While its film projects are currently comfortably resting on their multi-billion-dollar laurels—and prepping for a whole new push when Black Widow arrives in theaters this May—Marvel’s TV fortunes have never been quite so smooth. With the various Marvel Netflix shows now consigned to the dust of too-many-ninjas history, and its only currently extant show now the ending-in-a-couple-months Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., the company is currently looking to its upcoming MCU Disney+ shows, as well as a handful of animated projects destined for Hulu, to keep its small screen ambitions in play.
And now, even less than that: Variety reports tonight that two of those animated Hulu shows, Howard The Duck and Tigra And Dazzler, are now both dead at the streaming service. As with all of the animated series—including Hit Monkey and Patton Oswalt’s M.O.D.O.K., both of which look like they might actually, well, happen—the series were being developed as comedies, complete with a now clearly overly ambitious plan to eventually unite all four shows for a crossover called The Offenders. (We know.)
Sadly, we never got much in the way of detail about either project: Howard would have featured one of Marvel’s better known-comedy characters, he of the MCU cameos, failed ’80s film, and battles against the infamous Doctor Bong. Tigra And Dazzler, meanwhile, was being pitched as an adult-aimed show about two young superheroes trying to carve out a name for themselves; it was also the origin of the first signs that this recent Marvel TV push—which came at roughly the same time as news that previous architect Jeph Loeb was being ousted from the company’s TV efforts in favor of MCU golden child Kevin Feige—was having trouble, when the series’ showrunner, Erica Rivinoja, and her entire writing staff were “dismissed” from the series late last year. That, in turn, came after the cancellation of Cloak & Dagger, and the news that Hulu wouldn’t be going forward with a live-action Ghost Rider show spun off from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
It’s all a bit of a mess, which might explain why Marvel is so eager to get some of those Disney+ shows—including WandaVision, which got abruptly pushed up the schedule to 2020 earlier this year—out into the world. In the meantime, we’ve still got M.O.D.O.K. and Hit Monkey to look forward to, along with a still-in-the-works-for-now-but-hey-honestly-who-knows-anymore live-action adaptation of Daimon Hellstrom, Son Of Satan.