5 Years Later, A Major MCU Return Is Confirmed In Marvel’s New TV Show

6 days ago 10

Published Jan 28, 2026, 3:29 PM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Superheroes Lead Writer and Reviewer at ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021, with a focus on superhero projects. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more. Since the launch of the Superheroes vertical in 2023, he has focused his efforts on coming up with insightful analyses of Marvel and DC's projects.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

The Marvel Cinematic Universe's new series is quickly proving itself a major win for the franchise, and it does so with a core player's return, which boosts excitement for another Marvel project. The MCU's 2026 releases started on the right foot. Over the years, Marvel's venture into Disney+ has yielded mixed results. A large part of that was due to the rapid succession of releases.

A company-wide slowdown was put into effect to address those concerns, hopefully leading to the MCU's future projects not suffering from issues that plague multiple Multiverse Saga releases. Based on the success of the MCU's new TV show, it seems to be working well for this new phase of Marvel series, and the project's success is in large part connected to a returning player.

Marvel's New TV Show Includes A Major MCU Return

Marvel Studios' Wonder Man is now available on Disney+. Originally set to debut in December 2025, all 8 episodes of the MCU series were released on January 27, 2026. The MCU TV show brought back characters like Sir Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery, aka the fake Mandarin, and Arian Moayed's Agent Cleary, who appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Ms. Marvel.

Simon Williams shocked on the phone in Marvel's Wonder Man

Marvel Officially Unveils 2 Heroes’ Suits In The MCU’s New TV Show

Ahead of Avengers: Doomsday and other releases, the MCU's first new TV show of 2026 has revealed two superhero suits for new characters.

However, the most crucial MCU return to Wonder Man's success was not that of someone in front of the camera, but the man behind it. Destin Daniel Cretton directed some of the MCU's best action sequences in 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Five years later, the director helmed the first two episodes of Wonder Man, "Matinee" and "Self-Tape."

Not only is he in charge of doing the heavy lifting in terms of establishing the tone of the series, its visuals, and its characters, but Cretton also had an even bigger role besides directing the MCU TV show. After all, Cretton co-created Disney+'s Wonder Man with Andrew Guest. As such, he is an integral part of the series.

Wonder Man Boosts Excitement For Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Wonder Man is currently at a high 90% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, standing at an even better 91% audience score at the time of writing. While we still have to wait for streaming numbers, the overwhelmingly positive reception to Marvel's new series is more than enough to boost excitement for Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

After all, Destin Daniel Cretton is the director of the MCU's next Spider-Man movie. By turning up successful projects in the form of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Wonder Man, I'm confident that Brand New Day will be a hit. Additionally, Wonder Man is a breath of fresh air for the MCU, and given how the Spider-Man movie starts a new chapter for Holland's Peter Parker, Cretton is the right man for the job.