Marvel on the Big (and Small) Screen
2021 was the year Marvel tried its hand at television in a way we hadn’t really seen before. The first few episodes of WandaVision seemed a little dicey, but that silly sitcom eventually transformed into something lore-filled and foreboding that would pave the way for MCU TV shows and films to come. Speculation is Tumblr’s bread and butter, but the miniseries turned regular fans with theories and text posts into full-blown detectives. You knew Agnes was Agatha Harkness before she even knew herself, but you loved her anyway. She was Tumblr’s third favorite WandaVision character, right behind the titular characters. Pretty impressive for an ancient, morally grey sorceress.
The dust had barely settled before The Falcon and the Winter Soldier dropped. The return of Bucky lit Tumblr up in the way only James Buchanan Barnes can. This time, his Captain America was an entirely different man but no less a best friend or lover, depending on which Sambucky fics you’re reading. But Sam Wilson’s transition to his new role as the first Black Captain America wasn’t a smooth one. This series tackled a lot of real-world issues like racism and morality, but the discussion wasn’t limited to plot alone. When hatred for temporary Cap John Walker became real-world hatred for actor Wyatt Russell, fans took to the tags to combat the harassment, urging each other to remember that fiction is fiction. A text post by @thecinematicalgorithm says it best: John Walker is a good soldier, but Sam Wilson is a good man, and that’s why the shield was always meant to be his.
Then came Loki and his Nexus Event. Loki Laufeyson has and always will be an enigma, and his miniseries was no different. Anticipation started last December after we got our first glimpse of the series and it was so strong, the #loki series made its first appearance in Week in Review. In June, the first episode finally dropped, and the sleuthing began. You came together to decipher a very complicated title sequence and ponder the repercussions of tampering with time. The show’s impact is still rippling all around us, its effects already taking shape in upcoming Marvel projects. Chatter around Loki’s love life also grew to an all-time high, and the confirmation of bisexual Loki as canon was a huge win for us all. His affection for Mobius and Sylvie leaped off the screen and into chapters of fanfiction. Lokius went on to become the 6th most popular ship on Tumblr this year with a stunning 411% more engagements than Sylki. Loki ended this year as Tumblr’s favorite Marvel series with 78.8% more engagements than runner-up The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—it was so popular, in fact, that you made TOMBLR happen, calling the God of Mischief himself to answer your questions.
If Loki and the multiverse tore us apart, then Shang-Chi pieced us back together again. The release of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was an incredible piece of history we all got to be a part of, but important to none more than the Asian-American community. Fans felt seen—their family traditions and cultures were reflected on screen in a way we don’t often see in Hollywood. Shang-Chi also gave us our first taste of Tony Leung in American cinema after decades of legendary performances in Asia. But fans also noticed the film’s shortcomings. The English subtitles often failed to do the translations justice in situations where their actual sentiment held more meaning to native Mandarin speakers. Those conversations took shape in a really meaningful way and in high volume—Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings topped our Movies list three weeks in a row and would continue to be a major topic of discussion in the weeks following. Some of you even got the chance to ask Simu Liu about his own connections to the film and his character during his Answer Time—portraying a fully-fleshed out, three-dimensional Asian-American character straddling the line between two vastly different cultures is something he’s really proud of, and something that resonated with so many of us.
In an age of instant gratification, Marvel reminded a lot of us of how TV used to work and gave us something new to look forward to every week. They introduced an inclusive, new wave of childhood heroes and pushed the boundaries of your typical box office hit. In this post, we focused on the Marvel releases you engaged with the most here on Tumblr, but this is in no way an exhaustive list of the MCU timeline in 2021. You loved Black Widow—probably Yelena more than the rest—and reimagined the Marvel Universe each week with What If…? We can’t even begin to imagine what next year will bring, but we know we’re not ready.