Marvel and Disney Plus are like woozy newlyweds realizing the honeymoon phase has officially worn off.
Fresh off the dumpster fire that was Secret Invasion and the CGI nightmare that was She-Hulk: Attorney at Law before that, the superhero studio has struggled to maintain a healthy viewership on the streaming platform, with numbers that have steadily trajected downward with every passing new show. The MCU needs every break it can catch, basically.
For that reason, the Mouse House’s decision to release The Little Mermaid, its highest-grossing movie of the year (sans Marvel) on Disney Plus the same day that Marvel plans to drop the second season of I Am Groot feels as head-scratching as a flea-infested chimpanzee.
Our favorite underwater princess and bite-sized Flora Colossus will each debut on September 6. The five-episode palate-cleansing Marvel show couldn’t have come at a better time for the MCU. The rotten reception to Secret Invasion and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a double whammy for the studio, punctuated only by James Gunn’s well-received Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
The news of I Am Groot’s sophomore outing just so happened to coincide with the trailer for Loki season 2, set to release a few short weeks later. From afar, the rapid succession of announcements read like a hurried dog covering its tracks after dropping a hearty pile of dung in the snow, that dung being Secret Invasion’s dreadful finale.
Choosing to release The Little Mermaid on Disney Plus the same day as I Am Groot isn’t a recipe for failure — per se — but if Disney Plus wanted to ensure it got the most amount of eyes as possible on its latest Marvel project, then it probably should have chosen any of the other three Wednesdays in September.
At the very least, intentionally or not, the move snubs Marvel’s favorite Flora Colossus of the undivided attention he deserves. To that, I say: “I am Groot.” And yes, there was an expletive in there.