Wonder Man is the second Marvel Spotlight series to stream on Disney+ after Echo’s 2024 release. The similarities between the two are their more grounded, self-contained stories with a focus on an atypical protagonist. Beyond the Spotlight designation, there are no specific connections between Wonder Man and Echo. But there are some significant MCU associations brought into the new show, as well as Easter eggs sprinkled throughout its eight episodes.
After portraying Black Manta in the DCEU’s Aquaman movies and Doctor Manhattan in the Watchmen HBO show, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is making the jump to the MCU as Simon Williams aka Wonder Man. Although this eponymous character is new to the Marvel universe, his screen partner, Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery is an MCU veteran. He first appeared as the actor, pretending to be the Mandarin, in Iron Man 3 13 years earlier.
He most recently showed up in Wonder Man co-creator Destin Daniel Cretton’s origin story, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. That narrative saw the thespian captured by the real Mandarin villain. The stepping stone between the two is the Marvel One-Shot, All Hail the King, which was a short included on the DVD for Thor: The Dark World. That is where Trevor Slattery was broken out of Seagate Prison by Mandarin (Wenwu) and extracted to China.
In Wonder Man, we learn that, following his newfound freedom in Shang-Chi, Trevor is taken into custody immediately after flying back from China. He is questioned by a second returning MCU regular, Agent Cleary. He investigates enhanced individuals, such as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel. Now his Department of Damage Control has their sights set on Simon Williams. Cleary claims Trevor never finished his original sentence and forces him to spy on Simon.
Trevor’s situation has him constantly defending his reputation after the whole Mandarin debacle. He also cheekily denies any other shady involvement he may have been associated with, claiming he is not part of the Illuminati. The Illuminati he is referencing most likely is the historical elite that is sometimes cited by conspiracy theorists as still operating as a secret society. However, in the MCU, that is also the name of the heroes that defeated Thanos on Earth-838 in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
So Trevor and Simon pair up as acting buddies, with plotlines that mock the industry in the same vein as The Studio or Extras. And Wonder Man also satirizes the government forces at work; the fact that Simon is not an obvious threat, but is being targeted, is just another pointed detail in this quirky story. Damage Control complains that their prison is half empty and the facility they are referring to was one of the settings in She-Hulk, where Abomination was kept. At the end of Wonder Man, the prison is the stage for a brilliant send-off to a thoroughly singular Marvel dramedy.
Kingsley really gets his chance to develop Trevor here, and even repurposes his most infamous line in the franchise. In Iron Man 3, he threatens the world by stating, “You’ll never see me coming," a scene he was paid to perform by Aldrich Killian. In Wonder Man, he once again is the fall guy, but this time for a more respectable reason. He protects his friend by claiming he caused an explosion on set and rephrases the quote to Agent Cleary – “you never saw me coming”.
Aside from the more overt interrelatedness, there are also many slight tidbits of MCU references scattered throughout the series. Rogers the Musical billboards can be spotted in the background; the show that Hawkeye takes his kids to see in his titular Disney+ show. Then, there is a movie poster for Zaniac, which was the blockbuster that a former TVA agent starred in during Loki season 2.
During the callback audition at the "Wonder Man" movie's director’s house, a vision wall reveals that some real-life heroes are used as inspiration for the project, such as Captain America, Black Panther, and Thor. At one point, Simon walks by the Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which is one of the locations struck by an Extremis explosion in Iron Man 3 and credited to Trevor’s puppet Mandarin.
An even more curious Easter egg is the name Eros scratched onto a wall. Eros is the Titan, Starfox, who appeared in the post-credits scene of Eternals, played by Harry Styles. Other than that movie’s close proximity in release date to Shang-Chi (they both came out in the fall of 2021), there are no other connections between Eternals and Wonder Man and no one has heard from the Eternals or Starfox since that feature.
At Simon’s mom’s birthday party, the new Captain America is discussed, with a few female friends and family members impressed that Sam Wilson is the “full package”. Simon, on the other hand, thinks he is just a regular dude who can throw a shield – indirectly comparing Sam to Steve Rogers, because the first Captain America possessed superpowers. Simon is an inversion of Sam Wilson, since he does have enhanced abilities, yet hides them from the public instead of standing as a symbol of heroism.
An even more indirect allusion to the larger Marvel universe comes from the movie within the show, "Wonder Man". The hero’s speech includes the line, “I’ve been to the void”. Wonder Man’s void is not the same from Loki or Deadpool & Wolverine, but that Void is a wasteland of emptiness, and the original version of "Wonder Man" happens to place the character in a comparable desert environment.
Another under the radar reference is how Doorman’s powers were a result of chemical waste that spilled out of a Roxxon dumpster. The Roxxon corporation has been spotted in MCU titles such as the Iron Man trilogy and the Loki series, as well as MCU-adjacent shows Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, and Cloak & Dagger. While Roxxon executives have served as antagonists in the comic books for years, it is unlikely that the conglomerate will resurface with a larger purpose in the MCU, at this point.