Sex on Screen: How Marvel’s Defenders Reveal Themselves Through Sex

Thanks to the rise of provocative scripted series on streaming and cable, there’s more sex and nudity on TV than ever before. What was once taboo is now par for the course. But what does all this sex and nudity mean for the art of television itself? How does it enhance or encumber the stories being told on screen? In this new Decider column, SEX ON SCREEN, we’ll take a critical eye to these scenes. We’ll strip down TV’s big sex scenes to see if they’re worth anything at all – or if they’re just used as a cheap trick.

Comic books aren’t just for children, but many of Marvel’s most famous film properties still tip toe around one of the most pervasive parts of adult life: sex. Sure, we know that Tony Stark’s a playboy, and Steve Rogers got jealous over “fondue,” but most of the romance happens well off camera. But in the unfettered world of the Netflix Marvel universe, the superheroes are allowed to get down and dirty — and each show has tackled sexuality in a markedly different way. Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist all give us their titular hero’s POV of sex and these moments do as much to reveal these individual characters’ inner ethos as any moonlit monologue or metaphor-laden fist fight could.

The first Marvel/Netflix show, Daredevil, has a uniquely complicated take on the sexuality. It doesn’t necessarily treat sexuality as a taboo, but it is seen as a font of danger. There are a variety of sensual scenes in both Seasons One and Two where Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) flirts with intimate encounters with love interests Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). These moments are filled with deep kisses, sweet blushes, and the suggestion of sex. Think Karen undressing in the shadows of Matt’s apartment or Claire spending the night after her kidnapping. The latter moment gives us a “morning after” scene that seems to imply that may very well have had sex. It’s impractical that they did — as she is healing from a beating — but their dialogue is laden with innuendo. When Matt offers to patch up Claire’s back, you can almost smell the pheromones wafting off the screen.

Claire and Matt share a flirtatious rapport throughout the series, but ultimately decide not to be couple. It’s not just the emotional drama they want to avoid — neither seems too taken with being in a relationship mired by constant worry for the other party’s life. Later in Season Two, when Matt is finally dating Karen in earnest, he deflects an invitation up to her apartment by explaining, “I have this incredible ability to bring disaster to the best things in my life,” and he wanted to keep their date night perfect. So why does sex have to equal danger and cataclysm for Matt Murdock?

Well, when we get a flashback to his passionate romance with Elektra (Elodie Yung), we see that the power of their passion took on a very volatile pitch. It’s not just that the two of them enjoyed testing limits and breaking dishes; they liked to beat each other up as foreplay and choke each other in coitus.

To Matt Murdock, sex is a temptation and sex is danger. This makes sense when you remember that Daredevil’s Catholicism is one of his most defining characteristics. Matthew Murdock is tormented by Catholic guilt. It would naturally follow that sex, although a place for true intimacy and abandon, would also be seen as a moral (and physical) danger to the devout Irish Catholic.

For Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), however, consensual sex is a rough and rowdy physical act. The show itself is a complex look at the power dynamics between men and women, abusers and victims. It’s strongly inferred that Jessica’s abuser Kilgrave (David Tennant) raped her, but the only sex we see depicted viscerally onscreen is consensual. In these scenes, sex is used simultaneously as a means of connection and as a means of escape. In the very first episode, she and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) go straight from flirting at his bar to a romp in the sheets. At this point, neither knows the truth about the other — that they are both super strong, and in his case, indestructible — so their hook up is full of relative restraint. When Jessica tried to tell Luke that she “won’t break,” he doesn’t believe her. It’s only after they join forces in a bar fight, and see each other’s powers in person, that they can let go.

Jessica spends the season trying to tamper down her own feelings for Luke, but they’re there. When Jessica and Luke discover that they both are super strong, they also learn that they aren’t alone in the world. It’s an understandably intoxicating feeling. Still, Marvel’s Jessica Jones unabashedly celebrates consensual sex as an extremely physical act. The sex scenes come without the pretense of romance; They are dirty, naughty feats of athleticism. This fits Jessica as a character. Her powers are all of a physical nature and she wears a surly attitude to hide the hurt she carries inside. It doesn’t totally fit Luke Cage as a character, though.

Throughout Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Jessica attempts to squash her feelings for Luke Cage and the complications they may cause — especially since she doesn’t want him to know that she killed his beloved wife Reva under Kilgrave’s influence. Before he knows this, though, Luke wants to fight for whatever it is they have. That’s because Luke Cage is perhaps the most emotionally mature character in the Defenders line up. This reveals itself further in Marvel’s Luke Cage, where sex is approached as a gorgeous, sensual, delightful part of adult life. The ongoing inside joke of the series is that “coffee” is code for sex. It’s a double entendre that slips into all sorts of conversations. But the big sex scene of the series comes in the first episode: when Luke Cage and Misty Knight (Simone Missick) have their one night stand.

The scene is raw without being vulgar and sexy without being sleazy. The characters smile, giggle, and tease their way through the scene. The camera lingers on both Luke’s and Misty’s bodies. This is a man and a woman enjoying each other. As the season progresses, the romance doesn’t go fully cold, per se, but both characters slowly, but surely, move on. She’s a cop and he’s an ex-con, and they’re both trying to undo the corruption in Harlem. They have a bigger game to play. And when Misty crosses paths with Luke’s new flame, Claire Temple, the two characters square off, but it never gets catty. There is a maturity to how Misty takes the rejection. Indeed, there is a marked maturity to how Marvel’s Luke Cage tackles sex. Intimacy is not something to be afraid of, but rather an experience to be embraced. And Luke has no problem confidently moving forward in this world. He is a bit a of ladies’ man.

Seemingly on the opposite side of the spectrum is Luke Cage’s (future best friend) Danny Rand (Finn Jones). In Marvel’s Iron Fist, we do get a romance between the Immortal Iron Fist and street-smart martial arts queen Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick). The two share an awkward flirtation that leads to an equally awkward love scene. Here we also get a slow undressing, but it feels more fumbling. While the camera zooms in on Misty’s and Luke’s body parts during their foreplay, it zooms so far out here that we see Colleen and Danny as two shadowed silhouettes.

We immediately jump to them in bed, but their naked bodies are completely hidden. Danny nervously asks Colleen if she’s sure and it’s only after she says she is that their breathing begins to take on a more sensual manner. So Iron Fist is getting laid, but he’s unsure about it. (My colleague Brett White and I are 99.9% sure he loses his virginity in this scene which adds to the cringe-y, all-too-innocent tone of it.) Danny Rand is a man whose life was interrupted by tragedy and circumstance. He’s technically an adult, but his personality is still stuck in boyhood. He suffers from his own specific brand of arrested development and this scene reflects that. Iron Fist is the sweet, dumb, excited puppy of the quartet.

Marvel’s The Defenders will finally unite all four of these characters and their opposing energies into one ferocious team. Will this influence how the characters are depicted in their own titular series? Will a bit of Luke’s energy bleed into Iron Fist or a bit of Jessica Jones into Daredevil? That all remains to be seen. But when it comes to sexuality, each individual “Defenders” show has gone its own way so far.

Marvel’s The Defenders premieres on Netflix tomorrow, August 18th.

Stream Marvel's Iron Fist on Netflix

Stream Marvel's Jessica Jones on Netflix

Stream Marvel's Luke Cage on Netflix

Stream Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix