Goodbye, Marvel’s Netflix Shows: A Requiem for The Defenders

I remember what it was like at the beginning, pretty much the very beginning. I was lucky enough to score a seat for the Daredevil panel at New York Comic-Con in 2014, which included the first reveal of footage–the first look at what a mature-audiences Marvel TV show would look like. The scenes we saw–which starred a clad-in-Frank-Miller-black Daredevil and the crisp, tightly coiled ferocity of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk–were gorgeous. I compared the framing of the shots, the cinematography, to House of Cards (because honestly there were approximately a million fewer Netflix shows to compare Daredevil to in 2014). This wasn’t going to be Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the CW’s DC slate; Daredevil–and presumably the rest of the Defenders shows–was going to be prestige superhero TV unlike anything we’d seen before.

Fast-forward four and a half years later, and with Friday’s (June 14) premiere of the third and final season of Jessica Jones, that niche era is dead. What happened to all that promise?

You can measure how quickly this all fell apart just by looking at what happened between the release of Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 3 this past Friday and Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 2 a brief 14 months prior. In that time, Netflix went from having a robust lineup of Marvel shows to having just one hard-drinkin’ private eye, a woman with swagger turned into a straggler. JJ Season 2 kicked off another round of releases last spring: Marvel’s Luke Cage, Marvel’s Iron Fist, Marvel’s Daredevil, and Marvel’s The Punisher all dropped new seasons–and all of them would be their last. Why? We truly won’t know until the tell-all oral histories are released decades from now, but the launch of Disney+ and the announcement that Marvel Studios (not Marvel Television, the company behind all the Netflix shows–yes, they’re different) would be making TV shows probably had a lot to do with it. Netflix had no reason to keep churning out seasons starring characters that were expensive to license and who indirectly promoted another streaming service with Marvel shows of their own, shows starring literal movie stars. The ax fell on the Defenders universe, and it was way deadlier than anything carried by a Hand ninja.

No matter what Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb says, Jessica Jones Season 3 is the definitive end of the Defenders, at least as we know it now and definitely for a few years (if not forever). The painful thing is, production on the season was mostly finished before they knew this would be it. Because of that, there’s no grand statement on what it all meant, no last-minute cameos from the other heroes (SPOILER: aside from a very brief scene with Luke Cage), and plenty of loose ends left untied. We invested roughly 161 hours on this crazy experiment, so don’t these shows deserve better than that?

To be as blunt as Jessica Jones, I don’t know that they do, not at this point. It’s kinda appropriate that Jones Season 3 is the final word on the Netflix/Marvel-verse, because it’s emblematic of everything that quickly became tired about the shows the instant it was painfully clear they were never gonna get out of this slow-paced slog. There’s a D-List (that’s being generous) villain from the comics who doesn’t show up until a third of the way through the season, shade thrown at the kind of super-suits they literally wear in the movies, glacial pacing because “13 hour movie” is perplexingly still the goal of these seasons, and endless ruminating on whether or not a hero should kill. Good god, we get it.

It’s wild how quickly this bold, fresh take on superheroes–especially ones from Marvel’s generally all-ages-ready universe–grew stale. Sure, there have always been people complaining that not enough happened in every season to justify 13 hourlong episodes, but the performances from the leads (Charlie Cox, Mike Colter, Krysten Ritter, and Jon Bernthal turned the party every time) to the villains (Kingpin and Kilgrave, even Mariah Dillard and Mary Walker) to the sidekicks (Deborah Ann Woll and Simone Missick will forever have my utmost respect) justified the slow pacing–for a while. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that when these shows were at their peak (2015-2016), they were neck-and-neck with the movies to me. I loved them. If the ax had fell when we only had Daredevil Seasons 1-2, Jessica Jones Season 1, and Luke Cage Season 1, the anger would be real.

The biggest problem with the Marvel/Netflix shows was, ultimately, their unwillingness to evolve past their initial form. Just look at how much the movies changed from when Daredevil went into production in 2014 (the gritty AF Captain America: The Winter Soldier just hit theaters) to now. Every single Netflix show was a variation on the exact same grim theme. There is no equivalent to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or Spider-Man: Homecoming or Thor: Ragnarok in the Netflix canon, no season that dared deviate from the shadowy tone that was apparently set in stone. While the movies were getting bolder (Black Panther) and bigger (Civil War) and weirder (y’all saw Endgame, right?), the shows were stuck on whether or not a hero should kill. Seriously. Again. And again. We never got to see swashbuckling Daredevil or irreverent Iron Fist. We also never got to see Jessica Jones actually do her job in the procedural format of the original Alias comic. She maybe took, what, four cases in three seasons?!

But not only did the Marvel shows not learn from the movies, they didn’t learn from themselves either. The real trouble began in 2017 with the release of Marvel’s The Defenders, the team-up mini-series that fans had been eagerly anticipating that ultimately didn’t live up to expectations. One thing did work about it, though: the cast.

Ritter’s chemistry with Cox was off the charts, Colter brought out the best in Finn Jones’ Iron Fist, and yeah, the series even kinda redeemed Iron Fist! It was at this moment, especially knowing now what was coming up, that Netflix should’ve scrapped all their plans and kept the band together. Defenders had horrible pacing problems, but it was also the last time that the heroes–specifically Jessica Jones and Luke Cage–felt vibrant.

Netflix should have kept Defenders going, or at least nixed the solo seasons idea and started pairing these characters up in interesting ways–kinda like Marvel Studios pairing Captain America with Black Widow, or Spider-Man with Iron Man, or Thor with Hulk. What I’m saying is, we needed Power Man & Iron Fist Season 1 more than we needed Iron Fist Season 2.

After seeing them team-up, it was admittedly kinda dull seeing them go their separate ways again. And as more Netflix seasons came out and it became clearer that 1. absolutely zero characters from the movies were ever going to show up and 2. most likely zero characters from the other Netflix shows were ever going to show up, the excitement wore off. The Defenders were a victim of their lack of adaptability.

I can only hope that the next universes Marvel Television tries to build learn the lessons the Defenders never did. Both of them are on Hulu, an animated slate leading to an Offenders special and a pair of supernatural live-action shows (Ghost Rider and Helstrom). We don’t know how Marvel Studios is going to handle the shift from making movies to making TV, but reports that the seasons are going to be 6-8 episodes is already a sign they’ve maybe learned from Marvel Television’s mistakes.

As for Jess, Matt, Luke, Danny, and Frank… who knows? Loeb and even Netflix (to an extent) have been so vague about their post-cancellation future, hinting at future appearances. The reality is, there’s a slim chance we’ll ever see them again. They aren’t going to Disney+ because it looks like Marvel Television is only making new streaming content for Hulu (they also have Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC and Cloak & Dagger on Freeform). Hulu now has a lot of Marvel content, including Marvel’s Runaways, and who knows if they want to add a fourth Marvel Universe to their roster. Either way, Netflix’s contract stipulates that their Marvel shows can’t jump to another streaming service until two years after cancellation, which means the earliest one could start production would be Fall 2020 (and that show would be Iron Fist of all shows). And even if the shows jump to Hulu, would Hulu want to take on a franchise wherein the previous seasons live on Netflix forever? It’s just messy, messier than Jones’ desk, or closet, or bedroom, or life.

We can hold out hope. As disappointed as I’ve been in these shows (other than Daredevil, the sole show to maintain its quality over its run), I still want more. These actors are that good. But I think it’s more likely that this is it, that we’ve seen the end. Rest in peace, you bickering, beautiful, sometimes boring bad asses.

The Defenders
2015-2019

Stream Marvel's Jessica Jones on Netflix