One of my favorite
parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is how interconnected all of the movies
and TV shows are, so the second part of my mini-series looking forward to Daredevil
and The Defenders (so is the team-up going to involve them starting a
band?) will be a look at connections between The Defenders and the rest
of the MCU.
As of now very little
is known about Daredevil, and almost nothing has been revealed about A.K.A.
Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders,
so the list of known connections is very small, and all of them come from Daredevil. There may be a couple spoilers in this
article for the comics and from the promotional material released for Daredevil,
but not a lot. After all, the shows aren’t
out yet!
Image Courtesy www.cosmicbooknews.com |
The first connection
comes from a fight billing released a couple months ago. Matt Murdock’s father, “Battlin’ Jack”
Murdock, is listed to fight against Carl “Crusher” Creel, aka “Absorbing Man.” Creel appeared on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
at the beginning of Season 2 as a “gifted individual” brainwashed into working
for Hydra. There haven’t been any set
photos to indicate whether or not Creel himself will appear on the show, or if
he will have his powers yet, or if he will actually fight Daredevil, but he is at
least being referenced.
The second connection
is in the background of the second Daredevil motion poster, above Matt Murdock and a little to the right:
In the New York
skyline behind Matt Murdock, you can see the silhouette of the Avengers
Tower. In The Avengers, it was
the Stark Tower until Loki commandeered it to open his portal. At the end of The Avengers, Tony
started working on blueprints to turn the tower into a base of operations for
the Avengers. It does not appear in Iron
Man 3, but by Captain America: The Winter Soldier the outside has
been completed (and is even visible when the Insight Helicarriers are starting
their target identification program).
During The Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Avengers will be using
the Avengers Tower as their base of operations.
Will any of the Avengers appear in Daredevil? It’s doubtful, but they are certainly going
to be present in spirit in Matt Murdock’s and Wilson Fisk’s efforts at
rebuilding Hell’s Kitchen and cleaning up the crime.
The final connection—following
in the same vein as the previous one—is in a throwaway line of dialogue from
one of the trailers in which one of Daredevil’s friends makes the comment that
it would make more sense for him to be fighting crime if he had a metal shield
or a super powerful hammer or a metal suit.
As I said above, I don’t think any of the Avengers will actually appear
on Daredevil, but they will still have a presence.
Okay, here’s one
that’s not from Daredevil. There
is one other possible connection, this time with Luke Cage: Seagate Prison. Seagate Prison is where Trevor Slattery (aka
the Mandarin Impersonator) and Justin Hammer are serving their sentences in the
Marvel One-Shot “All Hail the King.” In
the comics, Luke Cage serves his prison sentence there as well, and it is where
the experiment which gives him superpowers takes place. So far as I know, they haven’t said anything
about bringing the Seagate Prison connection into his MCU origin, but it is
entirely possible that they will.
As far as I can tell,
these are really the only connections between The Defenders corner of
the MCU and the rest of the MCU. From
what Marvel and Netflix have said, all of the series will be taking place in
New York City, where portions of four movies (The Incredible Hulk, Iron
Man 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers)
happened, but those scenes involved different areas of New York—not Hell’s
Kitchen. None of the characters who
appear in the movies or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been announced as
having parts in Daredevil or A.K.A. Jessica Jones. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t
any other connections which we will discover as we watch the series, so here
are some of my thoughts on other possible connections.
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Daredevil
Given the timing of
the Marvel/Sony deal, I don’t expect this to happen in the first season of Daredevil. However, given the connections between
Spider-Man and Daredevil in the comics, I think it would be possible at some
point in the future to see both of them share the screen in a TV episode or
movie. This could come in Daredevil
season 2, [The Spectacular] Spider-Man, or The Defenders—and
since the new Spider-Man movie and The Defenders season 1 will
both (likely) come out the same year, it would be a really wild connection for
them to make between the two properties if Daredevil cameos in Spider-Man
and Spider-Man shows up for an episode of The Defenders in return. Considering the rumors that they are setting
up Spider-Man to be the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for years to
come, it would make a lot of sense to use him as a bridge between the Netflix
properties and the big screen Avengers, since he is at home in both realms in
the comics. And considering that they
are introducing him as a high schooler so we can watch him grow up into the
Peter Parker we know from the comics, it would make a lot of sense to work him
into several different properties so we can see him in action and watch him
grow and mature as a character and as a hero.
Since the events of Daredevil
look to be picking up where the battle with the Chitauri in The Avengers
left off, another possible connection is for some of Matt Murdock’s cases to
involve citizens suing the government/S.H.I.E.L.D./Tony Stark personally for
damages as a result of the destruction caused by the battle. This—or contractors gouging their customers
while billing for repair jobs—could be just the push that Matt Murdock needs to
start his vigilante career. A side
benefit of this connection would be seeing the effect of super-powered battles
on ordinary people, helping to set up the need for a Superhuman Registration
Act (or whatever the MCU equivalent turns out to be) to make sure that someone
is held accountable for damage caused by super-powered battles. Seeing how people were hurt by the Chitauri
invasion could be exactly what we need to sympathize with Tony Stark’s position
on registration in Captain America: Civil War—even more than seeing his
guilt over creating Ultron during The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Image Courtesy dailymail.com |
A.K.A. Jessica
Jones
As I mentioned last
week, Carol Danvers and Jessica Jones are actually very good friends in the
comics: Carol is a regular client of
Jessica’s detective agency. They could
build this friendship into the MCU through the A.K.A. Jessica Jones
series by introducing Carol Danvers into the MCU as one of Jessica’s first
clients. For all we know that is
actually part of their plan, especially if the rumor that Carol Danvers has
already secretly been cast turns out to be true. [Note:
Nerdist News has a source saying that at least part of this rumor is
false—the part about Danvers appearing in The Avengers: Age of Ultron—but
she may still have been cast, so an introduction in A.K.A. Jessica Jones
is still a possibility].
We know very little
about A.K.A. Jessica Jones, but we do know that she will be working as a
private detective. I wonder if at least
a couple of the first episodes will focus on Jessica working cases (one of
which could be for Carol Danvers)—in other words, a “case of the week”
format. I doubt that will hold true for
the entire series—or even more than say 3-5 episodes, but a couple of episodes
like that would help to set her up as a super-powered private detective who’s
been active for a while. In any event,
if they choose the “case of the week” format for a couple early episodes, one
or more of her cases could be related to the Chitauri invasion. Alternatively,
she could be hired by an Avenger.
Imagine if Tony Stark were to show up and hire Jessica Jones to figure
out who leaked his Iron Man designs to North Korea!
Image Courtesy www.nerdreactor.com |
Luke Cage
(Note: Marvel Studios announced a showrunner for Luke
Cage on Tuesday, and also confirmed that the show will be released in 2016)
Given Luke Cage’s
longstanding position in the comics as an anti-hero/super-powered mercenary and
only reluctantly as a hero, he might be the easiest to connect to the larger
MCU of the four characters. Given that
he really works both sides in the comics, both heroes and villains from the MCU
could be involved as clients, customers, or even targets. He could end up being hired by his old
Seagate Prison buddy Justin Hammer to provide security for one of Hammer’s
facilities, only to turn around and stop whatever illegal activity is going on
there. Alternatively, Bruce Banner might
hire him to help Betty Ross escape from her overprotective father. Will something like this happen? It’s doubtful, but certainly not impossible.
After the “prison
break” staged in the Marvel One-Shot “All Hail the King,” what if the first
season of Luke Cage involves Luke attempting to track the fake reporter
down to avenge a friend from prison who was killed in the escape? This would help connect Luke Cage to Iron
Man 3, and even set up the “return” of the Mandarin—this time the actual
Mandarin. The “Real Mandarin” might be
too big for a Netflix show, but they could certainly use Luke Cage to
set him up to appear in Iron Man 4 if and when it happens. Again, is this going to happen? Probably not, but it would be really cool if
it did happen!
Iron Fist
Danny Rand’s family
company has already appeared in a promo for Daredevil as possibly being
responsible for the chemicals which blinded Matt Murdock and enhanced his other
senses. However, his company could also
be revealed as business partners or rivals of one of the other major companies
appearing in the MCU, specifically Hammer, Stark, or Pym.
The Defenders
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This holds true for
all of the series, but especially for this one:
S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ve seen some
speculation that the character of Claire Temple, whose character is being
combined with that of the “Night Nurse” (Linda Carter), could play the Nick
Fury role in bringing the Defenders together.
However, what if Phil Coulson shows up in Hell’s Kitchen and asks them
for help tying up some loose ends on the Hydra front? Maybe Coulson decides he needs his own team
of superheroes—an equivalent to Fury’s Avengers team—and a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent
in New York City tells him about the four new superheroes emerging in Hell’s
Kitchen.
Another option in The
Defenders is to look at possible villains they could face. Any of the (living) villains in the MCU are
options, even super villains like the Abomination who are too powerful for any
individual hero (short of Thor or the Hulk) to take on alone. There are also numerous villains who had been
in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody but were freed by Agent Garrett as part of his campaign
to spread disorder and confusion. Could
one of them (maybe even Graviton) be the main villain for The Defenders? They may even use one of the Spider-Man
villains to which they now have access, setting him up to play a larger role in
[The Spectacular] Spider-Man, which (as mentioned above) may be coming
out around the same time that The Defenders is released—which would set
up The Defenders as a prequel of sorts to the Spider-Man solo film.
So what do you
think? How will Daredevil and The
Defenders be connected to the MCU?
What possible connections can you think of that I missed? Let me know in the comments!
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What powers does Jessica Jones have?
ReplyDeleteStan
I went through all of their powers in my first Defenders article last week (http://mcureviewer.blogspot.com/2015/03/all-about-defenders.html).
DeleteIn the comics, her powers include flight, limited invulnerability, and super strength, among others. Think a "Poor Man's Super Girl" and you've got the idea (at least in terms of abilities; the characters themselves are vastly different).