With the latest MCU/Disney+ show, Secret Invasion, just wrapping up last week, it felt like a good time to step back and take stock of what fans have been offered so far, because while this experiment in blending movies & television has been exciting, it has had decidedly mixed results. But if we take a look, the things that make these shows work are often similar, and when they don’t, it’s often because they’ve fallen into similar traps. Do we dare hope that Marvel and Disney will notice the pattern and apply these lessons to future seasons and new series?

*For the purposes of this list, I am not including any of the one-off specials, anthologies, or shorts. Fair warning, spoilers may follow!

7. Secret Invasion

Not even the excellent cast (who knew Olivia Coleman as a chipper spymaster was something I wanted to see?) was enough to save this one. Despite being billed as a “spy thriller,” the only twist that was truly surprising was the death at the end of episode one. I think the show spent too much of its runtime focusing on worn out hero Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and embittered villain Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) angsting over their shared history when it should have zoomed in on the political and social fallout of their “secret war” in the final episode. At best, you might call this a pacing issue, but it could also be argued that they just told the wrong part of this story. Also, while the Super Skrull plot line was a good idea, they took it too far with the addition of “the harvest,” and now the MCU has a character so overpowered I’m not sure why anyone should care anymore, because the obvious answer to any villain now should be to just call her into action.

6. Moon Knight

Oscar Isaac is what makes this show. His dual performance is impressive, as I discussed in my original review, but what could have been a unique and exciting story suffers from such uneven pacing that certain entire episodes feel like filler, as if this was a movie that someone was directed to stretch into a mini-series.

5. Falcon and Winter Soldier

This show was fine, but it has some issues with how the story is paced across its six episodes. The dynamic between Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and Sam (Anthony Mackie) is great though, and this series does play an important part in the MCU of establishing the new status quo for the world post-blip.

4. She-Hulk

People like to rag on this series for some reason, but I enjoyed it. Yes, the effects could have been better, but it’s smart, funny, and pokes fun at itself and the super-hero genre instead of taking itself too seriously. I do suspect there were some powers-that-be at Marvel that probably tried to keep it a little more in-tune with the typical super-hero story arc instead of giving it free rein to go its own direction, which holds it back from being a great show. If those powers-that-be would give it a season two and get out of its way, I think She-Hulk has the potential to be something unique and fun.

3. Hawkeye

As I discussed in my original review, Hawkeye is a solid offering that, while it may not have a standout plot, still shines because that plot serves as a vehicle for showcasing great characters. It also doesn’t suffer from the need to impact the greater MCU, simply existing within it and putting it into a different context for audiences. Yes, it uses and introduces characters that could (and should) be used in other shows and movies, but it stays focused on their importance to this show, making this the MCU series that best stands on its own.

2. TIE: Ms. Marvel/Loki

Both shows have a perfectly cast, strong central character with great supporting characters behind them that you can’t help but root for.  Loki has the more complex story to tell, but its first season struggles with pacing, sometimes feeling more like an interrupted movie than a television series (hopefully the upcoming second season improves on that). Ms. Marvel, on the other hand, is one of the better paced MCU shows, even if it does retread some familiar high school and hero-in-training tropes, completely focusing on telling it’s title character’s journey of self-discovery.

1. WandaVision

The first outing for Marvel on Disney+ got to be exactly what it wanted to be, and that’s why it is the best. It’s different, it’s stylized, and it’s 100% committed to telling the story it wants to tell in the way it needs to be told. You can read my original review here, but essentially the only thing WandaVision suffered from was marketing that hyped it as having much bigger connections to the greater MCU. Having seen Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I now know what they were getting at, but it was still the wrong thing to focus on in building buzz for this show.

From my perspective, if Marvel could let go of the need to tease audiences with “what this show might lead to,” and just get back to the basics of letting each director/writer tell the story at hand, so long as it aligns w/ MCU continuity, they’ll be better off. It worked with James Gunn introducing Guardians of the Galaxy, the Russo brothers handling Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Taika Waititi breathing fresh life into Thor: Ragnarok. And it could especially work if they’d let the directors and writers embrace different (and appropriate) styles for each character, instead of shoe-horning them all into either a 6 hour long episode format or a 12 half-hour episode format with a required big (often CGI) showdown towards the end. It is streaming, after all, so they should be freer to play with form; if Moon Knight needs to be a 3 hour movie instead of a 6 episode mini-series, let it, and if She-Hulk wants to be a half-hour comedy with mostly self-contained episodes, try it! With increasingly low ratings for each series, what have Marvel and Disney got to lose at this point?