Wonder Man Just Introduced A New Potential Avenger To The MCU
Meet Simon Williams — for real, this time.
Marvel’s latest offering barely feels like a Marvel project at all — which, for the record, is a really good thing — but it still introduces a few major changes to the franchise’s status quo. Wonder Man is as grounded as it gets for the MCU, cut more from the cloth of something like The Studio than Iron Man. Its hero, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), just wants to be an actor, a dream that proves all the more challenging thanks to his mysterious powers. It simply costs too much to insure a Hollywood production with an enhanced individual, so Simon has to hide his abilities even as he auditions for the lead role in a superhero movie. How ironic.
As Wonder Man unspools, however, Simon steadily loses control. Our hero gains an ally in Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) — the venerated actor whose reputation was tarnished by posing as the Mandarin — but it’s almost all for naught. The final episodes of Wonder Man push Simon and Trevor to the brink. Miraculously, though, things turn out okay for the unlikely duo; Marvel might even have found its next Avenger in Simon.
Warning: spoilers ahead for Wonder Man.
Wonder Man’s ending, explained
Acting may be Simon’s calling, but the pull of his powers is stronger.
Though both Simon and Trevor score roles in Von Kovak’s (Zlatko Buric) reboot of Wonder Man, they hit a major snag just a week into production. A reporter from the New York Times wants to document Simon’s meteoric rise, and he’s convinced she’s discovered his hidden powers. In truth, though, the Times is more curious about Trevor’s sketchy past. He never completed his prison sentence for the damage he wrought as the Mandarin, but cut a deal with the Department of Damage Control to round up enhanced individuals who pose a major threat. (They’ve spent billions building a new maximum security prison, and need to justify that expense by filling it with supervillains.) When Simon learns that Trevor’s been spying on him for months, he loses control, triggering an explosion on the studio lot.
Simon is ready to give it all up the next morning, convinced the DODC is about to arrest him. At the last possible moment, however, Trevor reprises his role as the Mandarin, taking credit for the explosion and submitting himself to the DODC. Simon’s able to finish filming Wonder Man, becoming an overnight celebrity in the process — but Agent Cleary (Arian Moayed) knows he was behind the chaos on the Wonder Man set. After analyzing debris from the studio, he learns that the explosion was the result of a devastating ionic pulse. Simon is much more powerful than anyone could have previously guessed: his body is a conduit for electromagnetic energy. Rather than see him as a threat, however, Cleary now calls him a “powerful asset.”
What Simon’s powers mean for the MCU
Simon has just scratched the surface of his potential.
There’s no telling what Cleary intends to do with this new information, but his suspicions are confirmed when Simon infiltrates the DODC’s supermax prison and escapes with Trevor... by flying out. Of course, this makes him and Trevor fugitives, but there’s a high chance Cleary will forgive their crimes in exchange for some hero work. Simon has clearly just begun to meet his potential: in the comics, his brawn has been compared to Thor’s and even the Sentry’s. To say nothing of his strength, he’s also incredibly durable, having fought titans like the Hulk to a stalemate and surviving other battles that would have slain other heroes. He eventually unlocks superhuman vision and hearing, regenerative healing, and even immortality.
That the MCU’s Simon was seemingly born with these abilities makes him all the more powerful. His comics counterpart gained his powers after exposure to ionic rays — but this version of Simon could potentially be a mutant. That unlocks an intriguing future for this incarnation of the character: Simon could easily go on to help establish the West Coast Avengers, as he does in the comics. But he might also pave the way for the X-Men, who will finally get their long-awaited reboot after the events of Avengers: Secret Wars. Either way, the sky’s the limit for Wonder Man.
