This past weekend marked the end of the first and supposedly last season of Inhumans. From the start the series had a number of criticisms, and many of them were well founded, even as it turned out, were some of the criticisms from those being overly harsh on the trailer. Here is a break down of my own opinion of where the series went right and went wrong (there will be some spoilers):

Cast

The cast was a mixed bag of good casting, bad casting, good performances and bad performances. One of the most compelling and well acted was Anson Mount as Black Bolt. He was probably the best acted character in the series, or at least the closest to what we might have to expect from the comics. His frustration at his inability to speak was well conveyed, and he did a good job acting in the role of being somewhat regal, while also struggling to find a place for his people.

The two sisters, Medusa and Crystal, portrayed by Serinda Swan and Isabelle Cornish, were probably the two most underutilized characters in the series. The decision to cut off Medusa's hair made the character not very consistent with the comics version, as the character despite a superpower that is considered bizarre, is still a powerhouse at times. Crystal was also somewhat wasted, most of the time acting only as a means to get Lockjaw to teleport people from one place to another.

Ken Leung and Eme Ikwuakor had more difficult roles to portray, as their comic versions (Karnak and Gorgon) were mostly only ever supporting characters in the comics. With a more prominent role here and with plot lines that made little sense at times, the characters were most often an unnecessary distraction.

The worst and most distracting part of the series was Iwan Rheon as Maximus. Neither the character nor the actor were helped by the writing, but the over-the-top portrayal of the character did not help things.

Special Effects

Despite the criticism, there were some good special effects in this series, though effectively only in one regard. The impression of watching this series was that they had a budget for special effects, blew it all on animated Lockjaw in CGI and then ran out of it for more practical effects. When Crystal used her powers, it was fairly generic looking. Medusa's hair was well portrayed in the first episode, but then it was cut off, seemingly as much for the reason of saving money on special effects as it was necessary for the plot. Gorgon's hooves looked mostly only comical, and Karnak's ability to analyze events was interesting though under utilized.

Perhaps the biggest letdown was that we never got to see Black Bolt let loose even a little bit. He really only used his power three times from what I can recall, and one of those was a clip that was recycled numerous times through the series, once again giving the impression of saving on special effects.

Dialogue

If there was a failure in the show though, it did not come from the special effects as some beloved movies have some poor special effects. The main problem came from the writing, and it was so poorly done at times, that both the dialogue and the plot deserve equally for the failure of the story.

The dialogue can be best summed up by Maximus, who is given mouthfuls of evil phrases to say, that make them sound to be the most dire of statements that one could think to make a character utter, at least until the next line of dialogue. He is clearly a megalomaniac in his speech and actions, that it becomes hard to believe that anyone in Attilan would have supported his rebellion beyond the first day.

The dialogue at times for most of the other characters was not much better, but was not as bad as was handed to Iwan to read for Maximus.

Plot

The introduction of the characters to Hawaii was interesting, as it insulated them from the rest of the Marvel universe, at one time providing a solid reason for why Captain America never shows up, and equally giving them their own small world to grow inside of.

The fact that the characters were thrown apart in the first issue was perhaps the first and most grave mistake of the series. Each of the main heroes makes allies in their attempts to reunite with the others, though the connections are pretty weird. Gorgon meets some surfers on a beach, who decide that they will fight to the death for him, despite not knowing who he is? Lockjaw is hit by a truck, and Crystal falls in love for a short time with the guy that almost killed her dog? Karnak falls in love with a drug dealer? The interactions were stupid, and made it seem like the writers knew that they had to kill time in the series before Maximus' scheme could be dealt with.

The handling of space was weird as well, as we never really get an impression how a group of people mostly just wandering around Hawaii could find each other. Equally in Attilan which is a strange area, the characters just come and go, and are only ever challenged by guards when it works for the plot. Attilan seems to be a city built of only three rooms, which makes it surprising that the characters can't ever seem to confront one another, especially considering that one side has a teleporting dog.

Continuity

Despite the fact that continuity is not necessarily such a big deal in this series, it invariably ties itself into the bigger Marvel universe in an unfortunate way. First of all it bears mentioning that the series never utilized Easter Eggs in an effective way, and while it was a letdown for those wanting to see how the series fits into the greater picture, it was not a necessity. What was a bigger problem was the ending, which came exactly one week after Thor Ragnarok was released in theaters. The same end state is presented for both Ragnarok and Attilan, with characters saying something to the effect of "Ragnarok/Attilan is not a bunch of buildings, it is the people". The people then watch as their home crumbles behind them, only to be faced with a new and powerful threat.

Despite the fact that Marvel Studios does such a good job of continuing the narrative between its series and even its tv shows, this seemed like a rare mistake on their part, giving two stories the same ending.

Synopsis

When Daredevil came out on Netflix, no one was quite sure how it would fare, and so there was some uncertainty beforehand about whether it would be renewed or not, or if it would just stand alone as a one-shot. The same idea could seemingly apply to Inhumans, but the performance of the show was evidently not enough to warrant a second season.

There are a few unanswered questions at the end of the series, and specifically what the great threat was that Black Bolt referred to. Seeing as Marvel phase 2 is building up to a big throwdown with Thanos, it could mean that, and really this could be the best outcome for the characters in this series, not to be relegated to a below average television show, but to throw them on the big screen with their other heroic counterparts, even if it is just a cameo. Avengers: Infinity War is going to be a busy movie, with all the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy showing up, but it would be interesting to see if they could work in Black Bolt, Medusa and Crystal with an actual CGI budget behind them. The actors are strong enough to portray the characters, it just seems like they never really got a chance.

One of the main criticisms of the modern comic industry and especially of the big two publishers, is that the comics are lacking in diversity and when they have diversity that this diversity can be somewhat stereotypical. If one looks at either company, most of the heroes come from only one country (though the X-Men have done a good job at changing this) and most of them are white males. Attempts to add diversity in the 1970s were kind of hit-and-miss, with the first African-American heroes being racial stereotypes or worse. Black Lightning was a hero that talked like a black guy from the street, or at least how white people understood it, and despite being a teacher in private life was reduced to a caricature in his few adventures as a hero. If one looks at Vixen, the character is written both better and worse, as she has a totem which gives her the powers of African animals (though not particularly inventive) yet as a person she is only a model. At this stage of the game for the big two, it would make sense to have an African-American hero that is a doctor or a lawyer, or some other profession, which relies on more than looking good, but the examples of such characters are somewhat limited despite having had a long time to be developed otherwise.

DC and Marvel have done a lot in recent years to add to the overall diversity of their titles and their characters, but fans usually seem to think that there is more distance to go, but a big part of what is missing is that there has been no huge influx of new characters into comics in recent years. There are those that show up as secondary characters in comics, but they rarely fill out into major characters, and more often than not they get ignored. In terms of its own development though, DC and Marvel went through periods in the 1960s and 1970s when they were being very productive in terms of new characters, and while not all of them caught on, or even right away, they did after a while, and became important parts of the comic universes. The DC series Showcase in the 1960s and 1970s introduced a few names that might not be at the top of DC's best sellers, but who are characters that show up now and again to give some depth to bigger stories - Creeper, Dolphin, Metal Men, Challengers of the Unknown and Rip Hunter. The 1970s series Marvel Preview in back to back episodes introduced Star Lord and Rocket Raccoon, two characters that made the surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy so popular in theaters. The question then is whether DC and Marvel should have a series where creators can let loose within the broader universes and just create.

The lack of rules is a staple of the indies, with for instance Image allowing creators to keep rights to most of the characters that are created, but it is not a set of conditions that is as common at Marvel or DC, where editorial control decides what happens and what gets published. All things considered though it might be interesting to once again let creators let loose, even if the comics are losing money and even if it is just for a couple of years, just to see what comes out of it. Some female scientists? An African aid worker? A South American zoologist? These would not be necessary outcomes, but rather it would be interesting to see what creators would come up with if they were allowed to just cut loose. There would certainly still be a lot of white male heroes, but with a different outlook and different culture, it would likely also produce a lot of characters that were more in line with what the companies need going forward.

The Silver Age was one of the most defining periods in comic history, as it helped to shape the medium into what we know it to be now. Later developments would have gone through a different format if they were still using the characters as they existed in the Golden Age of comics. One of the hallmarks of the Silver Age was that it went through one specific major change. Whereas the Golden Age of comics relied heavily on the occult for the superpowers of its heroes, the Silver Age relied more on science and science fiction to populate its ideas. For instance, instead of being an Egyptain based hero, Hawkman became a space cop, and other characters got the same treatment as well, as little bits of science were thrown into character's stories to make them more realistic seeming. In the case of Marvel there was no need to revamp characters, and instead characters started off fresh with science and technology behind them, even if said science was as ambiguous as Cosmic Rays or Gamma Rays.

What many don't know about this period is that the female characters of the era got a somewhat different makeover as opposed to the male characters. While the male characters were reimagined as space or science based, the female characters were reimagined in a completely different way. While superheroes had declined in popularity in the 1950s, two new genres had arisen to fill the void, romance and science fiction. Both Marvel and DC had a glut of romance titles, some which came and went quickly, others which ran for several hundred issues. There were many science fiction series as well, many of which later served as partial basis for space-based super heroes. With only two prominent female characters in comics at the time - Wonder Woman and Lois Lane were the only two who had their own series - it seemed as though the way forward for the male characters was through science and for the female characters was through romance. So while Green Lantern was battling new alien foes, Wonder Woman, or her de-aged version Wonder Girl (not Donna Troy) was trying to figure out who she loved more between Mer-Boy and Bird Boy. This same focus went on for some time as well. While the male heroes were getting their makeovers earlier in the 1960s, Wonder Woman and Lois Lane hung on to the romance genre, so much so that Wonder Woman essentially skipped the whole genre of science fiction inspiration and went into a short lived kung-fu inpsired period before going into her own version of the Silver Age. The Kung Fu genre might have been as short lived in comics as it was in movies, but it still gave us some memorable characters like Richard Dragon, Shang-Chi and Iron Fist who still are popular to this day, but even Wonder Woman was not allowed that re-write.

The comic industry doesn't really need to be criticized for its focus on its female characters in this period, and especially not necessarily DC. Even the scientific female characters that existed as Marvel were more there as props than as heroes, as The Wasp and Invisible Girl (Woman) were damsel-in-distress who had to have the science explained to them. It was a reality of a different time and place where female characters were simply not as popular as their male counterparts because the industry was mostly focused on young male readers, instead of the much broader demographic that it serves today. The young girl readers were focused more on romance than heroics, even a character such as Night Nurse at Marvel who would be later rolled into superherodom, started off as a romantic character in the early 1970s with basic plots centered around trying to find a man while also trying to find some success in her career. Popular culture was not as concerned with female characters as well when it came to genres such as science fiction, fantasy or action, and in comparison comics could be seen as somewhat ahead of other mediums when it came to heroes like Wonder Woman or many others who followed along shortly after in the middle of the Silver Age.

What is perhaps more interesting to consider is what might have been with these female characters if the creators had known what was going to be instead of relying off of what was popular at the time. The female characters at Marvel might have been given a more scientific outlook (for instance, it would make sense that Susan Storm would know a decent amount of science if she were dating one of the greatest scientific minds in the history of the world) but what would be more interesting would be to see where DC's main two female leads might have gone. Would Wonder Woman still be from an ancient race of Amazons? Or would she have come from an interstellar tribe of female warriors? Or a cross dimensional clan of powerful beings? Would Lois Lane have remained the same reporter that came from humble background to become one of the most famous print reporters in the world? Or might she have been reimagined as an alien reporter sent to follow the career of Superman while hiding as a human, much as Superman did in his Clark Kent persona? Only some non-canon stories ever really got into exploring some potentially universe changing questions of if this had ever been done. Thus in Flashpoint's Lois Lane and the Resistance we see Lois Lane reimagined as a facsimile of herself but also as a freedom fighter in a post-apocalyptic setting, or Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating Wonder Woman, recasting the Amazon as a form of a Incan goddess from Peru.

In either case, at least as the medium continues to grow and change it is still not impossible that some of these changes were to still take place. Just because these characters missed their silver age makeovers over fifty years ago, doesn't mean that they can never happen, even with comic fans being tied to continuity more than many fans in other mediums. Some jaws would drop if it was revealed that Lois Lane, had always been an alien double agent sent to monitor Superman, her own secret identity hidden from us for over seventy years, but the case is that this popularity still exists. And while people continue to debate pants of no-pants for Wonder Woman, the reality of it is that there is a far deeper revamp of the character which is owed and overdue.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the biggest developments to hit mainstream popular culture in the past decade. It has changed the landscape of how movies are made and the prospective careers of Hollywood stars. In the 1990s, superhero movies were still considered somewhat as niche movies. They came out every now and then (mostly Batman at the time) but weren't really considered to be on the cinematic map. They were so mishandled that the 1990s saw the introduction of the Joel Schumacher Batman films which were a throwback to the Batman television show from the 1960s. There were signs that Hollywood was getting its act together in the following years with the Spider-Man movies, but equally Hollywood still didn't really seem to know what to do with superheroes with the bad entries like Catwoman, and completely average entries like the Hulk and the Fantastic Four movies. This was all solved in the late 2000s, in part by the Nolan Dark Knight and in part by the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The latter was not so much of a plan as a discovery when numerous Marvel movies far exceeded expectations, starting off with Iron Man and continuing through a sequence of movies for Thor, Captain America and the Hulk. Although wildly popular with fans, there are always those that will want to find any sign of weakness and so there started a few complaints about the films, and one of the strongest ones was that the villains are weak. Are the villains weak? Well, yes, but for the following reasons the villains kind of have to be weak:

Too Many Origin Stories! - One of the other biggest criticisms of the newest movies is that there are too many origin stories associated with the character. One of the biggest pre-criticisms of the newest MCU Spider-Man movie is that fans don't want another origin story for the character that they are so familiar with. Granted that comics have re-entered mainstream pop culture for the first time since the golden age, but the average movie fan doesn't know the origin story of most super-heroes (aside from Superman, Batman and Spider-Man) and so some level of origin is necessary in order to establish the main characters. After all, character development forms the backbone of what makes the movie viewers relate to the main character, and if we were forced to relate to a character without sufficient back story then we would have trouble doing so. With origin stories and character development a big part of the stories, then the villains back story often gets pushed to the background, glossed over, but their reasons for being evil don't usually go much beyond the standard formula. It therefore shouldn't be a surprise that villains come off being less than engaging when there isn't much for fans to go off of. Either non-comic fans don't know the background, or comic fans feel as though the background isn't developed enough.

Death Matters - On that same subject, it is completely plausible to say that each franchise shouldn't be judged by its villains until at least the second entry in the series. After all, if the first movie is meant to establish the hero, then the second can be used to establish the villain. In certain cases this can be seen to be true, in that the most successful of the villains, Loki, started off weak in Thor but then has become more approachable as he has moved through the sequence of movies. Part of the problem with the villains in this case though is that unlike in the comics, that death is a real possibility in the movies. Thus far we have seen the death Iron Monger, Whiplash, Ultron (presumably), the Red Skull, Ronan, Killian, Malekith, Yellowjacket and pretty much all of Hydra. Seeing as only Loki has ever really gotten a chance to be developed over multiple movies, it is not really surprising that he is a character that is considered the best, primarily because his

Digging Deep for Talent - Another part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it has in part become a victim of its own success. Fans are eager to see the movies, and as supply meets demand, movie stars who are eager for name recognition want to star in them. Thus the real world side of the MCU has gone from a position where it was seen to be taking a gamble on Robert Downey Jr. (whose career was somewhat resurrected by way of Iron Man) to Academy Award winners like Natalie Portman and Robert Redford willfully signing on for roles. The problem with this is obvious as it relates to the villains, as the MCU is trying increasingly to get bankable stars, but the stars want more recognition than just getting killed off as the replaceable villain.

Too Many Villains in the Wrong Places - Any fan of the MCU knows that despite its popularity, that it is composed of many of the B-List character from their titles. While each character has their die-hard fans, these are not the characters that were sold off for their own series, primarily because there was little interest in them before. It was possible to sell the rights to the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four because these were considered marketable properties, and when Marvel finally got interested in its own movie universe, it was left picking over the best of the rest. The problem with this is that with the heroes of these franchises so went the villains, including many of Marvel's most iconic. Would it be cool if Magneto was the next major villain of the next Avengers movie? Or if Doctor Doom showed up to battle Thor? In both cases most fans would say yes, but that just isn't possible.

What Villains Anyway? - Who is the arch-enemy of Spider-Man? The Green Goblin (partial credit for Doc Ock). The arch-enemy of the X-Men? Magneto of course. The Fantastic Four? Doctor Doom. How about ... Ant-Man? Ummmm? Anyone have an answer? Or now that they have killed off the Red Skull, who is Captain America's next most dangerous enemy? That one is also kind of hard to answer. While some heroes in the Marvel Comics are celebrated for their villains, others just don't have any that are on the map. Of course comic fans could debate over the particulars of these questions, but ask a non-comic fan and they will have no idea. As some fans are asking for movies for characters like the Black Widow, the question of notable villains becomes even worse.

The Changing Landscape of the MCU - Part of the popularity of the MCU is that it has taken the same Marvel Heroes and given them a bit of a makeover, particularly in the realm of science and technology. It started with Iron Man, but every hero has gotten a polish of science (even if it is movie science) to make them a bit more approachable to the fans. The most obvious case for this is Thor, whose history now sounds a lot more like his background being super-powered dimensional traveler than ancient god. If one looks at Iron Man's arch-enemy, the Mandarin, this makes it less of a fit. The character was alluded to in the first Iron Man movie, but as is evident from Iron Man 3, they really don't know how to approach this character, other than to make him into something that he is not. Thus some characters don't really fit as well into the MCU, particularly those based on magic (and it will be interesting to see how Doctor Strange changes this.)

Despite these limitations, there have been a few good villains thus far in the MCU. Loki stands out, as does the Snowden-like SHIELD/Hydra apparatus from Captain America Winter Soldier. So too is Thanos being built up as well developed villain. Looking a bit farther, the Kingpin from the Daredevil television series was also pretty strong, though in part because he had 13 episodes to develop over, often sharing equal time with Matt Murdock. There are good villains out there, and Marvel Films and Television does know how to build them, only there are a lot of challenges in doing so.