In July 2026, the Marvel projects “Wonder Man” and “Blade” were both cancelled in the span of two weeks. Both had Black lead actors. Other projects spotlighting Black characters such as “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” (2023) and “Iron Heart” (2025), have also been scrapped without explicit reasoning on the part of Marvel.
“When you put them all together, there’s no way around it — it does not look good … (Marvel) looks like (they are) certainly not favorable to (their) Black creatives,” “Wonder Man” star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II said in an interview with Fresh Air, when asked about Marvel’s cancellations of Black-led projects.
On July 8, 2026, Abdul-Mateen II was Emmy-nominated for his performance as Simon Williams in the first season of “Wonder Man.” The show was canceled three weeks later. Today, that first season boasts an impressive 91 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, rendering it one of Marvel’s highest rated television series. “(Wonder Man) got nominated for an Emmy. They were making the ratings. They were doing the thing, right? So if you’re making the money, then why are you taking it away?” Jenell Marshall, an English teacher in the African American (AfAm) Studies Department at Berkeley High School, said.
Moreover, although fiscal reports on advertisement remain undisclosed, there was a noticeable lack of promotion for “Wonder Man” in comparison to other Marvel series. “WandaVision,” a 2021 Marvel series sitcom, received diligent advertising campaigns, even having a debut at the 2020 Emmys, while promotion of “Wonder Man” was sparse, coming mostly in the form of standard trailers.
After the cancellations of “Blade” and “Wonder Man,” Marvel’s eight projects set for debut in 2026 revolve around white main characters. “I don’t really know any characters (of color) because most Marvel characters are white,” Joshua McClain, a BHS senior, said.
“There were only two movies that revolved around Black (people and) Africa,” Abraham Afeworki, a BHS senior said, referring to the “Black Panther” duology, Marvel’s only Black-led blockbuster hit. This franchise centers Black characters in a manner that is not only rare in Marvel, but also within the greater range of Hollywood movies. “It shouldn’t be just all these white characters. There should be different races. We want to see a mix of people from different cultures together making a movie. That would be amazing,” Afeworki said.
This glaring lack of Black representation is discouraging to young people of color hoping to make it into the film industry. Without a diverse range of role models on television, Hollywood’s history of racial homogeneity is doomed to repeat. “How are people going to see mentors and how are they going to see themselves on screen? ... It’s really disheartening because if you have kids who want to be actors, writers or cinematographers, and they’re a person of color, they don’t see how they can get (involved),” Marshall said. 64 percent of Hollywood films star white actors, a vast overrepresentation of the white population in the U.S. (University of California, Los Angeles Social Sciences Hollywood Diversity Report).
The pattern in the termination of Black-led Marvel projects implies an ongoing rollback of Marvel’s push for diversity in their onscreen characters, which became apparent with “Black Panther” in 2018. As a dominant force in Hollywood, Marvel must champion their Black actors and directors to strive for a more equitable entertainment industry.