Marvel's "Legends" Far From Legendary

Platform: Disney+

Release Date: January 8, 2020

It's not fair to get upset when you grab an apple and it tastes like an apple even though you wished for a different taste, right? Well, there is plenty of disappointment to be had anyway. Coming out of Disney Investor Day 2020 was a slew of official date releases for already announced MCU series along with new series announcements to sweeten the pot. Marvel fans will finally be getting new MCU content, which has not been seen since July 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the closest to release is the January 15th release of WandaVision. With all of these announcements and updates, it was strange that days later, Disney+ announced a new series that would debut a week before WandaVision titled Marvel Studios: Legends. Why not announce this during the investor's meeting alongside the other series? Well, it's because there isn't much to say about it.

Legends debuted with its first two episodes “Wanda Maximoff” and “Vision”, each offering a 7-minute look back at the characters place in the MCU. Actually, that's even giving it too much credit. It's random assortment of scenes that may include the characters and remind you that they exist, but the episodes are ultimately too short and don't offer any commentary/behind the scenes footage to supplement the footage and educate on the character. I saw a post that described these episodes as glorified YouTube videos and not only do I concur, but I am sure I could find better videos on YouTube.

(Directly after writing the last sentence, I ended up getting sucked in to a couple of recap videos for Wanda and Vision, both of which were light-years better than whatever “Legends” offered.)

As to not to shit all over this parade, there was maybe 10-15 seconds that offered a few potentially important aspects of Wanda that may come to play in the WandaVision series. The first was a reminder of Wanda's explosion in power level when overwhelmed with emotion: her disintegration of Ultron bots after Pietro's death, holding off Thanos while destroying the mind stone and killing Vision, and her revenge on Thanos in Endgame. While not knowing the details of the series, Wanda will seemingly be attempting to cope with Vision's death and how that will impact her power level (it's over 9000!!!) remains to be seen. Another point it reminded me of was Wanda's power of mental manipulation, which she used on the Avengers in Age of Ultron. Both of these points could be important for the happenings of WandaVision, or not, who knows. There was little/nothing offered from the Vision episode other than a stark reminder that he is part Jarvis.

It seems Disney's plan is to release episodes of this miniseries to coincide with the the new MCU series as a highlight reel for the characters involved. All in all, I don't know who these episodes are supposed to be for. There's not enough information to be informative for new viewers and MCU veterans will not find anything new for them. Perhaps this series is best geared for someone who has watched the MCU and enjoyed the movies but bumped their head hard and need help triggering old memories. Other than that, stick with YouTube. I know that this is not really a traditional Marvel series, but it is still sad that this can be billed as the first Marvel show on Disney+.