For over two years now, Disney+ has streamed many of their beloved movies and TV shows from across every company they own. Whether it be a classic Disney princess movie, or a fantastical sci-fi film from the Star Wars universe, or even any of the action-packed Marvel movies and shows, there are tons of options to choose from. Lately, Disney has begun using the platform to create their own television series. These originals aren’t available anywhere else, and are often showing audiences the return of fan-favorite characters, creating new characters for everyone to fall in love with, or even a combination of both.
Their superhero shows are no exception to this. Streaming both old and new shows, Disney+ gives the studios something they never had the chance to do before—create their stories with these heroes in a setting that far surpasses the typical two-hour mark on a movie, allowing them to fully flesh out the stories they want to in as much time as they need. They continue to bring in new heroes too, teasing several new series for 2022 including Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and Ms. Marvel. Take a look at some of the best superhero TV shows streaming on Disney+ right now to find out what you should binge next.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
6 What If…?
Marvel Studios
Marvel’s What If…? was a surprising change of pace for the studio in the summer of 2021. Over the course of 9 episodes, the narrator known as the Watcher takes the audience through different universes in the multiverse. These universes pose questions like “What if T’Challa became a Star-Lord?” and answers them with depictions as if they were true. However, the through-line here is that the Watcher’s one vow is that he cannot interfere with the universes, no matter how much he may want to. This grows harder and harder for him to do as a growing threat plans to harm the multiverse.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
While Marvel has produced animated series before, they were mostly designed for kids, premiering on the Disney Channel or Disney XD. They also never tied into the MCU directly, using the comics to create their own stories instead. The creators for this series combined both, using the comics as inspiration but also using several references to the MCU throughout. They even still had several popular actors returning to voice their characters, including Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson. What If…? quickly became a success and has already been renewed for a second season, promising more multiversal shenanigans to come.
5 The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier brought some fan favorites back to the screen, as none other than Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes teamed up for this six-episode show. After the events of Avengers: Endgame, the Captain America mantle was passed onto Sam Wilson. However, he didn’t feel like he was the one who could fill those shoes, so Sam and Bucky reluctantly team up to stop a new threat that’s surfaced and come to face their new role in society.
Ever since Avengers: Endgame retired several of the original Avengers, finding ways to write them out of the story, it left audiences wondering what would happen to Sam and Bucky since Steve Rogers, a friend to both, was now gone. The show almost feels like a buddy-cop movie as Sam and Bucky butt heads often while working together, just as they always have. It also focuses on a lot of heavy, relevant topics in today’s society, and proves that Sam is worthy of the Captain America mantle.
4 Agent Carter
A prominent figure in the first Captain America film is Peggy Carter, the love interest of the movie and also one of the few women we see in the military. In 2015, Marvel Studios decided to produce a TV show around her and dubbed it Agent Carter. The two-season show follows Peggy around post-World War II, struggling to work in the USSR while most of her coworkers believe she is incapable of much as a woman. Peggy might not be a superhero herself in this universe, but she still worked with many unbelievable things, met some familiar comic book faces like Howard Stark, and did have a villain who had powers at one point. While airing, the show earned critical acclaim, and was loved by fans while it lasted. Sometimes, you just need to root for the underdogs.
3 Loki
Disney+/Marvel
Another fan-favorite character, Loki returned for the show Loki, appropriately named after himself. In Avengers: Endgame, a few of the Avengers accidentally create a new timeline when they fail at getting one of the infinity stones from the past. Loki gets his hands on it but is quickly taken away by a new group to the MCU, the Time Variance Authority. Mere seconds away from being pruned, he is saved so that he can help track down another variant of himself to stop the timeline as we know it from collapsing. There was never a doubt that Loki is a fan favorite. Several times now it has appeared that the character has died, but fans refuse to believe it. So it came as no surprise that Marvel producers decided to write a way to pull him out of the timeline and make his own show, using his popularity to start teasing the arrival of the multiverse. A second season is already confirmed, meaning it’s not Loki’s time to leave the spotlight yet, or maybe even any time soon.
2 Hawkeye
The newest of the Marvel shows, Hawkeye premiered between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2021 due to its holiday themes. Post Avengers: Endgame, Clint Barton is trying to put the past behind him and enjoy the time he has with his family now that they’ve returned from The Blip. However, when Kate Bishop borrows his old Ronan outfit and stirs up trouble with some of his enemies, he feels the need to fix his mistakes and keep her out of trouble. The duo teams up to try and clear Kate’s name while also wrapping up quickly, so Clint can make it home in time for Christmas.
Hawkeye is perhaps one of the most underrated of the original Avengers, as he doesn’t have any superpowers but is just really good at archery. This show really depicts the nitty-gritty details of that side of him, showing his injuries after getting beaten up, humanizing him with how he tries to self-medicate using bags of frozen vegetables. Not only is it a great homage to the overlooked Avenger, but it’s also a great introduction for Kate Bishop, and fans hope to see more of her in the near future.
1 WandaVision
As the first MCU show to premiere on Disney+, WandaVision had collected a lot of anticipation. When we last saw Wanda Maximoff and her lover Vision, the latter was killed, brought back and killed again, while the former was dusted in Thanos’ snap. Suddenly, they are in a perfect home together at the beginning of WandaVision and are living out the plot of a different classic sitcom in each episode. However, not everything is as it seems. As the series progresses, strange things keep happening in the small town of Westview, and the characters begin to realize something is wrong.
Though many can agree the first two episodes, which premiered alongside each other, were strange at first, everyone was quickly hooked as the bizarre just got weirder and weirder, and we began to find out what was really happening in Westview. The show was nominated for many awards, including several Emmys. Though it’s likely there will be no season two, as the series now ties into the new Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness movie, a spinoff series including the villain has been announced, so it’s likely we’ll be seeing these characters around a while longer.
