By In the past year or two there’s been numerous indications that Marvel Studios has adopted their Netflix shows – “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “Iron Fist,” “The Defenders” and “The Punisher” – as canon to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
First came actors and characters from “Daredevil” popping up in MCU works, but still shying away from direct connections to events of the Netflix show narratives. More recently though “Daredevil: Born Again” was retooled and so will now serve as more of a direct follow-up to the Netflix series with multiple cast members returning.
Marvel executive producer Brad Winderbaum, out promoting the launch of “Echo” in January this year, was asked about the various Marvel Netflix series and whether they are canon. He only spoke of “Daredevil” at the time but said: “I think that I personally, Brad Winderbaum, would be confident in saying it is part of the Sacred Timeline.”
Around the same time, Disney+ updated the Marvel section of their streaming service to incorporate the various shows officially into the ‘Timeline Order’ alongside the Marvel Studios titles. That was seen as an acknowledgement that they were.
Cut to today and whilst speaking with THR to promote the launch of the “X-Men ’97” animated series, Winderbaum confirmed the overall Netflix era of live-action shows is full MCU canon and the company is making it official and able to publicly speak about it now:
“We finally said it out loud. Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we’re like, ‘We should just do it. Let’s do it.’ It was also spurred by the redevelopment of ‘Daredevil: Born Again,’ once we started to really lean into some of the mythology and backstory that was established in those Netflix shows.”
Winderbaum also spoke about why the shows were never really considered canon until this year, saying they hadn’t decided one way or another until recently:
“When the Netflix shows were coming out and being made, we were building towards ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame.’ We were trying to balance all of these film franchises and get them to culminate onscreen in these two epic movies. To say it was a challenge is not even correct.
So, at the time, to say, ‘Alright, we’re also going to take this television show and wrap our heads around that,’ it would’ve been too much, even though we were communicating back and forth.
Everyone on the television side and the film side knew what each other was doing, and you can see that there’s a continuity there. The references do line up, but it was just too much for us to wrap our minds around at the time.”
Indeed, it was questions about the topic during the “Echo” press tour that made them come to realise how many were invested in the topic:
“I was asked about this during the press for ‘Echo,’ and I realized, ‘Oh, it’s not just assumed. People have an active interest, and they want confirmation.’ So we were able to do it fairly quickly [with Disney+], and it’s interesting that the service of Disney+ actually became the statement just by rearranging those tiles. That’s our medium to define the canon now, which is wild to think about.”
So, definitively and once and for all, the MCU shows from the the heights of the first seasons of “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones,” to the lows of the first season of “Iron Fist,” are all officially a part of the MCU.
Marvel has multiple series on the way with “Agatha,” “Ironheart,” “Wonder Man” and “Daredevil: Born Again” all in the works.
Source: THR
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