UPDATE: On August 27, 2021 All Hail the King got added to the service as an individual short. The others are almost certainly close behind.
One of the most surprisingly absences from the service (and there are a lot of them, to be fair) is the Marvel Cinematic Universe shorts that served to tie things together in Phase 1 and in Phase 2 featured a pilot for what would become the Agent Carter (2015) series. Casual fans didn’t know they existed because they were extras on the Blu Ray releases. Disney Plus would have been an ideal place to bring them to a much larger audience where they belong.
There has recently been an increased amount of noise about their absence for 2 reasons:
- Shang-Chi (2021) is coming out in September and one of the characters mentioned in the All Hail the King (2014) One-Shot is the villain present in the Shang-Chi trailers… It’s all connected.
- Disney made considerable efforts in recent months to fill in the gaps under the Star Wars brand tile
Disney Plus sorts its content into 5 main hubs or “brand tiles” on the home screen – Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Between April and June a significant effort went into adding the missing Star Wars titles including the old Droids (1985) cartoon, and the Direct-to-Video Ewok films.
In the wake of this work, it would be nice to see the same effort put towards filling in the many gaps in Marvel’s brand tile. Some titles can’t come due to distribution rights issues – this includes content owned by Sony like Spectacular Spider-Man (2008), the Lionsgate animated films, and The Incredible Hulk (2008) distributed by Universal Pictures.
Disney does have access to roughly 15 Marvel titles that remain unstreamable – and perhaps the biggest surprise is these 5 One Shots. Since they’re part of the MCU, they were expected by most people to have been included at launch along with the films that they premiered alongside on Blu Ray.
One of the shorts actually is streaming – Agent Carter (2013) is under the Iron Man 3 (2013) “Extras” tab that nobody ever clicks through (get rid of tabs, Disney, please).
The full list of One-Shot shorts are as follows:
- The Consultant (2011)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer (2011)
- Item 47 (2012)
- Agent Carter (2013)
- All Hail the King (2014)
The Marvel brand tile features an MCU timeline that is incomplete without the shorts listed. Phase 1 is missing these 3 titles plus Universal’s Hulk film. I actually sent Kevin Feige an e-mail the other day asking him to please advocate to get these titles added soon.
Other Obscure Marvel Titles Missing Include:
Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD (1998) – Yes, before Samuel L. Jackson there was a David Hasselhoff-starring Fox take on the hero. Now that Disney owns the former Twentieth Century Fox assets, they own this.
Spider-Man (1967) – Everyone knows the iconic Spider-Man theme. You’ve also seen the memes. Not streaming this is a crime.
The Incredible Hulk (1982)
Do you think Disney will ever add these 8 missing titles? There are more – perhaps we’ll feature some in our Missing Titles section in the future 🙂 And please, help us get these titles added by requesting them here. Just click “Give Feedback” and “Request a film or show.” You get 3 options. So rinse and repeat until you’ve requested all 8!
Drew Ryan is a film, TV, and Disney geek. He has degrees in English, Student Personnel Administration, and Library & Information Science from Lawrence University, Concordia University-Wisconsin, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Interested in the minutia and licensing of streaming service content, he is always publishing lists, suggestions, and advocating for Disney’s missing library to be added to Disney+. Drew subscribes to Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and Paramount+. You can find him waxing nostalgic over classic Disney Channel or geeking out over Marvel, CW shows, & Disney on Twitter.
