Summary
Wonder Man, fittingly for the most atypical MCU show, has an entirely atypical ending, eschewing any cameos or mid-credits scenes to instead leave things on a completely ambiguous note.
As if it wasn’t obvious that Wonder Man isn’t your typical MCU show, the ending should make it pretty clear. No mid-credits tease? No proper explanation of what Simon’s powers even are, beyond a vague nod to them revolving around ionic energy? No proper payoff for Simon and Trevor’s relationship, or what might happen to them after Episode 8? Yeah, you’re going to have to get used to it.
Lots of the MCU shows have ended on cliffhangers, of course, including Moon Knight – which to the best of my knowledge nobody has thought about since it aired – and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, but this is usually to panhandle for a second season, or make it easier to wrap up various plot threads in other projects, such is the interconnectedness of the MCU. But the ending of Wonder Man doesn’t feel like that. Instead, it’s more deliberately ambiguous and subversive, depriving the audience of the answers they expect because it’s so determined not to be just another superhero show.
Thanks to this, there isn’t a great deal to even break down, but we’re going to do the best we can either way.
Trevor’s Redemption
The events of the finale are deeply coloured by Simon’s discovery that his new best friend and mentor, Trevor Slattery, was really spying on him at the behest of the Department of Damage Control. By this point, both men have developed a friendship that is very real, but the revelation that it was built on false pretences is a bit much for Simon to bear, given how much of his life and how many of his relationships have devolved on account of his careerism and hidden superpowers.
In his rage, Simon unleashes his pent-up ionic energy, completely destroying a – thankfully empty – Wonder Man set, the remake in which both he and Trevor had finally been cast. Simon – and Trevor, when he hears of what happened – knows that this will have exposed Simon to the DODC as a potential risk, given them justification to detain him and derail his career, which all the flashbacks to him and his father enjoying the original Wonder Man movies have made very clear is everything he has been working towards for his entire life.
So, Trevor does the only thing he can do to atone. He once again adopts the persona of the Mandarin, the terrorist villain he has spent years trying to slip the shackles of, and takes credit for the studio attack. The DODC has no choice but to arrest him instead, and since he won’t budge on the idea that the Mandarin is his true identity and that Trevor Slattery was the performance all along, Simon is safe.
Simon Has Made It
If you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t explain why the DODC is suddenly so happy to let Simon become a global Hollywood megastar, especially since they firmly believed he was a danger in the first place and know that Trevor is making things up. They have budget cuts to avoid, I guess, so any arrest will do. But this clears the runway for Simon, who becomes the star he always wanted to be, starring opposite Joe Pantoliano as Barnaby in Slattery’s absence.
It seems like Simon got everything he wanted. There’s already talk of a Wonder Man sequel. Big projects are being sent his way. Even his needlessly antagonistic brother Eric is on board. But Simon can’t quite get over what happened to Trevor, and even as his career develops, there’s a sense that he’s simply biding his time – and nurturing his powers – until the time is right.
Simon Rescues Trevor
Towards the end of Wonder Man, Simon gets friendly with a guy named Chuck Eastman, who turns out to be a security guard at the DODC. He hasn’t forgotten about his friend after all.
With help from Chuck, Simon breaks into the facility, where he’s being discussed in hushed terms as either an extraordinary threat or a major asset on account of his vaguely defined powers, and makes his way to Trevor’s cell. He uses those powers to do away with the bars and then to fly off with Trevor through the roof.
Just like that, Simon and Trevor are on the run. Where can one of the biggest stars in the world hide, though? Perhaps his next audition will be for the Avengers, or some other big superhero team, though it’s hard to know where he’d fit since we still know so little about how his powers work.
There Is NO Mid-Credits Or Post-Credits Scene, Stop Searching
I know I said it at the top, but since I know what people are like, let me just be totally clear: There are no mid-credits or post-credits scenes in Wonder Man. It doesn’t tease anything. There are no cameos.
Seriously, stop searching for these things. On this one occasion, they aren’t there. Maybe relish that a bit. I don’t think it’ll last.
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