Marvel TV has run the gamut of genres during its time on Disney+. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was a meta-comedy, Secret Invasion was a conspiracy thriller, WandaVision was a sitcom parody that doubled as a meditation on grief, and Loki was a time travel adventure. But streaming isn’t enough for the MCU anymore; according to the new showrunner of a long-gestating series, Marvel is now going to tackle one of the most enduring broadcast television genres too.
Back in 2022, Deadline reported that Marvel was developing a project centered on Richard Rider, aka Nova, with Moon Knight writer Sabir Pirzada attached. Details were murky — we didn’t even know if the result would be a series or a feature — and there weren’t many updates after that, suggesting the project may have been abandoned.
Richard Rider, aka Nova, has been waiting in the Marvel wings for more than two years now.
Now, however, Deadline reports that Nova is back in development, but with a few major changes. It’s now officially a series with a new writer and showrunner: Ed Bernero, best known for running the CBS police procedural Criminal Minds. Bernero, a former police officer, has written police procedurals — shows where cops are presented with a crime at the start of an episode and catch the criminal at the end of it — pretty much exclusively for his entire career, but his move to Marvel may not be the sudden change it seems.
Nova is a member of the Nova Corps, an intergalactic police force, and relatively disconnected from the rest of Marvel’s heroes. That means Nova may just be the first police procedural show in the MCU, and it has the potential to churn out interesting space mysteries while the Avengers do their own thing on the big screen.
Ed Bernero has tons of experience writing police procedurals, albeit none set in space.
However, Nova is set to join its fellow MCU shows on Disney+, not the broadcast TV home where police procedurals usually find success. Sure, Criminal Minds, Law and Order: SVU, and NCIS are all massive draws on streaming platforms, but that’s after they build up a fanbase via broadcast. If Nova is the police procedural it’s set up to be, it won’t just be a first for Marvel, but for Disney+ as well.
Marvel is essentially its own genre at this point, and procedurals are a proven format with a half-century of success, so maybe this gamble will work out just fine. But both Bernero and MCU fans will have to move out of their comfort zones to create and consume a case-of-the-week series that’s also full of Marvel’s trademark drama and wackiness.
