It was huge news when it was first announced back in 2013 that Netflix were developing a slate of TV shows based on Marvel Comics characters, given that the big screen MCU was already one of the most popular brands in the entire entertainment industry. While we ultimately ended up with 161 episodes spread out over six individual series, the general consensus was that Netflix’s Marvel experiment was largely enjoyable, but also wildly inconsistent.
Jessica Jones and Daredevil were the most widely-praised by far, Luke Cage and The Punisher fell somewhere in the middle, while poor Iron Fist didn’t seem to have many fans at all. Even the heavily-hyped Defenders miniseries, which fans were hoping would be a small-screen, city-level version of The Avengers, turned out to be a disappointment.
As soon as the news broke that Disney were developing their own streaming service, of which the MCU would be one of the crown jewels, it seemed as though time was up for the Netflix shows. That turned out to be the case, as they were all canceled one-by-one in a move that shocked even the showrunners themselves, while at the same time, Marvel Studios announced a big budget lineup of TV projects set to be exclusive to Disney Plus.
The MCU is only getting bigger and bigger, then, and Kevin Feige’s quest for world domination means he’ll need as many superheroes as possible to fill up the sheer volume of content that the franchise will require. It’d been previously reported that he was looking to reboot the Defenders at some point in the future once the contractual small print surrounding the rights had lapsed, but now a new rumor has hinted that Marvel Studios are already hard at work developing projects that will bring the former Netflix residents back to our screens, with MCU Cosmic’s Jeremy Conrad writing that Kevin Feige and co. are “already in various stages of development on projects that utilize characters from the Netflix Defenders series,” and that “it’s possible that Netflix allowed them access to them long before the two-year moratorium expired.”
While this is nowhere near concrete information at this point, it definitely lines up with a number of breaking stories that We Got This Covered have brought to you recently. In the last few months, our sources have told us that Mike Colter was definitely out and Luke Cage was being recast, an Asian actor was being actively sought to play the new Iron Fist, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher was under consideration for a third season on either Hulu or Disney Plus and that Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox were all-but-guaranteed to reappear in the MCU as Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Not to mention that MCU Cosmic also mentions a possible Midnight Sons film, which We Got This Covered reported on way back in September.
So, if Conrad’s intel is correct, then it would appear to corroborate much of what WGTC’s been telling you for months now. Which is interesting as Conrad has been quick to shoot down many Defenders-related stories from not only We Got This Covered but several other outlets as well, telling his followers on Twitter that nothing was in the works with these characters. Now, however, it seems that he’s changing his tune, as he’s likely heard the same information from his sources that we’ve been hearing from ours for a while.
In any case, it certainly seems like there’s every chance that the Defenders could be back on our screens sooner rather than later and no matter what form they take, that can only be good news.
