The Marvel Cinematic Universe promised to be something audiences had never seen before. It was a franchise where the films would be far more interconnected than those in any other property before, recreating the experience of being able to read a comic book and see a character pop up for an issue before they head off on an adventure of their own. This unique quality made the MCU a pop culture juggernaut for over a decade after its launch in 2008. But that was then; now, what was once the MCU’s biggest feature has become its worst bug.

Indeed, since 2019, it’s become more refreshing for MCU movies or shows to be as disconnected from the rest of the franchise as possible (as was the case with “Moon Knight”), lest audiences find themselves having to do endless amounts of homework just to understand the plot. It also doesn’t help that the MCU has left several loose ends dangling for years, only to eventually tie them off in an underwhelming fashion (like what happened in “Captain America: Brave New World”).

But a franchise that requires viewers to watch dozens of movies just to understand a new one is not the same as a successful expanded universe. There are better ways to do interconnectivity. Take “Thunderbolts,*” a film that acts as the MCU’s answer to “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” in that they both focus on superhero teams composed of characters who were introduced in other projects. As with that Arrowverse show, it’s useful but not wholly necessary to understand where the heroes in “Thunderbolts*” are coming from — because it’s not really their past that matters in the story at hand so much as who they are when they’re together.

Now, it appears Marvel has another ace up its sleeve (one that shows a better path to achieving interconnectivity) in the form of “Eyes of Wakanda,” an animated TV show that offers phenomenal world-building without requiring lots of homework. Those attending the Annecy International Animation Film Festival got a chance to watch the very first episode of the series, and it’s shaping up to be something pretty special … as well as, hopefully, a sign of things to come for the MCU.

“Eyes of Wakanda” is an anthology series about Wakanda’s attempts to retrieve stolen artifacts throughout history. The first episode, titled “Into the Lion’s Den,” starts out in Crete in 1260 B.C. and follows a disgraced former member of the Dora Milaje as they pursue the “Lion,” a man who defected from the Wakandan guard in order to run his own band of pirates, using stolen Wakandan technology to power his kingdom. The whole thing takes inspiration from the real-life hypothesized tribe known as the Sea Peoples, which terrorized Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean region in the Late Bronze Age. (The Sea Peoples also played a prominent role in the excellent second season of Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Primal.”)

The “Black Panther” spin-off is visually stunning and unlike anything else we’ve seen from Marvel Animation so far. Gone is the 2.5D look of “What If…?,” with Axis Animation creating a graphic 3D style full of 2D visual effects and exaggerated designs that make it feel like a comic book. Being animated, “Eyes of Wakanda” only further bolsters “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler and his team’s efforts to infuse Wakanda with a sense of cultural specificity, from its attire and buildings all the way down to its residents’ body shapes and skin tones.

In terms of the story, “Eyes of Wakanda” manages to be self-contained even as it explores the long history of the fictional eponymous nation and expands on the prologue from Coogler’s first “Black Panther” movie, revealing in greater detail just how Wakandan society became so advanced. As “Into the Lion’s Den” director Todd Harris explained after the episode screening, “Eyes of Wakanda” is meant to explore how the tactics and the culture of Wakanda have evolved over time and the means by which the country has stayed preserved for as long as it has in the MCU.

As each episode moves to a new time period and focuses on different artifacts stolen from the country (but with a sense of connection between them, as they each explore the ramifications of the episodes before them), this feels like the perfect way to expand the Marvel universe. Sure, there will be some familiar MCU characters making appearances (as Harris confirmed we’ll see Iron First at one point, though not the version you might expect), but what makes this all the more appealing is that the show also functions as a history lesson about the MCU at large.

As Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) put it at the end of the original “Iron Man” movie when he showed up at Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) mansion, “You think you’re the only superhero in the world?” We’ve gotten glimpses of the MCU’s long history before, including flashbacks featuring the original Ant-Man and the Wasp. Still, we’ve never gotten something like “Eyes of Wakanda,” i.e. an expanded history lesson that shows how the MCU has evolved and changed over the centuries.

This is something the “Star Wars” franchise excels at — exploring different corners of its universe, expanding on certain time periods, and painting an overall more complete picture of its fictional setting. Even after so many MCU films and shows, including all those limited series that function specifically as world-building, the property is still strangely lacking in comparison.

That is what makes “Eyes of Wakanda” feel so special. It’s a show that seems to fulfill the promise of the MCU by recreating the experience of reading a comic book and following a single character, only to discover there’s a special one-shot exploring their past and ancestry. It helps that Wakanda is already the most fleshed-out place in the MCU, a country with a sense of history, tradition, and culture that viewers are eager to see more of (as opposed to, say, all those same-y alien planets we’ve barely had time to explore in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies).

“Eyes of Wakanda” will begin streaming on August 6, 2025, on Disney+.