The battle for New York City rages on in today’s first-look trailer for The Defenders, Marvel and Netflix’s long-anticipated ensemble series that gathers the four principal heroes (?) of Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem in Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Mike Colter’s musclebound Luke Cage.
Cutting straight to the chase, the moody promo begins by shedding some light on how that superpowered quartet comes together in the first place. Locked away in a holding cell with only Simone Missick’s Misty Knight for company, Krysten Ritter’s smart-ass private eye finds an unlikely savior in Charlie Cox’s whip-smart attorney, Matt Murdock. By day, he’s one of the finest lawmen in the city, but by night he transforms into the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, quietly tracking his prey (read: armed goons and thugs) from the safety of the shadows. Elsewhere, the remaining two Defenders only come into contact through Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple – a mainstay of Marvel’s small-screen universe, having cropped up in all four standalone series thus far – and after some fisticuffs, Danny Rand and Luke Cage inevitably join forces to become the Heroes for Hire.
Their adversary? The Hand, it seems, along with Sigourney Weaver’s NYC power player Alexandra. The former is a shady organization that operates in the underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen, and thanks to yesterday’s morbid promo, we know that those mystical ninjas will be responsible for resurrecting Elodie Yung’s Elektra.
Exactly how Matt Murdock will react to the news that his former flame has returned to the land of the living remains to be seen, but we understand that Yung is part of an all-star supporting cast comprised of Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Eka Darville, Carrie-Anne Moss, Scott Glenn, Rachael Taylor and Jessica Henwick, whose Colleen Wing will seemingly be on the brink of a full-blown meltdown by the time The Defenders premieres in a few months’ time.
Here’s the official logline for the show:
Marvel’s The Defenders follows Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter) and Iron Fist (Finn Jones). A quartet of singular heroes with one common goal – to save New York City. This is the story of four solitary figures, burdened with their own personal challenges, who realize they just might be stronger when teamed together. The Netflix original series will launch globally on August 18, 2017.
The Defenders will be with us on August 18th. It’ll run for eight episodes in total, which is significantly shorter that the standard Netflix template of 13. But will a truncated season be enough to answer the critics?