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When Oscar winner Sir Ben Kingsley was cast as the villain of 2013’s Iron Man 3, no one could have predicted where things would go from there. For starters, Kingsley wasn’t actually playing iconic Marvel villain the Mandarin; he was Trevor Slattery, a washed-up actor posing as the Mandarin. From there, Kingsley reprised the role in a 2014 short about his character, All Hail the King, and again in 2021 with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. That, by all accounts, could have been it. But Trevor remains.
Kingsley and Trevor will return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year in the new Disney+ show Wonder Man. The show follows both Trevor and a fellow actor named Simon Williams (played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) as they go after the leading roles in a new superhero movie called, you guessed it, “Wonder Man.” It’s Kingsley’s best chance yet to dive into what makes Trevor tick, and he’s still a bit in shock that it’s happening.
“During Shang-Chi, [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige and [director] Destin [Daniel Cretton] suggested to me the possibility of Trevor reappearing for the fourth time in a TV series,” Kingsley told Entertainment Weekly. “We didn’t even know the title, and I said, ‘I’d be thrilled.’ I love revisiting Trevor—there’s so many layers to him. [This] series does see Trevor before he got the role of Mandarin, and then of course after, so it’s a real biography—it’s a biopic of Trevor in four episodes.”
Wonder Man, which debuts on Disney+ on January 27, 2026, is actually eight episodes, so we aren’t sure exactly what he means by that last part. But the prospect of seeing the character both before he took on this role that changed his life and what the impact is after is very intriguing, especially as he’ll be doing it with Simon Williams, a character who, as early clips have revealed, actually has powers.
“[Trevor] sees in Simon a friend, a colleague, but he also sees Simon as someone he can absolutely exploit for his own ends,” Kingsley said. “It’s quite a classic, basic human condition story. You are associated with somebody and you have an affinity with that person, but at the same time, you know that you’re going to have to exploit that person to get to where you need to be.”
Read more from Kingsley over at Entertainment Weekly. And keep an eye out for Wonder Man in January. We have a feeling it’s going to be great.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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