When the news broke in quick succession that Iron Fist and Luke Cage had been cancelled, the popular joke was that the two Netflix shows had fallen victim to the snap from Avengers: Infinity War, which saw the demise of half the universe’s population. And while the number of Defenders shows to get the axe has since turned out to be more than half, Mike Colter has drawn on the old metaphor while explaining that Luke will not be showing up in Avengers: Endgame.
Speaking to ComicBook.com, the Luke Cage lead confirmed once and for all that neither he nor his co-stars will be appearing in the Infinity War sequel.
“Am I in Avengers: Endgame?” Colter started out. “Well, you know what? Based off what happened, I’m already dead, the snap has already happened with Luke Cage. We’re dead, we’re already gone! I hate to break it down, break people’s… but no, no, we’re not.”
Given the MCU’s tendency to avoid incorporating the events and characters of the TV shows into its movies, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, with a report from a few weeks ago even indicating that the Netflix heroes can’t legally appear in another project for two years after cancellation. Nonetheless, while we shouldn’t expect to see Cage back on our screens until late-2020 at earliest, Colter would still be game for bringing his character to cinemas at some point in the future.
“You know what? Sure,” Colter said. “Absolutely, I’d be down for [movies]. Anything is possible. These things are sort of up in the air, at this moment. It’s pretty fresh. We got canceled on October 19th, or something like that I think the date was. So yeah, it’s still pretty fresh. We’ll see. With time, they’ll probably be some more clarity for everybody whether we’re actually gonna be involved in anything else.”
While the cancellation of Iron Fist seemed fairly inevitable, it came as quite a shock to fans when the news broke that Luke Cage had suffered the same fate, and now that Daredevil has the axe, it’s starting to look very likely that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of the Marvel/Netflix era.
Next on the release schedule is the second season of The Punisher, which comes out on January 18th, and fans are already bracing themselves for more bad news. After that, the third season of Jessica Jones should be heading our way later in the year, but first, Avengers: Endgame will likely be resurrecting a few dusted victims when it hits theaters on April 26th.