If you’re making a TV show about a Hollywood stuntman, you’re going to need some actors in the cast. And in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s really only a handful of those. The most prominent is probably Trevor Slattery, played by Sir Ben Kingsley.
Introduced in Iron Man 3 as the MCU version of Iron Man’s arch-nemesis the Mandarin, he was eventually revealed as as decoy; an actor named Trevor Slattery who was being paid by the real Mandarin to serve as a body double to disguise his evil plans. Since then, Slattery also appeared in the “One-Shot” short film “All Hail the King,” and then Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which featured Wenwu, a villain loosely based on the comic book version of the Mandarin, who served as the inspiration for the fake Mandarin played by Kingsley. (Everybody got that?)
The Slattery character is a bumbling, boozing actor, which makes him a great choice for the cast of a Wonder Man TV show like the one Marvel is supposedly developing for Disney+. The Wonder Man character, Simon Williams, has sometimes worked as a Hollywood stuntman in his downtime from serving on the Avengers — and Variety reports that it looks likely that will be the premise of the show as well:
Kingsley returning as Slattery lends credence to reports that the show is intended to be a Hollywood satire, as it has been established that Slattery is a failed actor and Wonder Man has been an actor and a stuntman in the comics. Exactly how Kingsley would factor into the plot of the series and how many episodes he would appear in is being kept under wraps, but sources say he will play a major role.
Wonder Man could work as a nice counterpart to She-Hulk, another Marvel show that’s less about superhero adventures than it is a workplace comedy set in a world where superheroes exist. It’s early yet, but that approach seems like a fun way to distinguish it from every other MCU TV show, which tend to be more serialized and filmic. Let TV shows be like TV shows I say.
Marvel has yet to announce a premiere date for Wonder Man on Disney+.
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