The 9 Marvel Characters Who Deserve TV Shows Like Ironheart

Marvel fans have been calling for Captain Carter to get her own series ever since the character captured our hearts in the first season of What If…? Unfortunately, she was a casualty of the Scarlet Witch’s rageful rampage in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Marvel has started investing in fleshing out her story with a solo five-issue miniseries debuting in 2022 following her being unfrozen like Steve Rogers and having to adapt to modern-day life. Captain Carter dies at the end of What If…?, and an animated series that retcons that would be a bit much. So instead, let’s bring back Hayley Atwell and get this Captain Carter live-action show going.

Immortality is typically a godlike power that helps a character withstand the greatest threats. It’s also great inspiration for some of the funniest sequences you’ll probably ever see in a Marvel TV show. Mr. Immortal, aka Craig Hollis, is a man born with the ability to die and immediately come back to life with little to no damage. He’s been hit by a car, buried alive, vaporized, and even choked on a pretzel. And he’s been back each and every time. He appeared in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law while portrayed with deadpan comedic delivery by David Pasquesi as a man who repeatedly fakes his death to escape relationships. Immortality is cool until you have to watch everyone you’ve ever loved die. So, let’s bring Pasquesi back for a live-action TV series that never breaks your heart as much as it tickles your funny bone.

There are probably thousands of Marvel Rivals players who see the name “Jeff the Land Shark” and get traumatic flashbacks of being swallowed and spat out of bounds. Forget their trauma and give this cartoonishly chaotic character its own animated TV series. Although he enters the Marvel universe as a mischievous pet adopted by fourth-wall-breaking fangirl Gwenpool, I’d be more interested in a solo series centered on our shark hero, similar to his It’s Jeff comic series. In the comics, he has no dialogue (he’s a shark, duh!) but spends his time helping out other Marvel heroes. He saves Kate Bishop from drowning, steals Captain America’s shield back, and helps deliver presents to Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel. A low-stakes, feel-good Marvel cartoon is the injection of fun the MCU needs.

Put simply, Blue Marvel has all of the characteristics necessary to be the strongest character in all of the Marvel universe. After gaining godlike powers from a mutated anti-matter reactor explosion, former Marine Adam Brashear became a superhero powerhouse. He’s as smart as Reed Richards and strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Sentry. He was also forced to retire as a superhero because he was a Black man in the ‘60s who was stronger than every white man in the world, which was a big no-no. A superhero who reflects America’s complicated relationship with race while also exhibiting physical feats that stretch our imagination is a hero that needs to be on TV.

After watching Thunderbolts*, I think we deserve a Sentry TV series with Lewis Pullman reprising his role from the movie. In the film, Sentry is described as every member of the Avengers rolled into one superhero, and that’s before we get to The Void. Not since our favorite superheroes disintegrated at the end of Avengers: Infinity War has a moment in an MCU film made me audibly gasp like seeing people reduced to shadow skid marks by a blackened Sentry. We only got a glimpse of Sentry’s power in the film when he manhandled the Thunderbolts, and I believe an episodic look into just how great he truly is is necessary.

Marvel loves inspiring kids to believe anything is possible, even if that includes being imbued with cosmic powers from an intergalactic entity as a high schooler. In the comics, New York teenager Richard Rider inherits the powers of Rhomann Dey, a dying member of an intergalactic peacekeeping force known as the Nova Corps, and becomes Nova. Richard gives off a Peter-Parker-esque balance of comic buffoonery and unshakeable bravery when adjusting to his new powers, which endears him to readers and makes him eventually rising to the occasion feel inspirational. He accidentally breaks doors because of his super strength and nearly crashes into buildings because he’s not used to flying.

A Nova live-action series with a lovable young actor like Young Sheldon’s Iain Armitage or the maturing Stranger Things actor Caleb McLaughlin would be sensational. In the comics, after Nova takes the cosmic training wheels off, he turns into one of the strongest beings in the Marvel universe. He formed a new Guardians of the Galaxy with Star-Lord and helped battle Thanos. For all of those Marvel fans wishing for a return of some of these old MCU characters, a Nova series can bring all of that back.

Marvel knows the Black Panther universe is one of the few active properties that are both cash cows and critical darlings. It introduced Ironheart into the MCU in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, has the animated series Eyes of Wakanda debuting in August, and landed Denzel Washington for Black Panther 3. It looks like Wakanda is exporting more than just vibranium these days, so why not keep the party going with an origin series for the most badass security team in all of the MCU — the Dora Milaje?

So far, this sisterhood of traveling spears are the ones getting their hands dirty when Wakanda needs protecting, and come off a bit omnipresent. Remember, this elite all-female royal guard showed up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier unannounced to take Baron Zemo into custody for killing King T’Chaka and proceeded to manhandle three superheroes, removing Bucky Barnes’s vibranium arm like it was a clip-on tie in the process. A series following the origins of this group (a la Dune: Prophecy) would be rich with stories to tell, but so would a simple live-action series where they just go around the world killing villains who try to steal vibranium. As was said in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: “The Dora Milaje have jurisdiction wherever the Dora Milaje find themselves to be.”

At this point, just give us something. Depending on which corner of the comic book world you find yourself in, the Hulk is either the strongest Marvel character or is at least able to take on the strongest. Yet, we haven’t seen the gamma ray god do much of anything recently besides get wasted and meditate with his cousin She-Hulk in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. He’s been in the MCU in his current iteration for 13 years (sorry, Edward Norton), and Marvel hasn’t even scratched the surface of his Omega-level feats.

In the comics, this beast of a man has punched his way out of a dream realm controlled by Nightmare’s mind, lifted Thor’s Mjolnir to become the new God of Thunder, and once warped time by simply punching Red Hulk. But, honestly, there’s enough beautiful, action-packed storytelling in the historic World War Hulk comic series for six seasons and a movie. Since Mark Ruffalo believes the CGI required to do an entire live-action Hulk film would be too expensive, let’s turn it into an animated series so his boundless power won’t be constrained by Marvel’s tight pockets.

I’m all for Marvel’s penchant for humanizing its otherworldly humans in grounded storytelling, but I still want destruction on a multiversal scale. Wandavision is one of my favorite Marvel TV series because the entire show took place in a manifestation of Wanda’s reality-warping powers. There are few entities in comic book history as fearsome as the Phoenix Force, especially when master telepath Jean Grey is its host. This cosmic entity’s true powers have never been properly depicted in a movie yet, definitely not in the god-awful X-Men: The Last Stand which portrayed the universal threat its heroes face as some repressed memory of Jean Grey’s. By the time we got to Dark Phoenix in 2019, the Phoenix Force was given a bit more respect, but still left a lot to the imagination that a TV series could do justice.

My first introduction to this indomitable force was in X-Men: The Animated Series when Jean Grey was flying around in a cosmic, flaming bird-like avatar and once blew up an entire planet by absorbing its sun’s energy because the Phoenix Force was hungry. Since X-Men ‘97 is a continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series, we may not see Phoenix appear again. But, she’s rebonded with the Phoenix numerous times in the comics, so anything is possible.