Short-Run Geeky TV
Masters of the Universe: Revelation (Netflix, Season 1) - Following on from the original cartoon (but generally ignoring the follow-up cartoons and comics), this drew in all of the middle-aged fanboys and then drew their ire, because (first episode spoilers!) He-Man dies and it becomes the Teela show for four episodes. Given that Sarah Michelle Geller is playing Teela and she has an uneasy alliance with Lena Headley’s Evil-Lynn, I can’t find it in myself to complain about that. They give some great character moments to various folks but also kill off several more of them; and they have cameos from He-Ro and King Grayskull. I found it odd that they released this season with only five episodes (though it is a full arc); I’m going to guess that especially with the big cliffhanger they leave off on, the second season of another ~5 episodes isn’t that far away. Which I’m excited about, because it promises a lot more of Mark Hammill chewing scenery as Skeletor.
Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom (Netflix, Season 3) - This is technically the third season of the War for Cybertron series, the first two being Siege and Earthrise. I wasn’t interested in those, but this featured the Beast Wars characters and so I jumped ahead. It wasn’t hard to catch up-they present enough exposition that, knowing the characters and most of the Transformers tropes, I could follow along just fine. While the Beast Wars characters are visually on-model from their original counterparts, the voices are completely wrong and most of the characters who get personalities don’t get them quite right. (Honestly, it had the same feel of a lot of the comics they appear in-somebody wants to use all of the characters but doesn’t actually have the time to focus on any of them, so they just come out generic.) I was also irked that the relative sizes of the Beast Wars characters were matched to the Gen 1 characters and changed when they transformed; something the original series explicitly avoided. That said, fan-favorite Dinobot got a respectable arc; Blackarachnia got to move the plot along; the Golden Disk was a major plot element and the reveal of what happened on Cybertron in the future the Beast Wars characters came from goes a long way to explaining why the characters are different. This wasn’t anything standout, but it was fun.
Loki (Disney+, Season 1) - What happens to the Loki who disappeared during the time heist in Endgame. This clearly was envisioned as a mix of “everybody loves Loki so let’s see more of him” and “let’s set up the continuity for the next three feature films.” I have to imagine they intended another 3-5 episodes, cut filming short because of covid, and declared there would just be a season 2. Whether He Who Remains will be the big bad of the next giant Marvel movie arc is yet to be seen (my money is on no; it’s too early and I don’t think they’d set up something like that in a TV release), but I think they’ll do some interesting things with it. I'd also like to note that while the TVA premise seems to invalidate my theory that Steve Rogers created the "Steve fixes everything" parallel timeline at the end of Endgame... the ending of this season re-validates it.
Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom (Netflix, Season 3) - This is technically the third season of the War for Cybertron series, the first two being Siege and Earthrise. I wasn’t interested in those, but this featured the Beast Wars characters and so I jumped ahead. It wasn’t hard to catch up-they present enough exposition that, knowing the characters and most of the Transformers tropes, I could follow along just fine. While the Beast Wars characters are visually on-model from their original counterparts, the voices are completely wrong and most of the characters who get personalities don’t get them quite right. (Honestly, it had the same feel of a lot of the comics they appear in-somebody wants to use all of the characters but doesn’t actually have the time to focus on any of them, so they just come out generic.) I was also irked that the relative sizes of the Beast Wars characters were matched to the Gen 1 characters and changed when they transformed; something the original series explicitly avoided. That said, fan-favorite Dinobot got a respectable arc; Blackarachnia got to move the plot along; the Golden Disk was a major plot element and the reveal of what happened on Cybertron in the future the Beast Wars characters came from goes a long way to explaining why the characters are different. This wasn’t anything standout, but it was fun.
Loki (Disney+, Season 1) - What happens to the Loki who disappeared during the time heist in Endgame. This clearly was envisioned as a mix of “everybody loves Loki so let’s see more of him” and “let’s set up the continuity for the next three feature films.” I have to imagine they intended another 3-5 episodes, cut filming short because of covid, and declared there would just be a season 2. Whether He Who Remains will be the big bad of the next giant Marvel movie arc is yet to be seen (my money is on no; it’s too early and I don’t think they’d set up something like that in a TV release), but I think they’ll do some interesting things with it. I'd also like to note that while the TVA premise seems to invalidate my theory that Steve Rogers created the "Steve fixes everything" parallel timeline at the end of Endgame... the ending of this season re-validates it.