2020 was a bad year for Marvel with all of its movies and shows delayed. Well, not all of them. It may surprise many that a Marvel TV series did land this year. Helstrom, on Hulu, came out this year to almost no attention at all and slipped quietly into nothingness the moment it did. Now, Hulu has announced that the series has been canceled, and with it, the final vestige of live-action Marvel Television is gone like the dust of a desiccated corpse blowing away in the wind.
The show focused on two siblings who battled demons and had horror tinges to it, but it never really took off. It’s not much of a surprise considering Disney did almost no promotion for it and Hulu shunted it away into a dark corner quickly with little to no exposure. That’s likely because it was a Marvel Television series, all of which have been systematically canceled after Jeph Loeb left the division and it was folded into Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios. With all Marvel content moving over to Disney+, it was actually surprising Helstrom even came out.
The series was originally supposed to be part of a darker, horror mini-universe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe called Adventure into Fear and akin to Netflix’s connected-but-not-really shows. Adventure into Fear would have featured Helstrom and a Ghost Rider show along with a few other series that were never announced. However, Ghost Rider was canceled over creative differences, and the entire idea fell apart with only Helstrom landing eventually.
While this may be the end for any Loeb-produced live-action series, it is actually not the final, final end to Marvel Television shows. Loeb had planned to launch an animated Marvel universe including Howard the Duck, Tigra & Dazzler, MODOK , and Hit-Monkey. However, the former two shows were scrapped early this year due to creative differences, and the big team-up show that all the shows were going to lead to fell apart because of it. Now only MODOK and Hit-Monkey survive as they continue into production and should premiere sometime in 2021. Whether or not that leads anywhere is yet to be seen, but the idea of an animated MCU alongside its live-action one has to be enticing to Disney, even if it stemmed from the shunned Marvel Television.
