The Best Marvel Show on TV Right Now Is a Cartoon for Kids

Part of the recent disappointment with the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes from the feeling that it’s flubbing some of its loftiest supposed goals. Over the past few years, Marvel has made a lot of gestures toward embracing a trippier multiverse of sometimes-cosmic stories, expanding their roster of heroes to show greater diversity, utilizing a bolder visual palette that doesn’t render every environment as another green-screened slab of slate-gray overpass, and (on TV, at least) operating at smaller scales than the usual world-ending Avengers-level crossover. How does all of that add up to a glorified Zoom call of a movie like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or a dreary non-event of a show like Secret Invasion?

The dirty secret of Marvel is that it’s easier to fulfill certain creative ambitions when the movies or shows in question inch (or leap) further away from the company’s inner circle of continuity. Sony’s Spider-Verse cartoons, for example, have become a gold standard in comic-book adaptation by embracing their nerdy roots and stylistic boldness, outside the watchful purview of honcho Kevin Feige. The animated series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, meanwhile, doesn’t technically come as far out-of-house; it’s a Disney production, with the new second season airing on the company’s cable and streaming channels. But it’s hard to imagine that it receives much executive scrutiny.

It's also, admittedly, a show for kids. But maybe admitting a lot of this material is for kids is the first step to having fun with it again. Based on a Marvel comics series that originated in 2016, the series follows the adventures of 13-year-old Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White), a lifelong Manhattan resident and science genius who moonlights as the Lower East Side superhero Moon Girl—assisted by Devil, a red dinosaur who she accidentally retrieved from an interdimensional portal (and who the comics retrieved from 1970s stories by Jack Kirby). Lunella’s parents (Sasheer Zamata and Jermaine Fowler) run a roller rink—something of an anomaly for the present-day LES, but never mind—and remain in the dark about their daughter’s secret identity. Lunella’s best friend, Casey (Libe Barer), knows her secret, and at the end of last season, Lunella’s grandmother, Mimi (Alfre Woodard), found out, too. It turns out Mimi was the “original” Moon Girl, a code-named scientist who Lunella idolizes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.