MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*
This season is subtitled "Secret Wars," which can refer to two multi-feature crossovers from Marvel Comics in the 1980s and 1990s. In the first, a bunch of Marvel heroes and villains were abducted from Battleworld by an entity called The Beyonder, and forced to fight one another in largely pointless adventures. In the second, the Beyonder shows up on Marvel-Earth and has a lot of pointless encounters with Marvel regulars.
My summing-up of these dubious comic-book events should make clear that I don't think any adaptation of these stories had much to offer in the first place, and thus it's not impossible that any changes could well be improvements. However, when the season begins with a bunch of big-name Avengers getting dispersed into other dimensions, it's not the Beyonder who's responsible, but a new Cabal of regular Marvel villains: The Leader, Kang, Arnim Zola, The Enchantress and The Executioner. Once the former regulars-- Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Captain America-- have been scattered hither and yon, Thor's girlfriend Jane Foster summons a new cavalcade of heroes, informally called The New Avengers, to look for the lost crusaders and to take up the heroic slack. This team consists of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Vision, Wasp and the Ant-Man. What's historically intriguing about this development is that it begins roughly a year before the two live-action movies that climaxed the MCU's Phase Three, 2018's AVENGERS INFINITY WAR and 2019's AVENGERS ENDGAME. I can only conclude that the animation producers were given advance information as to how the Phase 3 conclusion would shape up, particularly with respect to neutralizing the prominent (and expensive) live-action versions of Iron Man and Captain America.
In the live-action universe, Marvel Productions then went through all manner of torturous efforts to make the public fall in love with a new concatenation of less expensive icons-- efforts that largely failed. Yet in fairness, ASSEMBLE's efforts to promote a group of "scrubs" to take the place of the previous heavy-hitters wasn't that bad. The Vision, Wasp and the Ant-Man were nothing special, and Captain Marvel, while lacking in charm, wasn't as tedious as in her two live-action incarnations. Ms. Marvel, who had been promoted in the comics to be an exemplar of a virtuous Muslim heroine, was in her animated form a fairly lively, quirky character, and for once, she was actually pretty good in a fight. I praised the producers' conception of Black Panther in my review of Season Three, and Season Four is truer to the comic-book icon, rather than following the dubious lead of the live-action PANTHER movies. To be sure, Season Four also injects some of the politically correct characters who later dragged down the live-action continuity, such as the Panther's obnoxious sister Shuri and the Jane Foster version of Thor. But at least they're only in the season briefly.
Further, since ASSEMBLE wasn't sidelining its big-name heroes for the same reasons as did the MCU, there was no problem with bringing them all back in the course of the season's 26 episodes. One could wish that when the MCU finally did debut a purported "New Avengers" in the 2025 THUNDERBOLTS, they'd chosen a mix of icons at least as good as the one in ASSEMBLE Season 4. In addition, Season 4 gives the big names some nice character moments. In the episode "Weirdworld," Bruce Banner becomes separated from the Hulk, and his allies Black Widow and Cap Marvel watch as Banner becomes obsessed with killing his alter ego. Late in the season, the Avengers' old foe Loki makes common cause with them against the Beyonder, and there are some good moments in which Thor is genuinely disappointed that his wayward brother has once more lied to suit his agenda.
The Beyonder is probably the weakest link in Season 4, but then as stated, his original model wasn't much to speak of.
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