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Things We’ll Hopefully See in Marvel’s Netflix Shows

Marvel is making four TV series (serieses?) for Netflix. Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones are all getting their own shows culminating in a miniseries featuring all of them called The Defenders (based on the comic book... The Defenders). And they're not messing around. Costing 200 million dollars in total, the five series (seri?) will amount to 60 episodes total and will be shot completely in New York to keep that Marvel everything-is-set-in-New-York feeling authentic. But that's the past, we're interested in the future. Specifically how these series will be handled. Here are some things, and I'm sure you'll agree, we'll hopefully see included.

Heavily Featured Shared Universe

So all five series (seriesies?) will take place in and around Hell's Kitchen which lends itself to the possibility of a strong shared universe. Now they're already in the shared universe of the MCU (and I'll get to that later), but that's not really what I mean. I'm not even talking about crossovers. Of course the heroes will cameo in each other's series (seers?). I'm talking something bigger. Image if the shows were intertwined. Imagine if Iron Fist beats the crap out of a bad guy who then, disgraced, looks for a weapon to gain a victory. This then puts him at odds with Luke Cage. Jessica Jones is handling some international espionage business which brings in The Hand to assassinate someone. Daredevil now has all these ninjas running around and has to get his punch on. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="520"] Stilt-Man would be in all of them. All of them.[/caption] This offers a bunch of pluses. They'll seem like a unique problems to those watching just one series, but for those watching all of them it'll create a bigger, living world. No wait, forget that, it will encourage viewing multiple series instead of just one. This will also get people into the idea of them getting together as The Defenders long before then. It could be like the pre-established MCU on steroids. Speaking of...

Street-Level Avengers Fallout

For me, dealing with the post-Avengers world was the most interesting aspect of Phase Two and Agents of SHIELD. Unfortunately, we still haven't seen the world's reaction. We've seen Tony's PTSD in Iron Man 3, Jane Foster slapping Loki "for New York" in Thor 2, and how SHIELD has reacted in Agents. It's not really a laziness problem, it's just that these particular characters aren't really man-on-the-ground characters. A god, a genius billionaire, and a team of secret agents don't really interact with the common man. However all the characters here do! I mean, it's iffy with Iron Fist and Jessica Jones, but they are, for the most part, street level heroes. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="389"] You can't get more common man than this[/caption] This means we can get a look at a post-Avengers New York in a way that we couldn't before. Do the people hate masked folks now? How have they handled aliens being a thing now? How has law enforcement reacted? How has this effected the city's criminal element? If handled correctly, this aspect could put these shows far ahead of Agents of SHIELD.

Actual Villains

Speaking of Agents of SHIELD, their Monster of the Week format has produced considerably less comic book villains than I expected. Two so far, each time an origin story that has a little tease at the end suggesting a cool payoff down the line. The rest of the villains have just been references to Avengers or a tie in to another movie (I think it's because Disney is scared to pull from anything off-MCU for fear of becoming too "niche", but that's another conversation). Netflix offers them a  unique freedom. Releasing all the episodes at once to the Internet means they don't have to worry about bringing people in each week. They don't have to worry so much about losing people. This, I hope, will allow them to delve into the comic books a little more than their network counterpart. I don't mean they have to break out Kang the Conqueror or MODOK, but you can definitely go into the street level characters. Typhoid Mary for Daredevil, you could have Cage dealing with Cloak and Dagger, Bullseye can be a problem for everyone, maybe The Hood show ups as a big bad, and hell even the Punisher could show up for something. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="342"] Also...[/caption] But what do you want to see? Let me know in the comments below!  

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