After the back-to-back crushing blows that Marvel had canceled Disney Plus series Wonder Man and was never going to make the Blade movie with Mahershala Ali, fans called out the obvious common denominator between the two projects. Both Marvel superhero titles were led by Black actors, a relative rarity for Marvel Studios.

Some fans have similarly groused about how Marvel's new Captain America, Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie), is having his headlining Marvel role undercut by the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday. Fans have also raised eyebrows about where Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau stands in the MCU, especially after the events of 2023's The Marvels. (Spoiler alert: She was transported to the X-Men universe, but has been absent in Avengers: Doomsday's marketing thus far.)

Now, Wonder Man star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is weighing in on that discourse. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the actor addressed Marvel's recent moves and how bad the public reception has been.

"I think the optics are obvious," Abdul-Mateen said. "If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics. So it should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources."

The Emmy-nominated actor, who played Simon Williams in the short-lived Wonder Man, told Vanity Fair he'd been told his show was axed because of viewership numbers. It wasn't down to the quality of the product, Abdul-Mateen said.

"I felt that our show did have quality story, did have quality resources, did have quality actors and people, and did produce quality results that the viewers responded to positively, that the voters responded to positively," he told VF. "So our show does deserve some study and some real, hard information about why a show like this did not continue forward, because it had all of the ingredients that one would want in a show."

Abdul-Mateen's comments follow a spicy response from former Blade star Mahershala Ali, who said in July, "[Marvel] had me under contract, they have billions of dollars. If they wanted to do the movie, we would've done the movie. So we're not doing the movie."

Wonder Man showrunner Andrew Guest was also flummoxed by the cancellation of the Disney Plus series.

"Yahya, Destin, Sir Ben, and I all loved making this show," Guest said after Wonder Man's cancellation. "[We] all felt passionately about continuing to do it, and were eager to. Contracts were signed. Schedules were cleared. The writers' room was supposed to start this week. The production was supposed to begin early next year, and there was a decision made internally between Disney and Marvel that this didn't make sense for them, even though a few months ago it did."

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in July that he felt "like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get [Blade] off the ground with Mahershala [Ali]." But that will probably be cold comfort to the likes of Ali and Abdul-Mateen, who seem keenly aware of the optics surrounding their role in the MCU.