There is a big lesson that Marvel can learn from Star Wars – and maybe he has already

The Marvel cinematographic universe promised to be something that the public had never seen before. It was a franchise where the films would be much more interconnected than those of any other property before, recreating the experience of being able to read a comic strip and see a character appear for a problem before leaving in a their own adventure. This unique quality made MCU a juggernaut of pop culture for more than a decade after its launch in 2008. But it was then; Now, which was once the greatest functionality of MCU has become its worst bug.

Indeed, since 2019, it has become more refreshing that MCU films or emissions have been as disconnected from the rest of the franchise as possible (as was the case with “Moon Knight”), for fear that the public can make endless quantities of homework to understand the plot. This also does not help that the MCU has left several loose ends for years, but possibly tie them in a disappointing way (like what happened in “Captain America: Brave New World”).

But a franchise that forces viewers to watch dozens of films just to understand a new one is not the same as a successful widened universe. There are better ways to do interconnectivity. Take “Thunderbolts” * “a film that acts as the MCU’s response to the” Legends of Tomorrow of DC “in that they both focus on superhero teams made up of characters who have been introduced in other projects. As for this spectacle Arrowverse, it is useful but not quite necessary to understand where the heroes of” Thunderbolts * come from which counts in history at hand that they are when they are together.

Now, it seems that Marvel has another AS in its round (the one that shows a better path to the realization of interconnectivity) in the form of “Eyes of Wakanda”, a animated television program which offers a construction of the phenomenal world without requiring many homework. Those who frequent the Annecy international animated film festival have had the chance to watch the very first episode of the series, and it promises to be something quite special … as well as, hopefully, a sign of things to come for the MCU.

“Eyes of Wakanda” is a series of anthology on Wakanda’s attempts to recover stolen artefacts through history. The first episode, entitled “Into the Lion’s Den”, begins in Crete in 1260 BC and follows a former disgrace member of Dora Milaje as they continue the “Lion”, a man who defeated the Wakandane Guard in order to manage his own pirate group, using Wakandan Wakandan Stolen technology to feed his kingdom. The whole thing is inspired by the real hypothetical tribe known as Sea Peoples, which terrorized Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean region at the end of the bronze. (The peoples of the sea also played a leading role in the excellent second season of “Primal” by Genndy Tartakovsky.)

The “Black Panther” spin-off is visually magnificent and unlike everything we have seen from Marvel Animation so far. No more the 2.5D look of “What if …?”, With the animation of the axis creating a graphic 3D style full of 2D visual effects and exaggerated designs that give the impression of being a comic strip. Animated, “Eyes of Wakanda” more reinforces the director “Black Panther” Ryan Coogler and the efforts of his team to infuse Wakanda with a feeling of cultural specificity, his outfit and his buildings to the body shapes and the skin tones of his residents.

Regarding history, “Eyes of Wakanda” manages to be autonomous even if it explores the long history of the fictitious eponymous nation and develops the prologue of the first film “Black Panther” to coogerate, revealing more details on the way Wakandan has become so advanced. As explained by the director of “Into the Lion’s Den”, Todd Harris, after the projection of the episode, “Eyes of Wakanda” is intended to explore how the tactics and the culture of Wakanda have evolved over time and the means by which the country has remained preserved as long as in the MCU.

While each episode moves towards a new period of time and focuses on different artifacts stolen in the country (but with a feeling of connection between them, because they each explore the ramifications of the episodes before them), it looks like the ideal way to extend the Marvel universe. Of course, there will be familiar MCU characters who will appear (as Harris confirmed that we will first see Iron at a given time, but not the version you might expect), but what makes it all the more attractive is that the program also works as a history lesson on the MCU as a whole.

Like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) said it at the end of the original film “Iron Man” when he introduced himself to the manor of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), “Do you think you are the only superhero in the world?” We have already had an overview of the long history of MCU before, including flashbacks featuring the original Ant-man and the wasp. However, we have never obtained something like “Eyes of Wakanda”, that is to say an extended history lesson which shows how the MCU has evolved and changed over the centuries.

This is something that the “Star Wars” franchise excels – exploring different corners of its universe, developing certain periods and painting a more complete global image of its fictitious frame. Even after so many MCU films and shows, including all these limited series that work specifically as a global construction, the property is still lacking in comparison.

This is what makes “Eyes of Wakanda” feels so special. It is a show that seems to keep the MCU’s promise by recreating the experience of reading a comic strip and following a single character, to discover that there is a single special blow exploring their past and their ancestry. This helps that Wakanda is already the most extensive place in MCU, a country with a sense of history, tradition and culture that viewers are impatient to see more (as opposed, let’s say, all these even extraterrestrial planets that we barely had time to explore in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films).

“Eyes of Wakanda” will begin to broadcast on August 6, 2025 on Disney +.