Roxxon causes trouble in Wonder Man and throughout MCU history

The company is a regular villain and source of superpowers

Wonder Man is a grounded story with little connection to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its best episode is even further removed from the sprawling multiverse. Episode 4, “Doorman,” is practically a surreal standalone short film about DeMarr Davis (Byron Bowers), a bouncer who gains a particularly weird superpower while taking out the trash in the early 2010s. While his origin story is mostly important because of how it impacts the acting career of Wonder Man protagonist Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), it also has ties to Roxxon – a corporation with deep roots in Marvel Comics and the MCU.

Roxxon has been popping up in Marvel Comics since 1974, serving as an exemplar of corporate greed whose illegal and unethical activities were thwarted by heroes like Spider-Man, Captain America, and The X-Men. The company became even more nefarious beginning with Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder run in 2014, where it’s led by Dario Agger, an extremely evil CEO who turns into a minotaur when angry. Agger is basically a Captain Planet villain, delighting in exploitation, pollution, and corruption, aiming to strip resources from Earth and other worlds.

The company has regularly popped up in the MCU since 2013, when Iron Man 3 villain Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) used a Roxxon oil tanker to stage a supposed terrorist attack by the Mandarin, a plot that Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) is trying to atone for in Wonder Man. Secret agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) uncovered Roxxon’s experiments with extremely dangerous weapons in season 1 of Agent Carter. In Netflix’s Daredevil, lawyers Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) quit their internship at a prestigious law firm because they didn’t want to help Roxxon retaliate against sickened employees seeking damages.

In Wonder Man, DeMarr gets his ability to turn his body into a door from touching strange goop coming out of a Roxxon dumpster, and he’s not the first MCU character to get their powers from Roxxon. In the 2018 Freeform series Cloak & Dagger, Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) were both close to an explosion at a Louisiana Roxxon facility that was extracting an unstable energy source. The kids were infused with that energy, gaining opposing light- and dark-themed powers. Roxxon served as the primary antagonist for the show’s first season, eventually turning many people into bloodthirsty killers with the same energy.

[Ed. note: The rest of this article contains major spoilers for Wonder Man episode 4]

DeMarr becomes known as the Doorman for his power to create a portal from his own body, which he uses to rescue Josh Gad and a bunch of clubbers when a fire breaks out during the Frozen star’s DJ set. The very niche ability gets DeMarr an acting role in a heist movie opposite Gad, but his 15 minutes of fame run out, leaving him desperate for work until Gad calls him for the heist film’s sequel. Unfortunately, when Gad steps into DeMarr’s portal while shooting the movie, he never comes back out. (Things that come from Roxxon tend to have big downsides.) DeMarr is left disgraced, and Hollywood bans anyone with superpowers from productions, forcing Simon to hide his own abilities more than a decade later.

It’s unclear what role Wonder Man might have in the future of the MCU, and it seems unlikely that DeMarr or Josh Gad will appear in the franchise again. Though given all the doors that Doorman sees when he uses his power, there’s a possibility that he’s actually opening portals to other worlds. It would certainly be a very funny Easter egg if Gad was found during the world hopping of Avengers: Doomsday. But whether that happens, it’s likely that Roxxon will keep popping up in Marvel shows and movies, and that the company will always be up to no good.