MCU: The Amount Of Shows Didn't Hurt Interest

The MCU isn’t what it once was and Disney CEO Bob Iger knows who to blame themselves. When talking to Variety the head honcho had this to say:

“They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything.” (via comingsoon.net)

While that’s a mighty large finger being pointed back at the House of Mouse, it isn’t the case at all. We can claim superhero fatigue all we want but that’s not even close to the truth. Streaming buried itself by releasing too much and now they’re trying to scale back so they don’t have to pay their actors, as seen by the writers’ strike. Now those same shows that had people signing up, to begin with, is the reason fans lost interest? Lunacy.

Bobby-boy can go throwing the MCU under the bus for releasing too much content all he wants, but the real problem was the quality of the content they were putting out. That’s not to say that the shows were bad, but the ones that proceeded them went too far, too fast and everything after was left to try and fill that void. Let’s not forget, the Infinity Saga took years to build to what it was. People fell in love with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, and so many more of these characters. Then they were all gone in a snap, brought back, and gone just as fast.

More MCU: Marvel Needs To Stop Dragging Their Feet

After that, they took these characters who were essentially sidekicks, and thrust them in front of people all at once. Anthony Mackie was chosen to carry on the Cap persona when fans wanted Sebastian Stan’s Bucky. She-Hulk was brought in but had no place in the MCU before her show. WandaVision started off confusing but hit its stride at the end. The stories went from being brilliantly tied together with perfect precision in continuity, to all over the damn map. Fans loved Loki and even his series seemed to tie into something bigger, then after season 1 ended, they were left scratching their heads. Moon Knight was a fan-favorite comic character but none of his stories seemed to have its place in the MCU with the rest of the characters.

Then if you’re going to point fingers at anyone for the failure of the MCU series, point them at yourselves for not giving up on the ones that weren’t home runs right away. Every single new show seemed like they were throwing crap against the wall to see what stuck. Agents of Shield had a loyal following and still had to question whether it would return the next season. Runaways aired on Hulu, Legion on FX, and Cloak & Dagger on Freeform, all were canceled early in their run. Even Netflix series seemed to be canceled at the height of their popularity. You can’t expect interest in the shows if no one knows if they’ll be back. Who has time to invest in shows and characters just to waste their time when they’re canceled?

Let’s be honest, fans tuned out because the writing for these shows wasn’t the best, no one knew how they tied in, the characters weren’t established as well as the MCU movies, and no one knew if they’d be back. That’s more of a quality than a quantity thing and CEO Bob Iger should know the difference.