has finally finished. It’s been a while since I last updated my ranking of the MCU Disney+ tv shows. So…here it is, let’s get started!

9. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: To be fair, I didn’t hate this show the way other people did. I don’t find it to be that bad of a show, but it is easily the weakest show the MCU has done so far. Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk I thought was great casting, I liked the energy and charm she brought to the role. I would like to see her show-up in future MCU projects and interact with other characters. You get a lot of fun legacy characters here whether it’s Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk or Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, they’re just nice additions to the show that make each episode they’re in better. I appreciate they really tried something different with this show, they don’t go down the safe and obvious path for a show like this. They really did something different, and that was met with mixed results. In a lot of ways this show feels like it was made to infuriate it’s fan base, the finale of the show is them going super meta. Where you have She-Hulk rewrite the end of the show because she realized that none of the plot lines actually go together all that well. And I feel like that’s a problem when you know you made a show that doesn’t go together so you create a finale to re-do your finale of your show. That’s such a weird path to go with this show, I don’t think it works all that well. Beyond that, some of the humor is pretty clever and pretty funny at points. But at other times the humor feels very forced and WAY to cringy for my taste. A show that isn’t the abomination (no pun intended) some people want to make it out to be, but it’s certainly not all that good either. 

8. What If…?: This is a tricky one to rank on a list like this, because it’s a very different show from all of the rest. I feel like people’s placement of this show will depend on how much you enjoyed the what if scenarios in every episode. Some of the episodes I thought were great, the Doctor Strange episode and the Ultron/Vision episode towards the end were great. Some of the scenarios and changes were very clever and the way the episodes played out were unexpected, each episode has some great twists and turns that makes sense but is also very clever. Of course the animation style of the show is great, it feels very comic booky and fits the nature of this show really really well. But the inherent nature of it is each episode takes a character or event in the MCU and changes one small detail about it. Inherently, some of the episodes I’m going to love and think are great while other ones I don’t care about all that much. And I think that’s part of the reason why this show is placed lower on the list, it’s way too inconsistent for my taste and I think because of that it’s frustrating. But as for the show itself, I appreciated that idea of them building up to their own Avengers in the finale. But when you create the villain of the show to be this Ultron/Vision hybrid and The Watcher recruits people, I don’t get why he’ll recruit Black Widow or Kilmonger or Captain Carter when going up against a threat The Watcher can’t even defeat. Get a lot of Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Thor, there’s so many other heroes they could have gone with. It pulled me out of the finale a good bit, when I didn’t feel like they earned what they were doing in the finale. 

7. Moon Knight: This is such a frustrating one for me because on paper this show sounds really cool. The idea of doing this darker MCU show mixed with horror vibes with a little bit of Indiana Jones in there starring Oscar Isaac that sounds fantastic. But this is a situation where I feel like the idea is better than the whole. Where there’s a lot of very interesting stuff going on with this show where it deals with PTSD and people having multiple personalities makes for a very different type of MCU shows, it feels very disconnected from the rest of the MCU. Of course Oscar Isaac is giving it his all with this show, he’s great as both personalities. He can play the scared and more tough sides of the character really well. And even though he’s Poe Dameron in Star Wars or in Dune, he’s able to disappear into this film role. Then getting Ethan Hawke as the show’s villain is a nice touch, he’s a great actor that can bring a lot to the role. But I think what hurts this show is for a show called Moon Knight there’s very little Moon Knight. Moon Knight is the big cliffhanger in episode 1, he’s in the finale for a large amount of time, episodes 4 and 5 don’t have Moon Knight. Then episodes 2 and 3 have a little bit of him. That’s weird to me, that’s a weird decision to call your show Moon Knight have very little Moon Knight in your show. So this is a show that I wish could be higher, I wish it was a top 3 MCU show, but it’s far from that. 

6. Secret Invasion: It pains me a good bit to have to put this show in the middle of the list. This was a show that I wanted to love, I liked what the trailers promised and I liked the basic idea of doing this paranoia thriller set in the MCU with a much darker tone about it. And the show had the elements and things I wanted from the show, it gave me. But it’s also not as good as it could and should have been. What I thought this show did best was focus in a lot on Nick Fury, and when it was that I thought it really worked. It was great to get some really solid character development for him after 15 years of being introduced. His relationship and dynamic with Talos was handled very well and you can tell there is a long history between the two of them, you know a lot happened in between the events of Captain Marvel and this show. So when they’re talking you like those moments, you appreciate those moments between the two of them. And even with meeting Nick Fury’s wife provides a different perspective on him that we haven’t seen before. I also appreciated the fact this was a more grounded and more mature show, it wasn’t a comedy. It was a darker and more mature spy espionage thriller set in the MCU, something so new and different for the MCU. Now where this show lost me was with the pacing, episode 1 came out and set-up the villains as a threat that need to be stopped. It was filled with tension and this sense of urgency for beginning to end, and the rest of the show didn’t really have that. It felt like we were just wondering around the show seeing all of these characters but not really doing anything to interesting. And I wish the rest of the show had that tension that episode 1 did, if that was the case this easily moves up several spots on the list. Also, the finale got a bit to silly and goofy for my liking. I don’t the the CGI fight worked all that well and it was to goofy with an idea that came out no where and didn’t the fit the show…really at all. So this is such a frustrating show, there’s so much about it I wanted to love. And the show did deliver some of the things I wanted, but not all of them. 

5. Ms. Marvel: Moving in a very different direction from Moon Knight and Secret Invasion. We have Ms. Marvel a show is a more light hearted, family friendly show. This is the type of show that my 9 year old sister would probably really like, it’s a show that is designed for them. What I thought this show nailed was the characterization and casting for Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel herself. Iman Vellani is so fun and charming in the role that you instantly want to see more of her. And she’s easily one of the more relatable heroes inside of the MCU as she’s a fan of The Avengers just as much as the audience for the show are. I thought the friendship and dynamic between her and Bruno was a lot of fun, it feels like a real friendship that would actually exist in real life. And the show is very stylized, it has a similar style to Spider Verse where it’s very comic booky. Words are appearing on the screen like how they do in comic books, which makes it feel very different from the other shows. And I appreciated this show, it doesn’t have word ending stakes. It’s not about a villain trying to blow-up the city or the world. It’s about Ms. Marvel’s origin story and solving very street level crime. What holds this show back is I think the middle episodes, mainly 4 and 5 feel like season 2 of the show. Episode 1,2,6 were focused on her being this superhero for the neighborhood and I wish the show was all that, I wish that was what the show was about. But they head off to Pakistan and explore her family’s origins, which is interesting. But that should have been season 2, I don’t think the two fully mixed well in one season. So in general, this is a really good show that I like a lot. But once again, there’s a few things her that hold it back from being a top tier show. 

4. Hawkeye: This one seems to be one of the more polarizing shows the MCU has put out. And I’m not entirely sure why, for me this is one that has gotten better and better the more I’ve thought about it. Initially I liked it, but I was a bit more mixed on it. And now I think this is a really good show that is a lot of fun. A large part of that is Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop. I really liked her character. Steinfeld is great. She is quirky, fun, and charming. She's a nice addition to the MCU. And she’s a character that you want to see more of her, I hope we get to see her soon in a MCU movie or tv show. Her dynamic and chemistry with Jeremy Renner is a lot of fun, whenever they’re bickering back and forth with one another it’s fun. Then when Florence Pugh shows up the dynamic between her and Steinfeld is once again a lot of fun. It’s nice to have a MCU project that is very street level, this is probably the most street level thing the MCU has done. That’s just a breath of fresh air, it’s not trying to be the biggest or the best MCU project out there, it’s just trying to be a solid tv show and it delivers that. Now I do think the show could have benefited by having a bit more of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in there, I think some of that feels a bit rushed. So this is a solid show, it’s fun with great and likable leads. And the fact it’s not a big EPIC tv show is nice and refreshing to me. 

3. WandaVision: Probably the show on this list that had the best week to week experience. When this show was coming out, everybody was talking about it. Everybody was hoping that John Krasinski would appear in the show as Mr. Fantastic. The internet lost its mind when Evan Peter showed up at the end of episode 5. That’s really what made this show work so well, was the week to week viewing experience that it provided. The middle section of the season, episode 4-6 did a great job of building intrigue and mystery where you didn’t fully know what was going on, but it was interesting and made you want to watch the next episode. I really appreciated Wanda’s character arc in this show, where she’s the main character but she’s also the show’s main villain. We really explore Wanda’s backstory, we understand Wanda a lot more as a person after watching this show. It made Wanda this fan favorite character that people were so excited when she appeared in Multiverse of Madness. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are giving it their all with this show, they can be fun and charming when they need to be. When they need to be dramatic and have screaming matches with each other, they can pull all of it off. The fact that it is just so weird, wild, and bonkers from anything else the MCU has done makes it unique and distinct inside of the larger MCU. When they pitched the show as a sit-com inside of the MCU, we were all scratching our heads as to what that meant. This is a show that is super unique, it’s a great binging experience. And it’s a show that is interesting watching it through for the first time, but re-watching it you pick up on a lot more details about what is going on. 

2. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: I know this is a show that a LOT of people really didn’t like, some people thought it was bad and one of the worst shows the MCU has done. As for me, I think the criticism the show gets is valid, I can see where they’re coming from. I just don’t fully agree with them, and those elements didn’t really hurt my experience watching it. What’s so much fun about this show is I love the chemistry and bromance between Sam and Bucky. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have such great chemistry, and them bickering back and forth with one another makes for some of the best MCU phase 4 moments for me. I also appreciate that they’re not just bicking people that are annoyed by each other, their relationship does have an arc. They respect each other and grow as the show goes on, I appreciated that aspect. Even Sam has an arc in the film as he goes from being The Falcon to being the new Captain America. That’s what this show was all about, Sam’s journey and I thought it worked really well. And it is a great and satisfying payoff in the finale of the show. I know some people weren’t crazy about John Walker as a character, and you’re not supposed to like him. He’s not meant to be a likable character. But that’s what makes him interesting, he’s the person Tommy Lee Jones wanted in The First Avenger. That’s such a great idea to do in a show like this that is so much about the legacy of Captain America and Steve Rogers. I’m a sucker of action spy thriller shows so doing a show like this inside of the MCU with these lead characters is naturally something that I’m going to really enjoy and it’s going to be easy for me to have a great time with it. Now the show isn’t perfect, I don’t think Karli and The Flag Smashers are super compelling villains. I like the idea of what they’re doing, but I’m not sure if they’re developed or fleshed out enough. And then twist with who the Power Broker is, it’s very predictable it’s very obvious all through-out the show that it’s Sharon Carter. I don’t think it remotely deserves all of the hate that it gets, it’s not perfect but it’s pretty solid and watchable. 

1. Loki: This was a show that I wasn’t really quite too sure what to make of it when they announced it, because I didn’t like the fact that once again Loki was coming back for a tv show. I thought they should have let Loki die after Thor: The Dark World. But, the show itself I thought was very good and gave a good reason as to why Loki would come back. Where they have a simple plot point in Endgame of Loki escapes with the tesseract and with that we get this whole story revolving around Loki that explores who he is as a person from all sorts of different angles. It can be rather philosophical at points in time that once again makes you think about Loki differently. I like how it mixes the sci-fi genre with being a crime procedural with the TVA that has this odd vibe and look about it. The chemistry and dynamic between Loki and Mobius was a lot of fun, a lot of the dialogue between the two of them very interesting, deep, and layered. And it made you care a lot about their dynamic so quickly, you loved seeing them on screen together building this friendship and respect for one another. It helps that Tom Hiddelston and Owen Wilson have great chemistry in here, the banter between them is a lot of fun. Adding Sylvie into the mix once again makes you interrupt Loki a bit more, seeing a similar but different version of him was a nice touch. I thought this season did a great job of telling a complete story while also setting up a season 2, it ends on a cliffhanger that makes you very curious for where they’re going with some of this in season 2. This is my number 1 show, I think it’s really good. But I don’t think Marvel has yet to have that fantastic tv show, they haven’t had a tv show that has just knocked it out of the park. This show does have its issues with it, but overall I think this is a well balanced show. It has heart, humor, great character, twists and turns, everything you want from one of these tv shows, this show delivers a solid version of all of it.