While the Avengers had Nick Fury to connect them and bring them together, the Defenders had Claire Temple, the resourceful nurse who’s on friendly terms with Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist. Also like Fury, once the job of uniting the heroes was completed in The Defenders, Claire began to take a backseat and Luke Cage season 2 wrote her out halfway through.
It sounds like that’ll be the last we see of Claire in the Marvel-Netflix universe, as well. Speaking at a panel at the 2018 Tribeca TV fest on Saturday, the actress talked specifically about her emotional final scene on Luke Cage and revealed that it was sort of intended to act as a “culmination” of her time in the MCU.
“I felt really grateful because Cheo Hodari Coker was the showrunner, and it was kind of looking like, at least for that season, who knows if I’ll come back again? This was looking like it was going to be a big final scene for Claire, and it was really as a culmination of three years and being on five different shows.”
IndieWire reached out to Marvel for confirmation on whether Claire will be back or not and only received a “no comment.” So, let’s take that to mean that no final decisions have been made at this time. This fits with what Dawson’s said on a previous occasion, which is that she’s currently looking to step back to focus on her family though she’s open to a return at some point.
Fittingly for potentially her final scene in the franchise, the actress actually had a significant role in forming the sequence. She revealed that she helped write the dialogue by bolstering Claire’s role in the discussion she and Luke have that breaks up their relationship.
“When the scene was first written, to be honest, it was a little bit more written on his side and his storyline and that kind of stuff. And I approached Cheo and had the audacity of adding some lines and rewriting some stuff and asked him if that could work.”
Dawson’s suggestions went down so well that Coker even offered to give her a new job, with the actress recalling:
“He gave me a really amazing compliment — he said, ‘You want to join the writers’ room? Because this is great.’”
The scene in question was a powerful one, well-written and superbly acted by Mike Colter and Dawson. However, it would be a bit of downer if this really was the last time we see Claire Temple in the Marvel-Netflix universe, don’t you think?
