One of the great tragedies of the absorption of the Marvel Television division by Marvel Studios in October of 2019 is that the often fantastic, occasionally lackluster Defenderverse, which included a grand total of 161 episodes across thirteen seasons of television over its five-year tenure on Netflix, is officially no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to which it was really only tenuously connected in the first place (unless you, like I, choose to believe that in the post-Endgame multiverse, the events of the Defenderverse now take place in the tangential timeline created when Loki used the Tesseract to escape in the aftermath of the Battle of New York in 2012).
The flagship series of that corner of the MCU was its first, with Daredevil providing absolutely pitch-perfect portrayals of some of Marvel’s most iconic characters, including Vincent D’Onofrio’s version of Wilson Fisk, AKA the Kingpin, Jon Bernthal’s embodiment of Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, and Élodie Yung’s performance as assassin Elektra Natchios.
Now, we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones who informed us that Taskmaster would be the villain in Black Widow and Aladdin 2 is in development, both of which have since been confirmed – that Elektra is one particular character that Marvel Studios wants to bring back to their larger universe and that they want Yung specifically to return in the role.
Having first appeared as an ally of Murdock’s in the fourth episode of Daredevil‘s second season, “Penny and Dime,” the character went on to die, rise, and develop into a forbidding adversary for the assembled squad of Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Danny Rand, Colleen Wing and Mercedes Knight as the Black Sky of the Hand in the Defenders series. She was presumed dead (again) following the destruction of Midland Circle, but considering that her body was never recovered, her survival is all but assured.
Rumors are also already swirling that Marvel is keen to bring back Charlie Cox as Murdock, Bernthal as the Punisher and Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, as well as eventually integrating the Iron Fist within Shang-Chi’s franchise. How and when Yung might return as Elektra is completely unknown at this stage, but it’s looking ever more likely that the Defenderverse will eventually be retroactively re-canonized as an official part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
