It’s over. With the cancellations of The Punisher and Jessica Jones, the Netflix corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has officially come to an end. Well, it will once season 3 of Jessica Jones airs later this year. It is truly a sad day. True, the Netflix series weren’t all amazing (looking at you, season 1 of Iron Fist), but none of them were awful nor deserved this fate. So why has the streaming service dumped them?
The answer, I’d assume, has at least a little to do with the fact that while Netflix was producing the series, they did not own the characters. Marvel is making a ton of money off these characters and the merchandising of them, with Netflix getting very little if any. For proof of this, look no further than the Marvel Legends action figure line. They released a wave containing the Netflix series versions of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Elektra, and the Punisher, with no mention whatsoever of the streaming service on the packaging.
But I’d imagine that the major reason for the split between Netflix and Marvel Studios boils down to the fact that Marvel’s parent company, Disney, is set to launch its own streaming service, Disney Plus, this fall. It has already been announced that Disney Plus will feature several MCU series in The Vision & Scarlet Witch, Loki, and a currently untitled Winter Soldier and Falcon show. With all the links and references that connect the MCU together, one can assume that there would have been plenty of connective tissue between the Disney Plus and Netflix series. So if Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, or The Punisher series had continued they’d have essentially been advertising for programming on a competing streaming service. No way Netflix was going to do that, especially after they had briefly had an exclusive contract with Disney for its library of movies and television series before they announced their intentions to launch Disney Plus.
The subject of whether Marvel Studios could revive these series on Disney Plus has been breached. At the moment it appears that that cannot happen, as there was a clause in the contract between them and Netflix that prevents Marvel from producing any movie or television series featuring these characters outside of Netflix for 2 years after the latter officially cancels them. It looks like it will be a long time before we see these characters in new live action media, unless some sort of buyout can be agreed upon. Such a buyout would be almost certainly be costly for Marvel Studios. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t happen, it would probably mean that it would take some time to be worked through. Meaning, it could take almost that 2 year time frame before it could be worked out and production be greenlit for new projects.
So while I’m every bit as bummed as you about the fact that we’re losing these shows, especially the fantastic and ground-breaking Daredevil, I understand the reasoning behind their cancellations. I’ll just have to console myself with the 160+ hours of content that we were fortunate enough to get from Marvel and Netflix’s collaboration…and hold to the hope that one day we’ll get to see more from these characters we love.