Copyright Screen Rant
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is renowned for consistency on the big screen, but its television output is quite a bit patchier. While the likes of WandaVision, Loki and Moon Knight enjoyed critical acclaim, Secret Invasion, She-Hulk and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are less universally beloved. The MCU could make a strong claim to being the pinnacle of superhero movies. On TV, however, there are plenty of series better than anything under Kevin Feige's umbrella. For the following list, releases from WandaVision onward will be counted as an "MCU TV show." Any series retroactively added to the franchise - Netflix's Defenders shows, for example - will not be considered an MCU production. Shows that explicitly take place in one of the MCU's parallel universes do count (e.g. What If...? and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man), but not X-Men '97, which is intended as a sequel to the original cartoon. 8 Invincible Based on the comic series by Robert Kirkman, Invincible is currently hurtling toward its fourth run after a trio of successful seasons since 2021. And the Rotten Tomatoes scores for those three seasons really are staggering: 98% for season 1, 100% for season 2, and 100% for season 3. Invincible boldly walks the line between character-driven drama, superhero action, playful parody, and sci-fi epic, and while the gaps between seasons can be excruciating, that waiting is Invincible's only real drawback. No one would expect the MCU to match Invincible's level of utterly brutal violence, but Marvel certainly could learn a thing or two from how Prime Video's series balances the serious with the silly. The esteem of the actors involved speaks volumes. The core cast contains Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons, Walton Goggins, Gillian Jacobs, and Zachary Quinto, but notable supporting stars include Sterling K. Brown, Mark Hamill, Kate Mara, and countless others. Throw a rock inside an Oscars afterparty, and you'll hit someone in Invincible. Fortunately, the A-list names are working with A-list material. 7 The Boys/Gen V We'll count The Boys and Gen V as one entity here - partly because the spinoff runs hand-in-hand with the main show, and partly because both are equally brilliant. Debuting in 2019, The Boys arrived just as fatigue with conventional superheroes was beginning to take hold, and while it would be easy to dismiss the show's outrageousness as shallow shock value, The Boys' bite is even worse than its bark. With a fascinating fictional universe, a conveyor belt of colorful characters, and a compelling plot based on Garth Ennis' comics, The Boys will intrigue and nauseate in equal measure. The Boys barely hides the way it pokes fun at Marvel, but the parody has overtaken the parodied at this point. Look past the gags, and The Boys is crafting a story better than anything the MCU's TV output has managed. 6 Misfits An overlooked gem from the golden era of UK TV that also included The Inbetweeners, Skins and Utopia, Misfits was the precursor to Gen V - if Gen V was set on an English council estate and had an ankle tag. Quietly revolutionary in its approach, Misfits was one of the first shows granting superpowers to relatable characters in relatable situations, using those powers to explore everyday teenage problems. The action may not be as slick as the MCU, and the gross-out moments may not be as frequent as The Boys, but Misfits gave superheroes an edge at a time when The Dark Knight was as gritty as the genre got. That influence can be seen in everything from Supacell to The Umbrella Academy - the latter of which weirdly copied Misfits beat-for-beat by giving Robert Sheehan powers of resurrection and burying him alive. Sheehan isn't the only Misfits actor to find greater renown after the show. Iwan Rheon of Games of Thrones fame also made his name in a bright orange jumpsuit. 5 The Penguin Colin Farrell's DC solo project was always a curious creature. Arriving at a time when DC was busily launching the DCU and other Batman offshoots were getting canned, The Penguin should have been a disaster. Instead, it turned into one of the greatest TV shows ever made, superhero or not. Staying with The Batman's bleak, noir-ish tone, The Penguin is more of a gangster story than a superhero show - more Tony Soprano than Tony Stark. But what it lacks in capes and cowls it more than makes up for in intense power dynamics and innovative plotting. Most amazing of all is that The Penguin rose from studio upheaval to show the MCU how much the genre still had to offer. Marvel was airing the actually-very-good Agatha All Along at the time, but even that felt inferior compared to the DC backstory nobody knew they needed. 4 Heroes (Season 1) Bending the rules slightly here, but only because Heroes season 1 functions perfectly well if you pretend the next four seasons don't exist. A huge network TV hit at the time, Heroes premiered two years before Iron Man and spearheaded the kind of recipe Kevin Feige's franchise would ultimately follow. The ensemble cast, the individual stories culminating in a team-up, the stripping away of comic book cartoonishness, the interpersonal drama - it was all right there in Tim Kring's Heroes. The debut season is a TV masterpiece from start to finish, brimming with mysteries, great villains, and massive plot hooks. The wheels would, of course, fall off in season 2 - partly due to a poorly-timed writer's strike and partly because the premise simply wasn't built to last. But we'll always have Heroes season 1 as a shining example of superheroes on the small screen. 3 Watchmen Like The Penguin, Damon Lindelof's Watchmen was another DC series that should have been awful. Following Zack Snyder's divisive 2009 movie but bravely positioning itself as a sequel to Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel, Watchmen didn't make life easy for itself. But the doubters were proved wrong. Combining an unashamedly political story with an eerie quality reminiscent of Twin Peaks, Watchmen was eye-opening in its power and even earned praise from a certain Barack Obama. Alan Moore wanted nothing to do with it, of course, but Watchmen was a one-of-a-kind experience that honored Moore's comic while also honoring its spirit of challenging the audience at every turn. 2 Legion Legion might just be Marvel's greatest TV show, but you'd barely know the two were connected at first glance. Created by Noah Hawley, Legion is a story about psychology and the human mind wrapped inside X-Men branding. It's very similar to the approach Hawley adopted with Alien: Earth - a tale about the ethics of scientific advancement told through xenomorphs. From the strikingly odd visuals to the exploration of mental health, Legion poked into areas the superhero arena typically avoids at all costs. And while those risks didn't pay off 100% of the time, the odd misstep can be forgiven when the rest of Legion hits with such ferocity. Charles Xavier's son may well make his MCU debut in the years to come, but it almost certainly won't look like this. 1 Batman: The Animated Series The Batman movies have sparked plenty of disagreements over the years. Was Christopher Nolan's trilogy too moody? Why does Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice make no sense? How can no one see the genius of Batman Forever? One thing almost everyone can agree on, however, is that Batman: The Animated Series was 85 episodes of pure brilliance. The character designs perfectly capture the essence of the comics, the tone is ideally pitched between light and dark, and the stories carry a depth while still being accessible. On top of that, the sweeping music and gothic visuals are both far better than they had any right to be. For many, Kevin Conroy is Batman.
