If you’ve been paying attention to the TV industry these last few days, it’s been brutal — cancellation after cancellation. A typical occurrence in early May, but the axe seems to be a lot more active this year. There is one little announcement amidst the bombshells, though, that no one seems surprised about: Marvel’s MODOK will just be a one-season show.
You’re probably asking what that is even though I already wrote about it three times. Yes, Marvel made a MODOK show, but it’s very different from the kind of thing they’re known for now. It was a stop-motion series on Hulu from the creators of Robot Chicken that took a satirical look at the Marvel Universe through the eyes of giant-headed supervillain MODOK.
The first and now only season involved the title character — voiced by Patton Oswalt — trying to regain control of his company, which he was planning to use to take over the world until it was seized by a tech bro. At the same time, MODOK was trying to keep his wife from filing for divorce and attempting to repair his strained relationship with his two kids.
I don’t think you mind spoilers at this point, so I’ll mention the show ends with MODOK successfully conquering the world, but losing his family in the process, and devoting his life from that point forward to find a way to go back in time, so he could undo his actions. A dark ending, but fitting for a dark show.
If this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Kevin Feige would be into, it isn’t. It’s the last remaining remnant of the Ike Permutter Era, which brought us Agents of SHIELD and those TV-MA Netflix offshoots. Marvel projects probably won’t be allowed to venture this far off the beaten path again for quite some time.
The news isn’t a good sign for Hit-Monkey, Hulu’s other adult animated Marvel show — and this time, that’s a problem, because that show was surprisingly good. It also made the unfortunate decision to reverse its happy ending in the last five minutes to set a hook for future seasons, a move I still don’t understand because they HAD to see the writing on the wall.
