Slowly but surely, Marvel Studios are reacquiring the rights to all of the Defenders as the two-year hold options expire for the former Netflix properties. The streaming service’s lineup may no longer be considered official Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, but there’s been no shortage of speculation that Kevin Feige would like to keep several of the small screen stars in their roles.
It won’t be too long until Marvel are able to get the band back together, with the options on Iron Fist and Luke Cage running out this month, while Charlie Cox has been rumored to enter talks almost as soon as he becomes available in December. Jessica Jones and the Punisher, meanwhile, will be free to join the long-running series as of February next year, meaning that development could soon be in full swing.
However, despite all of the street level heroes coming home to Marvel Studios over the next four months, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us Ahsoka Tano will be in The Mandalorian season 2 and Taskmaster would be the main villain in Black Widow – that the MCU’s incarnation of the Defenders could be getting a couple of new additions.
According to our intel, Namor and the Hulk will eventually join the team, although we can’t confirm if this would be Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner or another Hulk that’s set to be introduced into the MCU, like Amadeus Cho, who has long been linked with a debut as one of the franchise’s Young Avengers. Of course, Namor and the Hulk were founding members of the Defenders alongside Doctor Strange when the team made their comic book debut in 1971, so Marvel might be looking towards the past to put a fresh spin on the group in order to avoid comparisons to the run of Netflix shows.
