MCU TV Shows + Specials Ranked

MCU TV Shows + Specials Ranked

It’s been a full year since I’ve updated my ranking of the MCU tv shows and specials. With Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man finishing, it seemed like the perfect time to rank all of the tv shows and specials. Let’s talk about it! 

14. Secret Invasion: This kind of breaks my heart to rank this show in last place. I was so excited for this show. I loved the trailers and the concept of Nick Fury leading a Disney+ shows sounded awesome to me. The first couple of episodes were exactly what I thought and hoped the show would be. It’s very much something different in the MCU. It feels in line with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The spy espionage genre is something that’s very easy for me to watch and enjoy. After the first couple of episodes the show went in weird and wacky directions that I did not care for. It’s well documented that this show went through massive reshoots and reshot a large percentage of the show. When you watch the shows you can feel that. It starts off very exciting and thrilling. In the middle portion there’s a lot of people talking without a sense of direction. Big and important things happen to characters, but the show doesn’t seem to care about. The twists and turns in the show were either super predictable or didn’t make any sense whatsoever. As you move into the finale, it becomes ridiculous. They give Emilia Clarke’s character the powers of every Avenger which breaks the rules of the universe. For a show that started fairly grounded and mature, it ended up feeling very comic booky and goofy. I wanted to rank this show higher up on the list, but I can’t in good taste. 

13. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: I know most people are probably going to have this show ranked in last place. Honestly, I totally understand why people would do that. For me, I find this movie interesting that it exists in the MCU then I do with Secret Invasion. She-Hulk didn’t disappoint me the same way that Secret Invasion disappointed me. I don’t think this show is good, should we have gotten this show? Probably not. But there’s something fun about a show that’s bold with its choices. Once again, it doesn't feel like other MCU movies. Since it’s so different it makes it stand out and pop a little bit more. I think Tatiana Maslany is fun and charming in the lead role, she brings a fun energy and vibe to the entire thing. It’s nice to see Mark Ruffalo again. But this show still isn’t great, there’s a lot of problems here. First up, while I can appreciate this show breaking the fourth wall and I don’t think it fits or makes sense in the MCU. Especially as you move into the finale and they really break the fourth wall, it breaks the rules of the universe and I don’t think that’s a good thing. The villains of the show aren’t very good, it’s pretty predictable where things are going to end up. You don’t care about the villains and with how cartoonish they get in the finale it’s hard to take them or this show seriously. There’s some fun moments, and I can appreciate the boldness of it. But the show as a whole didn’t work for me and it feels weird inside of the MCU. 

12. Agatha All Along:I know a lot of people actually really did like this show. This is one of the more polarizing shows that the MCU has done. There’s a lot of people that would rank these five spots higher. As for me, I’m very confused where some of that hype is coming from. As I was watching this show, it never really took off for me. It was always a pretty generic and bland show. I do appreciate that it’s something different, it feels like Hocus Pocus and Evil Dead in the MCU. Kathryn Hahn is clearly having a lot of fun in this role, she’s great in here. The show as a whole was so mediocre and bland and I didn’t care about anything going on. Like so many of these tv shows, a lot of the twists and turns were so predictable. The reveal that Joe Locke’s character was Wanda’s son was revealed before the show came out but they treated it as a twist reveal. The mystery surrounding that didn’t work for me at all. The middle portion of the season was so repetitive. Where our witches will go to a place, we’ll learn the backstory of one of the characters and then the next episode will do that. It repeats that for three to four episodes straight. I don’t remember any of the side characters, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about any of them. It’s been a few months since it ended and I couldn’t really tell you much about it. Despite doing something different, a fun lead performance it’s a show that didn’t work at all. 

11. Echo: Another show that’s sort of there. This show and Agatha All Along are the ones that are the most mediocre. I rank this show above Agatha because it’s a little bit more my thing. It’s a small action story that’s rated-R and bloody. That’s more my thing than a musical witch tv show. I’m currently watching through Daredevil leading up to Daredevil: Born Again. Having Daredevil and Kingpin in there brings a certain weight to the entire thing. They’re far more interesting side characters than what the bottom shows gave us. I like that it’s a small scale show. The stakes are very personal to Echo, it takes place in this small town. It doesn’t have this global threat and I think when you’re doing a tv show, doing something small like this works just fine. Like most of these shows, the show starts off very interesting but goes nowhere by the end of it. It starts off as a pretty grounded show that can easily exist in reality. As you get into the finale it gets too fantastical and it loses what made the show fun and interesting in the first place. That seems to be a common problem with a lot of these Marvel shows. They start off strong and interesting and end up not being great. 

10. Moon Knight: Speaking of tv shows that started off strong but ended up not being great, Moon Knight is a great example of this. I loved that they were really doing something different. It’s a mix of supernatural, Jason Bourne, and Indiana Jones. Those pieces should be very interesting. Oscar Isaac is a great actor so I was excited to see him in the MCU. The first couple of episodes really delivered what I wanted from the show. It really was a supernatural take on the Jason Bourne mythology of the person with amnesia trying to figure out what happened to him. The big problem with this show is that every two episodes it seemed to change genres. Like I said, the first couple of episodes were really a supernatural Jason Bourne story. The next episodes turned into an Indiana Jones style global trotting adventure. And then the final couple of episodes felt like a generic MCU boss battle. Once again, like most of these shows it started off very fun and exciting and ended in a way that felt so bland. Beyond that, we don’t get a lot of Moon Knight action. That’s the title character and he’s only in a few episodes of the show. I wish this could have been a top three show, it had the pieces to be that. 

9. What If…?: This is a frustrating one. It’s a show that should be a fun novelty inside of the MCU. The idea of taking classic MCU stories and changing one detail and playing that out should be very fun. A good portion of the episodes were exactly what I wanted from it. Doing a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger except with Peggy Carter was great. They did a lot of interesting stuff with Doctor Strange. They took classic films like Blade Runner and Die Hard and figured out how to tell those stories in the MCU with existing MCU characters. At the same time, there’s also several episodes that felt pointless and like “what are we doing here?” I think that is always going to be a problem with the show. Some episodes were going to be great that I would be invested in. Other episodes that had characters that I wasn’t as invested in, fell short. In season three I felt like I completely lost the point. We’re introducing new characters in the MCU when the fun hook is telling new stories with characters we love. In season three there’s an episode dedicated to Howard the Duck hooking up with Darcy Lewis and having a child. And that child goes on to help Captain Carter save the multiverse. I was shocked by just how bad the third season of this show was. Season three really knocked this show down several spots on the list for me. 

8. Ms. Marvel: I felt like this show found its own space inside of the MCU. Between this and Spider-Man: Homecoming we get to see the world of the MCU through the perspective of a teenager. Having somebody who looks up to one of our MCU heroes and has the naive energy about them is fun. Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel is a lot of fun. She can be charming and does a great job of leading this show. We don’t have many casting announcements about our upcoming Avengers movies, I hope there’s a place for her in there. It’s a very comic book show that has a unique style. It has some similar stylized choices to the Spiderverse movies with texts appearing on the screen and doing fun creative stuff like that. Several of the episodes in the show were pretty fun, they captured the chaotic nature of the show really well. The big problem with this show is that the middle episodes felt lik season two of the show. The first couple of episodes are focused on Ms. Marvel being a superhero for Jersey City. Randomly in episode four and five they go to Pakistan and explore the backstory of Ms. Marvel’s family. It’s not that stuff is bad, but it doesn’t fit in the story of the show. That should be what season two is all about. Honestly, besides that I dug this show and it’s one of the more rewatchable ones. 

7. Werewolf By Night: In some of my past rankings, this show has ranked lower on the list. I feel like with time I’ve appreciated what they were going for with this movie more and I think it's a fun addition to the MCU. Once again, it really feels different from past and future MCU projects. For about 95% of this project it’s in black and white, that alone is something different. Since it is black and white it can be a bit more gorey. Had this been in color, the violence probably would have been dialed back a good bit. I thought it was very refreshing to have a MCU show that didn’t feel the need to connect to other MCU projects. There’s no surprise cameos or anything like that, it fits as a stand alone entry in the MCU. If there are people that are burned out by the MCU formula, it being the same thing over and over again this is a good thing to check out. The big thing holding this back, it felt very rushed. It has to introduce a new set of characters, a new world, a conflict, and resolve that conflict all within 45 minutes. I felt like they needed another 15-20 minutes to properly flesh this out. Had them fleshed this out and everything was expanded on a little bit more, this would move up on this list. 

6. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: I know a lot of people were quite disappointed with this show. Honestly, some of that is fair. I don’t think this show is fantastic, but I think it’s really good. I re-watched it leading up to Captain America: Brave New World and it held up nicely. The big selling point of the show was the dynamic between Sam and Bucky. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have fantastic chemistry with one another. In all of the episodes they get several moments that put a smile on your face. The stand out for me would be the counseling session in episode two. Each episode also has that standout action sequence. There’s so many cinematic sequences that it’s so impressive that they were able to pull this off for a tv show. This is entirely rewatchable to me. It’s taking a genre that I like with big and exciting action and putting two great characters front and center, this is an easy win for me. However, it’s not perfect. I don’t think the villains here are great. I like the basic idea of what they were going for. In the execution and how little of a threat they pose, I didn’t feel the stakes as much as I thought I should. How they tie Zemo into the plot doesn't make much sense considering what he did in Civil War. But overall, I really dig this show and I think it’s a lot of fun. 

5. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: This is one of the biggest surprises of the entire MCU. I wasn’t sold on doing an alternate universe Spider-Man show. The trailers didn’t win me over. I didn’t get what they were going for. The first couple of episodes didn’t win me over. It leaned into my concerns for the show. By episode three this show found its footing and went in some very different and unique directions from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. The big one being Norman Osborn being Peter’s mentor instead of Tony Stark. That leads to new scenarios and Peter’s character arc. Leaning into the traditional Spider-Man elements but having a different spin on it. It leads to different situations in the back half of the show. That’s what really stood out to me about this show, it was the same but different. It took everything you like about Spider-Man, but did something different enough with it. They tie in The Sokovia Accords into Osborn is helping Spider-Man. You care about the characters and the journey they’re on. Lonnie Lincoln being the big standout, I think his character arc is more interesting than Peter’s character arc. I’m excited to see where they take him in season two. I wish they had a more satisfying finale, it felt like they left too many things left unanswered. It feels like season two will be the payoff to season one, that’s frustrating. Overall, if you’re a Spider-Man fan this is a must watch. 

4. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special: Between the two specials, I think this is easily the better one. I think the 45 minute long format fits this special better. It doesn’t have to establish the characters of the world. Within the first five minutes, Drax and Mantis are off on their adventure to get Kevin Bacon. James Gunn managed to find a way to tell a story that has that Christmas spirit to it. Drax and Mantis are trying to find Kevin Bacon to have Peter feel the meaning of Christmas. It shows just how much of a family the Guardians are. Even the little reveal of Mantis and Star-Lord being half-siblings make it feel more Christmas with Mantis’ goal in this special. When you watch this before you watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, it makes you appreciate the team as a whole. I loved that they got Kevin Bacon to be in this, he’s clearly having a lot of fun. When you take somebody who can be as charismatic as Bacon and put him in this wild situation, there’s a lot that can come with that. Overall, this shows what James Gunn is great at. He’s able to take these fantastical stories and finds something to root it in reality. It perfectly blends comedy and heart. This is one of the most fun projects from the MCU. 

3. WandaVision: The original Disney+ Marvel show and to this day, it’s still one of the best. It’s also one of the most unique and creative entries in the MCU. A large portion of the episodes are sit-coms in the MCU. The idea of taking sit-coms and mixing it with The Twilight Zone and putting Wanda and Vision front and center is a fun mix of ingredients. Beyond that, it does a really good and interesting job of exploring different stages of grief. Each episode explores a different stage of grief that ties into Wanda’s character arc and explores the themes of the show. That’s very clever writing with all of the ways that it’s doing this. This is probably the most thematic project that the MCU has ever done. This show benefited by being a week to week release. Where it built intrigue as to what was going on and there was an anticipation for the next episode because you wanted to get more questions answered. Some of that led to some disappointments in the final couple of episodes. The big beon being the true identity of Evan Peters’ character. It seemed so weird to bring him back just for a boner joke. When I look back on this show after four years, I think it’s just a very cool MCU experience. 

2. Loki: This is one of the more consistent tv shows in terms of quality, tone, and style. This is one of the MCU projects that has the most style and creativity to it. People can criticize many MCU projects for feeling like they were written by AI. When you watch Loki, you can’t say that. The character arcs, themes, and production design are so unique. The TVA has this future realistic look to it, while also feeling like a thing of the past. For season two, the producers said it was the only MCU project that didn’t undergo reshoots. When you watch that season you can feel that everything feels consistent from beginning to end. The things that were set up in the first episode are paid off in the final episode of season two. Loki has always been one of the MCU’s most complex characters who is constantly changing and growing. But the arc they give Loki in these two seasons makes us see a whole new side of the character. He’s always wanted the throne, he’s always wanted to rule. In the finale of season they give him the chance to rule the throne of the multiverse, but he gets it at a point when he doesn’t want it. The TVA has changed him as a person because of it, he’s given a hero’s journey despite being one of the MCU’s greatest villains. With the MCU pivoting from Kang, I’m curious how important this should be. 

1. X-Men ‘97: Between this and Deadpool & Wolverine 2024 was the year of the X-Men. I watched X-Men the Animated Series the months leading up to this show’s release. That show was fantastic in terms of storytelling and made you care about the characters. This might be the best season of the bunch and that’s saying a lot. This show was able to build off of the foundation laid by X-Men the Animated Series. They gave all of the characters these character arcs that have emotional weight to them. It makes you really care about the characters in a way that Fox X-Men didn’t let you. The big one being Cyclops, it’s easy to forget that Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men. James Marsden’s Cyclops wasn’t able to do that, but this version was able to. Magneto ties into the entire thing and the conflict and tension that he brings because he’s the X-Men’s greatest villain. I also loved that it was able to go very comic book with everything. Since it has modern animation, it’s able to get weird and wild with it. It’s stuff that they couldn’t do in the original run or in live action. There’s multiple ways in which they found an X-Men story to tell that feels different from what came before. It all leads up to a finale that has global and personal stakes for the X-Men and leaves off on a cliffhanger that makes you so excited for season two.