During the 2021 Television Critics Association winter press tour, Hulu revealed the release date and a teaser trailer for its upcoming adult animated series, Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. The new trailer for the film has the villainous leader of A.I.M. revealing what his initials really stand for. Along with the trailer is the announcement that all 10 episodes will premiere on Hulu on Friday, 21 May.
The trailer starts with M.O.D.O.K. declaring: “Time to change the world… by bringing it to its knees!” Next, an A.I.M. agent lets M.O.D.O.K. know that the organization is bankrupt, which he predictably takes terribly. When M.O.D.O.K. gets ready to blast the agent to pieces, the nameless gentleman lets M.O.D.O.K. know that he still needs to do his personal taxes. So instead, M.O.D.O.K. vaporizes another agent’s right arm in anger.
Patton Oswalt lends his voice to the titular character, objectively Marvel Comics’ most brilliant evil genius who is also a gigantic head in a floating chair. The series, co-created and written by Oswalt and Jordan Blum, follows M.O.D.O.K., as he bankrupts his villainous organization and deals with a crumbling family at home.
The end of the trailer features a huge battle between A.I.M. and S.H.I.E.L.D. M.O.D.O.K. hovers over a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and asks if he knows what M.O.D.O.K. stands for. The agent gets through part of the definition (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) when M.O.D.O.K. blasts a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet out of the sky. The “Killing” part of M.O.D.O.K.’s abbreviation is tested when the pilot escapes with a parachute, forcing M.O.D.O.K. to then shoot out the parachute.
The synopsis for M.O.D.O.K. reads:
In Marvels M.O.D.O.K., the megalomaniacal supervillain M.O.D.O.K. (Patton Oswalt) has long pursued his dream of one day conquering the world. But after years of setbacks and failures fighting the Earth’s mightiest heroes, M.O.D.O.K. has run his evil organization A.I.M. into the ground. Ousted as A.I.M.’s leader, while also dealing with his crumbling marriage and family life, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing is set to confront his greatest challenge yet!
Joining Oswalt is a talented lineup of voice actors, including Melissa Fumero, Aimee Garcia, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ben Schwartz, Beck Bennett, Jon Daly, and Sam Richardson.
In that light, M.O.D.O.K. isn’t just a wacky spin on the Marvel universe; it is a final glimpse at a different path that the company’s comics adaptations could have taken before the MCU fully took over the future of Marvel TV shows.