At the end of November, we learned the news: Daredevil was canceled , joining the other two Marvel series , Iron Fist and Luke Cage , which had also been axed weeks earlier by Netflix . The continuation of these stories on other platforms (like Disney+) was left up in the air , something we're finally going to clarify for you now. However, [spoiler] what you're about to read isn't going to be good news.
Reliable sources have confirmed to the well-known media outlet Variety that Netflix has a signed contract with Marvel that does not benefit the latter at all and that would mean that it will take quite some time before we can see how the stories of Matt Murdock, Danny Rand and Luke Cage develop on other content services.
In said agreement, reached at the time by both parties, there would be a protection clause , which prohibits the characters of the aforementioned series from appearing in any other series or film that is not in the Netflix catalog for a certain period of time.
And what is that period? Well, exactly two years after their cancellation date . This means that Daredevil , Luke Cage, and Iron Fist could not be continued on any platform until at least November 2020.
We also have The Defenders (pictured above), a series that was also canceled around the same time but features a character still active on Netflix: Jessica Jones . This means we would have to wait for the third season of this heroine to air on the platform, for the series to be canceled afterward, and then add the two years stipulated in the contract, putting us, at most optimistically, in 2021.
Obviously, by then the interest of many fans (especially those who watched the series for entertainment and not because they were fans of the comics) will have fallen enough that there is no longer any motivation to watch it, producing such a strong disengagement that Marvel probably won't even consider the possibility of recovering these titles elsewhere.
This would be a loss for the viewers and fans themselves , who have unexpectedly seen—especially in the case of Daredevil —several Marvel series canceled one after another. Jessica Jones and The Punisher are still afloat , as both have seasons currently in production. Will these be the last we see?