If there’s any future for Marvel’s Defenders, it’s going to unfold somewhere other than on Netflix.
Multiple live-action TV shows that tell stories set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are leaving Netflix at the end of February. The list includes all of the Defenders shows: So, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron First, The Punisher, and The Defenders. But Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the network series whose existence predates the Defenders, is also leaving at the same time.
Pay a visit to any of those series pages on Netflix and you’ll see a note about how they’ll only be available to watch until Feb. 28. What happens to them after that is unclear.
The smart money is on the whole bundle heading over to Disney+, which is the current home for pretty much all things Marvel. Both Agents and the Defenders stories are part of the MCU, and fans who have kept up with recent Marvel movie and TV happenings know that the studio is still thinking about Daredevil and his friends. There’s also some Marvel stuff on Hulu — a Disney subsidiary — but Disney+ seems like a better bet given the MCU connection.
Disney and Marvel can use all of Netflix’s Defenders now, but should they?
The shows were originally created as part of a deal that made Netflix the distributor of Disney’s MCU-connected serial programming. But all of that came to an end in 2018 when Netflix’s Marvel productions were all canceled as Disney prepped for the 2019 launch of its own streaming Netflix competitor: Disney+. The shows are presumably leaving Netflix now because whatever deal that kept them there is expiring.
Mashable reached out to Disney for more specifics on what’s happening with the content that’s leaving Netflix. Even if these are all surely headed to some Disney-owned platform at some point, we don’t know if that will be an immediate shift or not. We’ll update this story when we get some specifics back.