Netflix will get its own version of The Avengers later this year with The Defenders, which collects Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist together for a summer event unlike any other on television. Not much is known about the grounded superhero series so far, but as we get closer to its premiere, showrunner Marco Ramirez has begun teasing what’s in store for us.
In a recent interview with EW (via Screen Rant), Ramirez revealed how he approached the project and how it’s ultimately about “a family of orphans”:
This will be a serialized story that feels like it is about one kind of contained event and story in our world. It’ll be one satisfying, self-contained piece … We never wanted anyone to feel like they’re a guest on anyone else’s show. It’s weirdly about all four of them. It’s about all of their collective stories finally folding in on each other … To me, it’s about four independent thinkers on their own flawed journeys who realize for a brief moment in time, they’re actually stronger together than they are apart. It’s ultimately a story about a family of orphans who are very grown-up but still have more growing up to do.
With Iron Fist set to premiere in March, The Defenders serves as an in-between series that will, like The Avengers films, take place in-between these characters’ individual stories. The 8 episode first outing is shorter than the usual 13 episodes found in the other seasons, but the story, which Ramirez describes as “kind of a shot of adrenaline to the neck,” will make its limited time worth our while. In short, prepare for something self-contained and earth-shattering.
I can’t describe too much, but I can say that we knew it had to be something big. We knew it would take something massive to pull these four characters from their individual worlds to work together, but also small enough that it felt like it existed in our world. It needed to be a crisis that brought these people together, but it still needed to be a very street-level crisis. That’s the world we’re dealing with, so it couldn’t be anything too sci-fi or too supernatural or big.
Though it’s unclear when exactly it’ll premiere, word on the web suggests that The Defenders will hit Netflix in June. Stay tuned for more.
