Dune: Prophecy and the Decline of the Spin-Off

But there have been a few successes even among the expanded universes. There are several species of spin-off, and whether a show rises or falls often depends more on what kind of spin-off it is. The easiest way to categorize is to name the particular relationship the spin-off series chooses to have to its source text. For instance, there’s the kind that lets us break off with a secondary character who’s either particularly beloved or seemingly worthy of a more complex storyline. This is very much the central guiding principle of lots of MCU TV. Loki, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel—these shows maintain sometimes tenuous, sometimes meaningful plot connections to the films, but, largely, they’re about building the universe through attention to supporting characters. Within the MCU, at least, these series also tend to have pretty distinctive stand-alone aesthetics or narrative gimmicks. They’re connected to the mothership by the character, but they feel formally different.

Then there are the spin-off series whose whole reason for being is that they don’t feel different. From a conceptual standpoint, if not from the standpoint of the makers themselves, the guiding principle of such series is for there simply to be more of the original. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and even Obi-Wan Kenobi fit this mold. Recently canceled Star Wars series The Acolyte was meant for this category too, but building out the world too much, and building it out in ways that implied some critique of the original franchise, was a step too far for Disney. For whatever its many charms and virtues, The Acolyte felt fundamentally like something else, and it was punished for that. The gold standard of this category, of course, is House of the Dragon, which turned back the clock on Game of Thrones just long enough for there to be a new set of Targaryens and Starks and for the storyworld to stock up on dragons. Sure, there are some nominal revisions to the original’s framing, but the main thing recommending House of the Dragon is that it quite simply feels like more Game of Thrones. Some of the breakout character series work on their own—WandaVision, in particular, benefited from some big metafictional risks paying off—but few of the More, Please spin-offs transcend, or even rival, the original material. They scratch an itch and don’t really do much more than that.

The best spin-offs in the current era—Agatha All Along and Andor—understand, to some extent, that sticking too close to the original is a fool’s errand. There are fewer series like this because spin-offs are definitionally low-risk, and because original shows like Agatha and Andor are definitionally risky. But when they sneak through, they can be special. They offer access to some breakout characters, for sure, and they offer more contact with the central beloved I.P., but they largely constitute their own universes. They could exist, truly without much trouble, without the mothership. Agatha All Along succeeded because its world was built so far outside of the MCU that it had to actually do some world-building. Kathryn Hahn is an electric performer—and most of the cast, from Aubrey Plaza to Patti Lupone, is working overtime to elevate every scene—but it would not work the same way if it were a series knitted too tightly into the narrative arc of whatever “Phase” MCU is in at the moment. The reason I know this is that the worst episode of the series, by a country mile, is the long episode dedicated to revealing one of the character’s surprising connections to the main MCU. Moving on from that episode felt like a relief; the show rejected all that lore like a foreign organ.