On Wednesday morning, Disney+ added to its Marvel fare list with a total of 20 TV seasons, including Netflix’s first street hero series Daredevil and the five that followed it, as well as ABC’s Agents of SHIELD.
However, none of the seven newcomers made it into any of the Disney+ Marvel Center MCU ranks – Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe phases one through four, or Marvel Cinematic Universe in timeline order – where they could live alongside such as WandaVision, Loki, and even the Marvel One-Shot feature films that have been included as special features on the Blu-ray and digital releases of the MCU films.
Of course, the place that either series in The Defenders Saga (combined in the new Disney+ series) or SHIELD takes in the MCU has been a point of contention for years.
In what was an impressive synchronicity at the time, S.H.I.E.L.E.L.E. clearly mirrored the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which S.H.I.E.L.E.L.D. was effectively disbanded after the takeover of HYDRA, with its 17th episode “Turn, Turn, Turn” (which had just premiered days after the release of the film). Jaimie Alexander reprized her role as Lady Sif from the Thor films just a few weeks prior, and Samuel L. Jackson appeared as Nick Fury a few weeks later to confront Clark Gregg’s agent Phil Coulson (who famously died in The Avengers “”) task: restoration of SHIELD
SHIELD also mentioned the Battle of New York (aka the Chitauri invasion led by Loki from the 2012 Avengers movie), as did Daredevil (Wilson Fisk’s main plan for season 1 was born from the destruction of Hell’s Kitchen) and Jessica Jones (where it was called “The Incident”).
The Avengers themselves have even been name-checked… sort of… like when Jessica Jones characters mentioned “big green dude and his crew” and “big green guy and flag waving”.
But then again, these Marvel series’ connection to the MCU has pretty much been at arm’s length (none of them ever mentioned/turned on Thanos’ Snap), and it was never reciprocated – until, that is, Agent Carter. Arcee was seen in Avengers: Endgame (as Jarvis Howard Stark in a different performance), and Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock made a brief, crowd-pleasing cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home (which exists in a “special” corner MCU). , considering all Sony-Marvel back and forth).
All of this is a way of summarizing that Daredevil, SHIELD, and others have never been firmly and mutually united in the MCU, although they have had their moments. And castings for No Way Home/Charlie Cox and Hawkeye/Vincent D’Onofrio hinted at some kind of shift.
Do you agree that Disney+ is isolating the newly added Marvel series, or do some/all belong to at least one of the MCU groups?