Thanos might not have affected the Marvel/Netflix universe, but the streaming service is happy to do his job for him, as they announced last night that ‘Daredevil‘ would be cancelled only weeks after it’s 3rd Season aired.
This is the 3rd show from the Marvel/Netflix team-up to get the boot following the cancellation of both ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’. It now seems extremely likely ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘The Punisher’ will also be cancelled once their already filmed next seasons are aired.
“We are tremendously proud of the show’s last and final season and although it’s painful for the fans, we feel it best to close this chapter on a high note,” commented Netflix in a statement. ”We’re thankful to our partners at Marvel, showrunner Erik Oleson, the show’s writers, stellar crew and incredible cast including Charlie Cox as Daredevil himself, and we’re grateful to the fans who have supported the show over the years.”
The news comes as a devastating blow to fans and to the cast, however, it’s not entirely unsurprising. The cancellations have all come following the announcement of the Marvel owner’s new streaming service Disney+ which would be in direct competition to Netflix. As part of the deal to take over Fox, Disney also gains a majority share in Hulu, another competitor to Netflix in the US, so it arguably doesn’t make a whole lot of business sense for Marvel to have characters on a rival service.
On the Netflix side, they don’t have ownership of the Marvel characters, and they are expensive series to make, despite New York throwing a bunch of tax credits at them. With the streaming giant acquiring a slew of new comic book and genre deals this year, it’s entirely possible they just don’t feel the Marvel deal is worth the time and money anymore.
Netflix went on to say “While the series on Netflix has ended, the three existing seasons will remain on the service for years to come, while the Daredevil character will live on in future projects for Marvel.” As to what those “future projects” are it’s not entirely clear, but Disney has a few options.
Firstly, it could be a reference to Daredevil showing up in the next season of ‘Jessica Jones’ or ‘The Punisher’. Another option could be to roll them more fully into the wider MCU and have them appear on the big screen, although, they have been somewhat resistant to do that up until now. A third option would be to move them to a new service, however, it’s unlikely that would be Disney+ as the Mouse House has stated that service would remain strictly PG13 rated. Whilst you could alter the shows to remove some of the sex, drugs and violence, that would be quite a big shift in the overall tone of those Marvel/Netflix shows. The fourth option is to move them to Hulu, which, IF they are going to continue as series, would seem the most likely bet…
As of right now, ‘Jessica Jones’ Season 3 and ‘The Punisher’ Season 2 don’t have premiere dates, however, they have both been filmed, so we would expect them to arrive in 2019 on Netflix. We’ll let you know when we hear more.