Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery will return to the MCU with Wonder Man

The MCU's goofiest villain is coming back for a Disney+ show

By Sam Barsanti  |  August 30, 2022 | 8:37pm
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Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery will return to the MCU with Wonder Man
Ben Kingsley Photo: Phillip Faraone

Ben Kingsley’s… villain(?) from the historically underrated Iron Man 3 stands as a good illustration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s power and how it extends beyond the traditional comic book fan audience. Not only was he introduced as an explicit rejection of an old (and problematic) comic book villain, but Kingsley completely wackadoo performance and the twist behind his real identity—he’s an actor hired to play a fake terrorist—made enough of an impression on fans that the MCU was willing to ignore the “but that’s not what happens in the comics!” complaints and bring Kingsley back for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.

Now, with that movie already serving as a surprise setup for the main plot of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, it’s apparently also going to set up Kingsley’s continued involvement in the MCU. According to Variety, he’ll be reprising his role as fake terrorist/disgraced theatrical actor Trevor Slattery in Disney+’s upcoming Wonder Man series. The show was co-created by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton, and assuming it has any connection to the Wonder Man from the comics (which is not a safe assumption, as noted above), it will be about a guy named Simon Williams who gets super powers from an evil experiment and later becomes an Avenger and also an actor.

If that’s what Disney is going with here, Trevor Slattery is a perfect addition: He’s an actor, he met Iron Man and Shang-Chi, and he’s… you know, a wackadoo. It’s fun to have him around, as Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings proved.

It may seem like a disservice to the success of Shang-Chi for Marvel and Disney to just keep using that movie as a platform to reintroduce older side-characters like Trevor Slattery here and Abomination on She-Hulk, but let’s not forget that—in addition to working on Wonder Man—Cretton is making a Shang-Chi sequel and he’s attached to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Marvel clearly wants to stay in the Destin Daniel Cretton business for a while.

 
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