Feige described Marvel Studios' approach to their television series in January 2021, explaining that streaming on Disney+ gave Marvel Studios flexibility with the formats for each series. He said some were being developed as "one off" miniseries that were intended to lead into feature films, though additional seasons could be added to these in the future. Other series were always intended to cover multiple seasons while still being connected to the films,such as Loki. These could have several years between the release of seasons, similar to series like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things.Feige added that each miniseries or season was intended to be around six hours of content, but this would be split in different ways depending on the story being told, such as six hour-long episodes, or nine or ten half-hour episodes.Marvel Studios' earliest series were directed by a single person, but later series have multiple directors taking on different numbers of episodes. Feige said this happened due to a combination of logistics, the needs of each story, and the studio's "own internal learnings of making longform television". He said the studio would continue varying the number of directors on future series as needed.
Marvel Studios uses the term "head writer" instead of the traditional showrunner title, since they approach their television series as if they were six hour-long films. They encourage the series' directors to be in the writers room and part of the creative process (much like the feature films) in addition to Feige and the Marvel Studios executives assigned to each series. This approach was confirmed by WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer,The Falcon and the Winter Soldier director Kari Skogland, and Loki season one director Kate Herron, with Skogland describing the approach as "effective and efficient" since the series are too much for a single showrunner to take on.Despite the head writer term, each series has multiple writers and a writers room that the head writer leads, and they also use "created for television by" credits for the head writers.Explaining the decision-making process and hierarchy for Marvel Studios' first three series, Loki season one head writer Michael Waldron said the head writer of each series would have final say on creative decisions before filming began. At that point, the series shifted to a "more feature centric model" where the director takes on the role that a traditional showrunner might have and has the final say for creative decisions while on set and in post-production, with the head writer still present on set for any necessary rewrites and during post-production.