Iron Man’s Worst Villain Returning To The MCU
It looks like we are getting a return from an Iron Man villain, one of the more unlikely bad guys in the Marvel Universe
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, once you are in it’s very likely we will see you cropping up in all different places in all different settings. With the Multiverse, it means even death is off the table and it doesn’t need to be heroes either. Villains and side characters can get a repeat performance and show up along the way as well. It’s something that makes the whole franchise, and frankly the whole experience so engaging. So it’s not really a surprise that we are getting a rather unique character back into the mix sooner than later. Variety has it that Ben Kingsley will reprise his Trevor Slattery role in the upcoming Wonder Man series on Disney+. This is a dude that just keeps popping up in different places and we are definitely here for it.
While it’s not totally clear just how much involvement Ben Kingsley will have in Wonder Man, there is definitely at least something of an overlap in what his Trevor Slattery character has brought to the mix and how he could work into this series. We originally saw Slattery in Iron Man 3 when it appeared, for all intents and purposes that he was the Mandarin, an plotting and sinister villain hellbent on upending and destroying Tony Stark’s world. But it was eventually discovered that Slattery was just a paid actor meant to act as a front for the operation.
Ben Kingsley then showed up again in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings when he had been taken prisoner by Xu Wenwu and essentially turned into a court jester for the amusement of the others. He manages to survive the final attack though so it was clear that he was still alive in this universe. For a character with no powers and really just a weird personality, it’s been just the right kind of role for Kingsley. And it’s easy to see why Marvel would want to keep him around whenever a production would overlap with some of his character’s story.
In Wonder Man, we will be introduced to Simon Williams who eventually takes on the hero moniker. At first, the Williams character is at odds with Tony Stark and that empire, though he is born into a wealthy family. Williams is an actor and a stuntman and there’s some chance that Ben Kingsley’s inclusion is because of these latter traits, overlapping the acting presence in some way for the story. Williams as Wonder Man starts off on the more evil side of things, recruited by Baron Zemo so there’s some chance we see that character as well.
Shang Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton is on board helming this new series and Andrew Guest is the lead writer. It’s not totally clear when we will see Ben Kingsley and company in Wonder Man seeing as how Marvel has yet to outline a production timeline for the series. But having some casting decisions start to firm up means we are likely honing in on more specific dates sooner than later.
