In the wake of the Ms. Marvel finale this week, I’ve seen a variety of these rankings on Twitter. Everyone, of course, can have their own preferences, and this list in a lot of ways reflects my personal taste. Unlike many television critics, I have, for the most part, enjoyed all the series in spite of any individual flaws they may have. So ranking them is a little tough. I did, however, try to channel my inner teacher with constructive criticism. When I have to grade a whole batch of student papers, I often have to compare their strengths and weaknesses against one another to keep my grade inflation in check.
Image Credit: The Direct
[SPOILER WARNING. I’m about to drop a couple spoilers for ALL of the Marvel Disney+ series.]
1. Loki
Image Credit: Marvel.com
As a teacher, I often talk about an A paper as one that is firing on all cylinders. It’s not just excelling in one area, like paragraphing or the use of research. It’s doing great work in all major aspects. That doesn’t mean it’s absolutely flawless, mind you; there’s a little leeway for error still. To me, Loki is the A paper of this group because the acting, the writing, the directing, the pacing, etc. They were all there. It dug into Loki as a character while giving us a thrilling action mystery. It introduced a whole new, fully formed world. And it’s hard to top the Jonathan Majors spectacular that was the finale. (When are we going to see him again? Right now, the most likely candidate is Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania, scheduled to release in theaters February 2023.)
2. WandaVision
Image Credit: Forbes
WandaVision was not necessarily as consistently winning as Loki, especially when it defaulted to a fairly generic battle at the end. To offset that, though, I give the series a lot of bonus points for taking creative risks. Not everyone may have appreciated the use of classic American television tropes, but I thought it was artistically fun yet purposeful and grounded in Wanda’s backstory. It was fresh and innovative, making me care more about a character I had previously dismissed. And the fact that I got so mad at Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for portraying Wanda Maximoff in a way I didn’t like is a testament to how this show imprinted her upon me so strongly.
3. Ms. Marvel
Image Credit: NBC News
I almost put Ms. Marvel above WandaVision, but I think the impulse to do that may be driven by recency bias. Introducing a new hero always involves a higher degree of difficulty, and I think this series did that extremely well. I feel like I know Kamala now. I like her, and I care about her. Was there some handwaving with parts of the plot? Sure. But, in the end, that didn’t matter too much because the show worked where it counted. We got fully-realized, relatable characters, who had complex, authentic relationships with one another. And I feel like I learned so much about a history and a culture with which I was not previously familiar. I don’t think I can say that about any of the other shows on this list.
4. What if…?
Image Credit: Marvel.com
In some ways this one was the hardest to rank, not necessarily because it’s the only animated series among live action ones, but more because the storytelling format was so different, with each individual episode being a completely self-contained story, until the end when some characters from those episodes converged. As a series, that’s a very different proposition than staying with the same group of characters over many episodes. But I liked the experimental, free play nature of this multiversal story, and was especially impressed with how they did manage to unify multiple narrative threads into one cohesive plot at the end. If I were to put this lower on the list, it would be because the stakes were intrinsically lower than some of these others shows because they will have less direct impact on the larger MCU.
5. Hawkeye
Image Credit: Buzzfeed
The humor and the Die Hard Christmas movie vibes of this series did not disappoint, and I was surprised at how much I liked it, considering I didn’t care too much about Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye prior. If I’m honing in on just Kate Bishop and Yelena Belova alone, this deserves a higher ranking. But it had a lot of issues towards the end, with too many moving parts. And if we’re comparing it to WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, which were also not without their issues, Hawkeye only has the holiday charm factor going for it; there just isn’t the same creativity and freshness there to override its issues. The series also dips down to number 5 because of its use of Kingpin. This was not an elegant crossover of Vincent D’Onofrio’s portrayal of the criminal mastermind in the (granted, much darker) Netflix Daredevil series. Rereading my review of the finale, it seems as though I was talking myself into being okay with it, but the more time passes the weirder and more “off” it feels. Hopefully that will resolve in the Echo spin-off series, which we now know will feature D’Onofrio’s Kingpin and Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock.
6. Moon Knight
Image Credit: Business Insider
Putting an Oscar Isaac show this far down the list physically hurts me, but, in retrospect, Moon Knight was so much messier and more loosely sketched than a lot of the series higher on this list. The core backstory for Steven and Marc hit hard, but everything outside of that — all the high adventure, the mythology, and the larger conflict — is kind of all over the place compared to the other shows. Ms. Marvel feels like the writers planted seeds that then bloomed beautifully by the end. Moon Knight, as much as I enjoyed individual episodes or moments, didn’t have that clear trajectory. A lot of potential, but needs to rethink the bigger picture and how all the fun pieces fit together. If the series were a student paper, I would recommend clarifying the thesis and creating a new outline based on that new thesis.
7. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Image Credit: TV Insider
Oof, it hurts to put this one last because the social commentary and fearless engagement with race in America through Captain America’s mantle is so valuable and important. But, unfortunately, weak villains and an amorphous plot undermines all of that. While I personally find Sam and Bucky’s rapport charming, that charm wasn’t enough to hold the story together. This is the student paper that has one maybe two paragraphs that are absolutely striking in their insight, but it’s unclear how they are trying to build those individual points into a larger, more cohesive vision.
If you would rank these differently, please share your list and/or your rationale in the comments!