Marvel Netflix shows

I would love if they could get Ann Foley (the costume designer for AOS Season 1-4) for any new Defenders shows.

Oh, yeah, she does amazing work!

I especially want to see what she would create for Iron Fist, because all of his costumes were...not good.

Whait, does anyone here seriously think that the MCU Netflix shows will somehow be saved?

You lost!

I highly doubt it, but I guess I can hope.

Trust you? The only person I can trust is myself.

There was a report that Marvel TV was looking at Hulu or FX to save them. They would have to wait two years, of course, but that's not really that long in terms of TV shows.

Of course, it would also be dependent on if the actors were still available, if Marvel TV still had the budget (considering Netflix wouldn't be putting forth 60% anymore), and so on. They might not be able to film in New York City anymore or instead of having four shows, have only one.

Since Mike Colter is already contracted for a new show (forgot the name), I think we can forget about him returning.

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That is assuming that the new show will take off and still be around in two years. Plus, they could start with whoever is available and bring him back either later or as a guest star. Hell, it is not like a Netflix show is a such a huge commitment.

The biggest issue with the Netflix stuff was that they seemed to think The Defenders would be the big deal. And in building to The Defenders they took away from two shows (Daredevil and Iron Fist) while also having a poorly laid-out plan for The Defenders, so it kind of threw everything out of wack for a while. Basically the entire mark on Daredevil's record as a show is all the stuff that was there in season 2 primarily to set up two spinoffs (The Defenders and The Punisher). And Iron Fist season 1 was primarily setting up The Defenders; in fact, the Hand stuff reduces Colleen (considered by many to be one of the few characters in Season 1 that was working at the time) to essentially "Elektra but she's nice and not trying to corrupt her boyfriend".

At the very least these shows could've stood on their own more in these seasons if they were given more freedom to tell their own story rather than be constrained by trying to also set up The Defenders. And The Defenders would've been better if whatever the plan was, it was a story that stood on its own. You shouldn't have to watch The Defenders or know what happened in it to follow Daredevil or Luke Cage's characters/plot elements. Look at the early movies: the first Avengers films were their own stories, and having seen stuff outside of them would only be icing on the cake. Essentially requiring people to watch dozens of hours of television before watching this miniseries crossover show was always too much to ask.

Having things connected and having them be required knowledge is different. If someone watched Daredevil Season 2, doesn't watch The Defenders, and then watches Daredevil Season 3 they really have no idea what's going on with the character of Matt, why he's in such a dark place, what happened with Elektra, or went on with the Hand. If someone doesn't watch Captain America: The First Avenger, the Avengers still does itself as a movie right to the point where they're able to infer the kind of character Captain America is and his interactions with others (primarily Tony) in the movie tells that story. Not knowing where the Tesseract first appeared isn't a big deal because the function of it is simply a plot device. The Avengers stands on its own just fine and the movies prior to it are simply icing on the cake. I'm not saying that this is the case for all Avengers films or MCU movies. By the time you're watching Infinity War and Endgame, you do need to have seen prior films to a very moderate extent, but you don't actually need to have seen everything. Seeing everything else is icing on the cake, but it isn't the cake itself.

The cold never bothered me anyway

It would be interesting to know what exactly was their plan for The Defenders when they began (and if there was one beyond "they fight the Hand"). IIRC, I think they wanted to do one season of each show before the crossover, so maybe part of the Hand plot of Daredevil season 2 would have been the plot of The Defenders. And maybe the Hand wasn't originally a part of Iron Fist, but they had to put it in to clean up the mess from Daredevil.

The two years restriction really is nothing. We were waiting two years for some of these shows to return at certain points anyway.

Especially if some of these characters return by way of showing up in the movies: we wouldn't be seeing them for some time anyway, so the two years thing is just kind of nominal.

That said, even after the two years, they probably wouldn't be able to literally continue the old shows (because they still belong to Netflix). The best we would get would be a new show with the characters that feels like the old ones but doesn't really reference them.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 27th 2019 at 7:29:35 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Yes, I do think that having to accommodate Daredevil season 2 probably did severely affect the rest of the shows, especially when they evidently were under contract to get The Defenders out by 2017. I think we can ask ourselves, what would have been done regarding Elektra if season 2 of Daredevil never happened? How would they have ensured the payoff of the stuff with Midland Circle without a Daredevil season 2 to establish the pit? For that matter, what would Daredevil season 3 be like if it didn't have to work from the ending to The Defenders that we got?

In fact, considering how season three of Daredevil ended, it would be relatively easy to craft a season four (or a renumbered season one with the same team) that would be highly accessible to newcomers while still paying off for people who’ve been on board from the start. I think that’s something for Marvel to think about.

The cold never bothered me anyway

The problem here, though, is that there were different showrunners for each season of Daredevil. Steven S. DeKnight's vision of what Season 3 would have been like is probably different from Erik Oleson's vision of what he would have done if Defenders never happened.

I guess you could work with the Defenders investigating the pit itself. It also solves the problem of the "heroes" setting off a bomb to destroy a building.

While we're on the subject of season 3, I said this in the main Daredevil thread, but season 3's biggest problems, in my opinion, were a product of the structure of season 2. I said over there that many threads in season 3 exist that should have been resolved much much earlier or differently. The biggest example being Karen confessing to killing Wesley. That thread would have made more sense to discuss in season 2 and for Matt to be the first person she confessed it to, maybe during the study date in the middle of Frank's trial. But the whole second half of season two is dedicated to the Hand, and Matt and Karen barely have any screentime together, which represents another missed opportunity in terms of Karen’s development.

That would have more solidified her arc for The Punisher season 1 and Daredevil season 3 as one of “Be your own hero,” and given her a clearer goal in terms of development. Also, as I said there, I felt the writers recycled major character beats from season 2 without altering them to reflect the different stakes. Like Matt and Karen's crypt conversation runs the same thread as Matt and Frank’s scene on the Blacksmith's boat in season 2, but doesn't have the nuance that would have provided greater depth for them. Killing Wesley has changed Karen, but that makes her stand as validation of Matt’s faith, since she, unlike Frank, has committed to being a better person.

Also, the fact that when Karen confessed to Matt about Wesley, the writing was framed around why Karen didn’t tell Matt or Foggy rather than the circumstances under which she did it, comes off like the writers were side-stepping the fact that it was self-defense. Wesley was threatening Karen's life, and it was either him or Karen's friends. But the writers clearly didn't want to end up rehashing Karen’s confession to Foggy word-for-word. Making her confession first to Matt or writing the scene with Foggy differently, would have allowed for the conversation here to tackle the more important questions of Wesley’s death, like "how did it affect her psyche". The confession we got seemed oddly simple for a world where questions of morality are consistently complex.

Karen seems to perceive, at times, that what happened with her brother and what happened with Wesley are somehow the same, even though it's clear they're two very different things. But the writing suggests that Karen’s arc is supposed to be about redemption. She is the person who crossed the line and came back, and she keeps coming back again and again in large part due to the fact that killing Wesley was again, self-defense. She's not Matt, who disavows killing entirely; but she’s also not Frank, who kills preemptively as part of an ongoing war. She has a different agenda, and she should have been allowed to actually be her own hero without sacrificing her own character development or Matt’s (or Nadeem’s) in the process.^note And as much as I want to defend the church as the site of Karen’s confession, it doesn’t make sense for Karen as a character to be compelled to confess in a church. Wouldn't it make more sense for Matt and Karen to flee to Matt's apartment and have the confession there? If done there, that would have freed up some time for some much needed character moments. Not only could Matt have grieved Father Lantom properly, but there could have also been a more thorough exploration of Karen’s confession.

The cold never bothered me anyway

And on the cancellations, well, One Day at a Time being revived is proof that after Netflix cancels a series, it CAN live on elsewhere.

The cold never bothered me anyway

I'm not sure if Karen killing Wesley counts as self-defense, at least from a legal perspective. Once she has the gun in her hands, pointed at him, and he's making no further moves to attack her, Karen has a "duty to retreat", to either leave the scene or call the police without preemptively killing Wesley just in case he tries to stop her.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

BUT there's also a dozen other mitigating factors, like "the police work for Fisk, and Fisk pays them to silence anyone who tries to rat him out" and "Fisk has tried to kill her twice before" and whatnot.

The cold never bothered me anyway

The second one is a mitigating factor, but the first isn't. It's an interesting situation, because Wesley definitely has her there against her will and he definitely used the gun in a threatening manner even if he didn't use it directly. The trick is in the exact manner of the death though: rather than take the gun and try to escape, or even fire reflexively, she takes the weapon and effectively sits on it, eventually shooting without immediate provocation.

The situation does kind of remind me of the situation in The Stranger, where the protagonist kills a guy in what could have been considered self defense had he not done so execution-style.

But no jury in the world would convict her, regardless. You're right that the whole "kidnapped by a mob boss that tried to kill her once before and threatened to do so in that very situation" would keep any jury from blaming her for her actions.

Subsequently covering it up, though...

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 28th 2019 at 2:08:40 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

At any rate, it's certainly a plot point that could've been better explored with better structured writing. Another example of a plot point that needed more emphasis, would be Matt's prison visit and that one-take fight from season 3 episode 4. I really don't like that Matt's visit to the prison is never brought up again after it happened, outside of Nadeem briefly mentioning it when he's questioning Foggy. And I'm like, "Did Foggy ever discuss this with Matt (since Matt stole his ID to visit the prison)? Did Matt ever discuss this with Karen?" Because what happened at the prison should have bigger implications than they're implying.

It's one of those moments from season 3 that feels like it exists in a vacuum. The writing in season 2 operated similarly, with key details left out in order to simplify conflicts and streamline the narrative. The scene where Karen discovers Elektra and Stick at Matt’s apartment in season 2 episode 8, for instance: Karen goes to Foggy having only noticed Elektra because the writers thought it easier to write her as being angry about Matt apparently cheating on her than contend with Karen, a keen investigator, interrogating Matt and Stick at the apartment and discovering Matt’s secret five episodes earlier.

The prison riot in season 3 is the same way. It could have had some pretty significant implications for the way the story unfolds. Like, how do the Feds account for Matt’s disappearance afterwards? Not a single person questioned Matt being shoved into a cab rather than held back for questioning? Maybe the implication is supposed to be that Fisk’s control over the prison is so ironclad that news of the riot doesn’t even register in law enforcement, but it's harder to believe that not even Nadeem asked one question about it. I know Nadeem's pride causes him to make so many poor choices that play right into Fisk's hands, but that's a bit of a stretch.

Still, it's definitely strange to never have it brought up again. You'd think Foggy would bring up the prison when he's talking with Matt before the Bulletin attack, since it was his ID that Matt used, and such a dangerous situation for Matt to put himself in. This could have precipitated a conversation about Matt going to see Fisk in prison in season 2, revealing that Fisk has had control over the prison for a long time, resulting in an even bigger reaction from Foggy because both his friends are putting themselves in harm’s way. It would have drawn stronger parallels when Karen goes to offer herself to Fisk in season 3 episode 8. And Foggy himself could've found his district attorney campaign in jeopardy due to Fisk convincing the Bar Association to put Foggy under investigation.

(An easy way they could've fixed this would be to have Matt be Karen's lawyer after the Bulletin attack, rather than Foggy. That could've prompted ripples that lead to Nadeem going to the prison and talking to Michael. Maybe even causing later ripples that result in Karen learning about the imposter Daredevil being an FBI agent much earlier by going along with Matt to Melvin's; while Nadeem, not Foggy, becomes the one to intervene in Karen's visit to Fisk (with Nadeem's intervention being part of Karen's plan, as opposed to Foggy only showing up in a stroke of lucky timing).)

The cold never bothered me anyway

There's an interesting article to read from three years ago, "Streaming social: What marketers can learn from Netflix’s social strategy." It's interesting to read it and notice that Netflix uses the reverse strategy on shows it plans to cancel.

One Twitter user actually went to the trouble of making a graph just with Daredevil to show the dropoff of social media posts pertaining to the show. One thing that became clear is that these shows' declining social media chatter was not an indicator of dwindling viewer demand. The biggest things to consider are the date of first teaser and date of first trailer in relation to premiere dates, the number of posts prior to premiere date, and the hashtag frequency. See here◊. In◊ line◊ graph◊ format◊. It's clear that the lack of promotion for everything that came after Luke Cage season 2 was intended to make these shows under-perform in order to provide Netflix with a palatable excuse to cancel them.

Worth noting is that all Marvel Netflix posts stopped after Jessica Jones season 2 in most of their Instagram pages. Which is interesting considering Luke Cage season 3 had an internal pickup and was in the process of starting production when the plug was pulled. There just wasn't a lot of effort to market these shows after the season 2s. Not exactly a shocker when you know Netflix has a lot of control over social media hype, regardless of a show's quality (as seen with Birdbox and many of their other more recent flops). Here's an article on what they do with social media to hype shows they're not intentionally trying to tank.

The cold never bothered me anyway

I'm not normally one for pushing threads, but I just realized that the age of Marvel Netflix ended just slightly over exactly 1 year ago.

Still hard to accept

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