Something is definitely afoot in the non-Disney Marvel universe right now. In recent months, the characters of Daredevil and Kingpin have been revived and crossed over into the MCU proper (the former in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latter in Hawkeye). Charlie Cox has spoken about future plans for Matt Murdock to come. And now, the entire run of Netflix’s Marvel series – including Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, team-up series Defenders, and The Punisher – is about to leave the streaming service that first brought them to life.
Recently, viewers have noticed messages attached to the above shows on their native service stating that they’ll be leaving Netflix on 1 March –which has since been corroborated by Entertainment Weekly. After Marvel cancelled its spread of Marvel shows in 2018, the rights to the characters involved began reverting to Disney more recently – but no official announcement has been made yet on whether the Netflix series will now be absorbed into the Disney+ streaming library. While that makes the most sense, it’s rare to see streaming shows like these move home, even when the character rights have since moved on. If it’s unlikely they’ll disappear completely, nothing has yet been confirmed.
As for whether any of the other Defenders will eventually join the MCU, that also remains to be seen. Could we have Jessica Jones snapping up a storm, or Luke Cage snapping people like twigs, in future Disney+ series? Is there a world in which Iron Fist gets any kind of second chance? Would the MCU really go so far as to bring in the brutal Punisher? Stay tuned – these are unprecedented times, and in the Multiverse, anything is possible…