The trolls are among us. Everytime a new DC or Marvel movie comes out the information (or disinformation) campaigns come out swinging. Each side, whether by agencies or fans begins the push for how amazing or awful the newest installment will turn out to be. It’s nothing new, but then the pandemic hit.
Both teams kept churning out their content and tried their best to follow COVID protocols while continuing to produce new material to keep with their time frames. The MCU felt this stronger than DC in all likelihood seeing as how their Disney shows funneled neatly into the new Phase 4 content and the quickest upcoming title was a prequel in the form of Black Widow. DC on the otherhand has been experiencing an identity crisis and has many projects circling without any real trajectory and this has actually served them well.
Now whether money or progress won the day, DC chose to use their Warner Brothers outlets in HBOmax to go ahead and release their content. Whether this was a prudent move won’t really be quantifiable until theater releases come back in force, but the new content was nice in the midst of the quarantine and it put DC squarely in the front of fans’ minds. Well done.
Unfortunately that presence of mind brought out the trolls who accused Marvel of slipping and questioned the rationale of continually pushing back their titles. Tsk, Tsk. Marvel on the other hand did not, and has not relented. Keeping their movie properties off streaming platforms and pushing the release dates further back. Enter WandaVision.
The hype over a single episode of WandaVision eclipsed a new Justice League trailer one week, and a Mortal Kombat Trailer the next.
– Straight Logic & a little bit of Googling. Lol.
Marvel fans had been waiting an entire year for new content and not only did they get new content in the package it was meant to be consumed, but they got a fancy 9 course meal, the likes of which DC nor Marvel has been able to produce in a television series before. The decision to dehydrate their fans for so long, I believe, has paid off and patience has been rewarded. Fans are digging deeper into episodes, parsing every scene for clues, talking, podcasting, videoing and everything in between, to the point that Wandavision is not only the most streamed and highest rated show in the Marvel stable, but it’s outpacing almost everything online. Episode 7 alone crashed the Disney+ server temporarily. The Disney. Plus. Server. Not a small feat.
Whether this strategy will payoff is anyone’s guess, but Marvel has shows tee’d up and ready to go. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is scheduled to drop just two weeks after WandaVision and Loki shortly after Falcon/Winter Soldier wraps up. Just in time for Black Widow to hit theaters (hopefully). Will there be Marvel fatigue? I’m betting not, since everyone else seems to keep foreshadowing the juggernauts’ demise and the juggernaut keeps on truckin’.
