The Marvel TV Shows We Never Got to See

As many as 87% of people say there are more ads than two years ago. That may be part of why average daily data usage across the United States reportedly jumped from 12 GB in March 2019 to 16.6 GB in March 2020 — a 38% increase seen across every device category. But even with this increase in ads and the availability of streaming services, we bet you’ve never seen these Marvel titles.

Marvel’s track record at the box office is pretty formidable, but not even Marvel can get every concept off the ground. From The Punisher to Deadpool, here are five Marvel shows we never got to see.

The Punisher

Before receiving his own solo Netflix series in 2017, a 2011 Punisher pilot was greenlit by Fox. The show was to be handled by Criminal Minds showrunner Ed Bernero and would have reimagined Frank Castle as an NYPD detective who only took on his Punisher persona at night, rather than being a grief-ridden man and living as the Punisher full-time, as in many of the comic versions. While no further developments on the show emerged, this initial pass did help pave the way for the more comic-faithful version which appeared a few years later on Netflix.

Hellfire

In the mid-2010s, Hellfire was proposed to Fox. The series would have centered on the Hellfire club, which had previously appeared in X-Men: First Class, from the perspective of an agent who had infiltrated the organization. Hellfire never got off the ground past the initial announcement and vague premise, and producer Lauren Shuler Donner later revealed that, “It was too many characters and not enough depth of character.”

Marvel’s Most Wanted

Lance Hunter and Bobbi Morse nearly had their own adventures separate from Coulson and company in this proposed Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff. The show’s pilot episode was shot back in 2016, but even with a fully filmed pilot, Most Wanted found itself ignored by ABC when the network passed on the project that same year. The network later noted that it really just came down the Most Wanted pilot “not [feeling] as strong” as some of the other concepts they’d seen.

Tigra and Dazzler

Not long ago it looked as though Marvel Television was looking to make a name for itself in the world of adult-skewing cartoons through a series of titles on Hulu. Among these was Tigra and Dazzler, which would have used Chelsea Handler’s comedic filter to imagine the two superheroes and their adventures. The trouble started in December of 2019 with the firing of the show’s writing staff. While Handler remained, the project was officially canceled the next month, as Marvel Studios took over Marvel Television and decided to focus on shows for the Disney+ streaming service.

Deadpool

After the success of Atlanta and the box office smash that was Deadpool, the stage was set for a Donald Glover-led animated series that would air on FXX. Unfortunately, news broke in March of 2018 that the show, despite its boatloads of talent, wouldn’t be going forward. Glover then took to Twitter with a scathing 15-page script attributing the cancelation to Marvel’s concerns about the show’s ‘different’ vibe, as well as other marketing concerns. The head of FX later clarified that while Marvel had backed away, FX was still very much behind the program. Despite Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld announcing that a new version of the project was being worked on, no further news has appeared since May 2019.

So, there are five Marvel shows you can’t binge-watch. Which one would have been your favorite? Was it taken down by creative differences or by a shift in the network’s focus? More importantly, which one would you love to see given a second chance?