Disney Plus quietly "axes" a beloved Marvel series

Marvel Studios and Disney Plus have been going hand-in-hand with each other since 2021. The Hollywood juggernaut turned its attention to the small screen after the conclusion of its Infinity Saga, determined to build out the world even further through the use of streaming television. It accomplished that with the launch of WandaVision, which has led to the arrival of ten more Disney Plus shows set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (including that original show's spinoff Agatha All Along).

There is no doubt about it, the MCU is a much bigger, more expansive place with the original series adding to the lore. Not all have achieved the same levels of success, but they have all reached different corners of the TV fandom that maybe wouldn't have jumped on-board the MCU ship otherwise. From WandaVision's sitcom episodes to the comedy of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, there has been something there for everyone.

However, there is one series that has been a staple of the Disney Plus line-up since those early days of the MCU streaming era. Unfortunately, it looks like its run has come to an end (at least for now).

Marvel Legends may have been quietly cancelled by Disney Plus

It's looking like Marvel Studios' Legends series has been quietly cancelled by Disney Plus. As reported by Screen Geek, Marvel fans on Reddit have been speculating that the series has quietly met its end due to the fact that it's no longer accompanying any of the MCU releases.

The series premiered back in 2021 as a companion for WandaVision, with shorts recapping Wanda Maximoff and Vision's history in the MCU. After that, new MCU movies and Disney Plus shows would see the release of another episode, explaining those respective characters' backstories, with episodes dedicated to The Falcon, the Winter Soldier, Loki, Black Widow, the Tesseract, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, Peggy Carter, Nick Fury, and so many more.

The show ran for two seasons between 2021 and 2023, accompanying every new Marvel release with a new episode. But, as fans have pointed out, there haven't been any new episodes in almost a year. Now, in any normal circumstance, one might just assume its 46th installment was the end of the second season and that we're simply waiting on a third. But upon closer investigation, you might see that this isn't a fitting explanation.

Since the beginning of 2024, we have had Echo (which released all five episodes in January), Deadpool and Wolverine (which brought both iconic title characters to the big screen and the MCU), and Agatha All Along (which is currently airing), but there haven't been any accompanying shorts of Marvel Legends released on Disney Plus since the end of 2023.

Now, one fan put forward the theory that those particular projects couldn't have had accompanying Marvel Legends episodes as their titular characters are all relatively new additions to the MCU, but if you look back the previous episodes, you will see that heroes like Ms. Marvel's Kamala Khan, WandaVision's Monica Rambeau, Captain Marvel's Carol Danvers, and even What If...?'s Guardians of the Multiverse all had their own episodes of Legends.

So the question remains: What happened to Marvel Studios' Legends? The likely answer is that it was unfortunately cut as a result of Marvel's new release strategy. After the failure of movies such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, as well as Disney Plus series Secret Invasion, president Kevin Feige and Disney's Bob Iger put together a new less-is-more approach for the studio to follow - which, according to reports, involved taking less risks and focusing their resources on projects that they know will be successful.

There have been a number of reports since that suggest Disney Plus shows such as She-Hulk: Attorney At Law were quietly cancelled, while miniseries such as Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye were being considered for second seasons. There were also reports suggesting that potential Captain Marvel, Ant-Man, and Eternals sequels were all cancelled, too.

With that in mind, the same could have happened to Marvel Studios' Legends. Admittedly, a companion series like this isn't a risk, but it is possible that the studio just opted to focus resources elsewhere instead of recapping MCU history that fans can research themselves.

Whether or not the series of shorts has been definitively cancelled, it has been axed for now. Characters like Deadpool and Wolverine could have really benefitted from an episode each in order to catch the MCU fans up on the story of the X-Men movie series, while it would have been equally nice to get a refresher on Echo and Agatha Harkness' backstories given that it had been three years since the shows they made their debut in aired.

Here's hoping that Marvel Studios' Legends makes a comeback at some point (and maybe catches up on the episodes that it has missed).