Just a year ago, it seemed like the folks at Marvel TV were going to enjoy a long life of making television series that were tangentially related to the MCU but would never fully be embraced by Kevin Feige and its Marvel Studios film brethren. But then, slowly but surely, we saw networks and streamers cancel all of the Marvel TV shows, leading to a complete takeover of the studio by Feige and the Marvel Studios film folks. But even though the Marvel TV graveyard is pretty full already, there is one leftover show that has yet to hit the air, Hulu’s upcoming “Helstrom.”
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And in the first-look photos from IGN, we get to see what the new horror-themed thriller series will look like, as we are introduced to our first peek at the cast from “Helstrom.” In the series, Tom Austen and Sydney Lemmon portray Daimon and Ana Helstrom, respectively—a brother and sister crime-fighting duo that also happen to be the son and daughter of a powerful serial killer. The series appears to be loosely based on the Marvel “Helstrom” comics from decades earlier, except minus the more religious and supernatural elements. At least, judging by the description of the series and the pictures, it doesn’t appear that we have a lot of supernatural elements at play. But hey, we’ll just have to wait and see.
As mentioned, “Helstrom” sits in this very peculiar spot in Marvel TV history. Greenlit and beginning production right as the studio crumbled, the series was too far along for anyone to really stop it. But yet, it’s not likely that the Hulu series is going to continue long past the first season. Clearly, Kevin Feige has very different ideas for what a “Marvel television series” should look like, with Marvel Studios planning on releasing numerous shows on Disney+ with massive budgets and huge acting talent. Gone are the days of C-list characters getting their own series that don’t connect to the larger MCU, such as we saw with “Runaways,” “Cloak & Dagger,” “Agents of SHIELD,” “Ghost Rider,” and “Inhumans.”
Of course, there’s also the outside chance that “Helstrom” veers more towards the Netflix side of Marvel TV productions, which gave us stuff like “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” and “Luke Cage.” At least those series were interesting and well-crafted, even if they weren’t always great and still didn’t connect to the larger cinematic universe.
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Long story short, it’s hard to imagine that “Helstrom” is anything but a final nail in the coffin of a dead studio, which is sad to say given that it’s not going to premiere until October. And if it’s great, maybe this is a way for Marvel TV to go out on a high note.
You can see all the first-look photos below:
