Exclusive: Michael Waldron Talks 'Heels' on Netflix, CM Punk and Bringing Wrestling Into the MCU

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

​Heels, one of the best original pro wrestling-centric series in recent years, has officially joined the Netflix family.

The show ran for two seasons on Starz between 2021 and 2023 before being unceremoniously canceled. It featured Stephen Amell in the lead as Jack Spade along with Alexander Ludwig, Mary McCormack and Allen Maldonado, among others.

What went on in the ring was far from Heels' only focus. It followed the tumultuous relationship of two brothers attempting to carry the legacy of their late father's beloved wrestling promotion and the many obstacles they, and everyone else behind the scenes of Duffy Wrestling League, were forced to face along the way.

Season 2's incredible cliffhanger of an ending left the door open for a third season that has yet to materialize. Michael Waldron, who served as its creator and an executive producer, hopes that its arrival on Netflix will increases its chances of being brought back in the not-too-distant future.

​"Season 2 is not the end of the show," Waldron confirmed in an exclusive interview with WrestleRant. "We end on a cliffhanger. There's a lot of great story left to be told with a big ensemble cast. I think ultimately that will be up to the audience. If the audience finds it and responds to it, which I hope they do, we would love to make more. One of the exciting things about it being on Netflix and Netflix's relationship with WWE, there's a real opportunity to integrate the WWE more fully into the show.”

In addition to Heels, Waldron has an accomplished career in show business working on shows such as Rick & Morty and Community, creating the Disney+ hit series Loki and scripting Marvel's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2022.

He credits Heels and its original home of Starz for jumpstarting his success.

"I'm so grateful to Starz for making the show and taking a chance on me," Waldron said. "It kicked off my career many years ago. They let us make something we were proud of and we kind of got away with murder on it. I just think, ultimately, the audience wasn't able to find it, but the folks who do find it seemed to really, really respond to it, especially the wrestling fans. We made it with a lot of love toward that world, mainly with wrestling my first great love. We always said, 'Man, if this was on Netflix, this would be the biggest show in the world.' And now, we got our bluff called and we'll find out.”

The timing couldn't be better with WWE set to bring its flagship show Monday Night Raw to the platform at the onset of 2025 and possibly its entire library of content soon after. The Mr. McMahon docuseries chronicling the controversial life of former WWE chairman Vince McMahon was also recently released by Netflix.

With Heels a part of streaming service as of September 15th, the potential is there for synergy between the two and WWE getting involved in the third season if it were to be greenlit. Waldron compared Heels to an underground operation in itself (a la the DWL) and would be excited to see the WWE world merge with theirs knowing there are people in the company who are fans of the show.

That includes WWE star Phil "CM Punk" Brooks, who appeared in the first two seasons as indie wrestler Ricky Rabies.

​"Punk is amazing," Waldron said. "Such a great actor. Such a hard worker and so lovely to be around. I got to know him way back when because he actually auditioned for the lead role Jack Spade a long time ago. I saw him work with an acting coach and take such great strides in a very short time as an actor. Immediately, you see why these actors go on to become the biggest movie stars in the world because they're the hardest workers and work so hard to get where they are. When we were lucky enough to make the show, we knew we had to get him in there as Ricky Rabies.”

Waldron went on to say that Punk makes Heels feel "real" and praised him for having a likable presence and making the cast better. After jokingly taking credit for his 2021 return to wrestling following a seven-year hiatus (which coincidentally coincided with Heels' first season that summer), he referred to the multi-time WWE world champion as a "fucking legend" and that they'd take as much Punk as they could, time permitting.

"That's that dude you want to watch this show and says, 'Yeah, this is the real thing,'" Waldron said about Punk believing they got it right with Heels.

The mastermind behind Loki and Multiverse of Madness has long been a legitimate wrestling fan, having grown up on both WWF and WCW in the late '90s. He named Sting and Shawn Michaels as his top two favorite wrestlers of all-time and said that he used to watch The Heartbreak Kid's greatest Ladder matches while eating lunch.

“I was a WCW kid, I was not just a WWF kid," he said. "Sting was really my guy. I'd be watching Nitro and taping Raw or vice versa. It's probably Sting or Shawn Michaels. Sting was what Batman and Superman are to those kids. That's what Sting was to me growing up. Just in terms of pound-for-pound, the amount of entertainment I've gotten watching someone perform, Shawn Michaels.”

Punk's recent rival Drew McIntyre made his debut on the silver screen in The Killer's Game just last month, joining the likes of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, John Cena and Dave Bautista as wrestlers to transition into actors. The latter three all have experience with superhero blockbusters with Rock portraying Black Adam in 2022, John Cena portraying Peacemaker in 2021's The Suicide Squad, and Bautista portraying Drax the Destroyer in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

CM Punk is that dude you want to watch this show and says, 'Yeah, this is the real thing.'

Likewise, active WWE star Becky Lynch was rumored to have a role in The Eternals before it was cut, and former World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins has been confirmed to be involved in Captain America: Brave New World out next year. As a lifelong wrestling fan, Waldron sees the similarities between the two worlds.

"I certainly spread the good word of what a great actor [CM Punk] is over there," he said. "There are wrestling fans in the halls of Marvel and we talk a lot about how the parallels of what we do at Marvel and what the world of wrestling is are obvious. I wasn't a comic book fan growing up, I was a wrestling fan and I think that was what prepared me to work in that Marvel world for so long.”

The comic book realm very much deals with good guys versus bad guys, not unlike the professional wrestling industry. Heels itself was about "babyfaces" becoming "heels" and vice versa with the DWL audience turning on Ace (the face of the league) in the pilot of the show.

Waldron says he's forever been fascinated with that dynamic, drawing comparison between goody two shoes Hulk Hogan joining the villainous New World Order (nWo for short) in 1996 and Games of Thrones' infamous "Red Wedding". With wrestling being one of the first serialized shows ever, he believes that the business laid the groundwork for other epic dramas such as The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

"Loki is a great example," Waldron said. "Loki is a show about a villain becoming a hero. I'm always fascinated in the double turn. The Stone Cold-Bret Hart Survivor Series [match]. That's such a brilliant feat of storytelling, when the hero becomes the hero and the villain becomes the hero and I'm always on the lookout for that stuff. We tried to do that in Loki, tried to do that in Doctor Strange. Just finding moral complexity in these characters.”

Waldron praised the Monday Night War between WWF/E and WCW in the late '90s for the way the performers evolved out of comic booky characters and weren't purely good or bad. There was more nuance in the told to be told, which is what he and everyone else at Marvel are consistently trying to achieve.

"That's why I think that a show like Heels has a great shot on Netflix because it's a show you can watch and say, 'Oh, shit, this is kind of everything,'" he said. "Politics is wrestling. Superhero movies are wrestling. Everything is wrestling... I think everything is wrestling and that's why WWE continues to be ahead of the curve and why I'm really glad this show is coming out on Netflix when it is.”

Waldron aims to do more seasons of Heels if it takes off on Netflix and is currently in production for the college football comedy series set to stream on Hulu called Chad Powers starring Glen Powell. His future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has also been a hot topic of conversation of late with Nexus Point News reporting that he's left Avengers: Doomsday (formerly Kang Dynasty) but remains attached to the subsequent Avengers installment, Secret Wars.

Heels is now streaming on Netflix.

SEE ALSO: Exclusive: Caleb Konley Explains Why You Should Be Watching Juggalo Championship Wrestling