The 100%-Rated Netflix Superhero Series Everyone’s Bingeing — 2.7 Million Views and Counting
Nearly a decade in the making, a wild new Netflix series once intended as Stan Lee’s final screen adaptation has erupted with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes critics score, sky-high audience ratings, and millions of verified views.
Netflix just dropped a new superhero oddball, and it turns out people really like it. Critics are all-in, audiences are way into it, and the view count is already in the millions. It is not MCU- polished; think The Boys or The Umbrella Academy, but lighter on the gore and cynicism, heavier on awkward laughs and messy powers.
Quick basics
- Title: The WONDERfools (8 episodes)
- Creator: Kang Eun-kyung
- Star: Cha Eun-woo (yes, the K-pop singer from Astro)
- Release: May 15, all at once on Netflix
- Vibe: Comedy fantasy about superpowered screwups who can’t fully control what they can do
- Scores: 100% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes (from a small number of reviews), 96% audience rating
- Views: 2.7 million verified views in the first few days, per Netflix. You may see 9 million referenced elsewhere; if that’s an update, it isn’t clearly sourced in the same breath, so file that under 'probably climbing, but exact window unclear.'
What the show actually is
It’s a small-town mystery with a comedy engine powered by heroes who are more clumsy than corrupt. The joke isn’t that they’re bad people; it’s that they can’t quite steer their abilities, which leads to a lot of accidental chaos and most of the humor. Tonally, it sits closer to the misfit energy of The Boys or The Umbrella Academy than anything in the MCU, just without the ultra-violent bite.
"In the weeks leading up to the turn of the millennium, the small Korean town of Haeseong City is gripped by a series of unsettling events. People are vanishing without a trace, and an eerie new church is taking hold - a chilling echo of the horrors the town thought it had long ago buried. But for The WONDERfools' trio of ordinary misfits, they’re more concerned with their own issues, until they wake up with newfound superpowers and discover that they’re the only ones who can save their town."
How this almost became a Stan Lee swan song
Here’s the behind-the-scenes wrinkle: back in 2018, this project was announced as an adaptation of an original Stan Lee concept called The B-Team. Not a comic, just a Lee idea about a bunch of B-tier heroes who couldn’t control their powers going up against the mad scientists who gave them those powers. The option on that story wasn’t even picked up until after Lee’s death, and his production company helped shepherd the early development. Classic Lee DNA: flawed heroes, powers they don’t fully command, good vs. evil. But by the time actual production kicked off, the show had a new name (The WONDERfools) and Lee’s concept was no longer the foundation. Same spirit of everyday weirdos with powers, totally different blueprint.
So is it any good?
The numbers say yes, with a couple asterisks. That 100% Rotten Tomatoes score is legit but it’s based on a small critic pool, so expect it to move. The audience rating at 96% is the louder signal, and the early Netflix view count backs it up. Over on Reddit, the consensus basically boils down to: it feels fresh because the heroes act like real friends who wing it, the powers misfire in funny ways, and the comedic timing lands fast. Multiple folks say they were hooked within the first 10 minutes.
Bottom line: if you want a super-series that’s more charmingly clumsy than grim, with a late-90s Korean small-town mystery running underneath, The WONDERfools is worth a full-weekend binge.