Marvel’s Darker Cinematic Universe

Barely a week ago or so, Daredevil’s second season premiered on Netflix worldwide which means that 13 episodes were dropped onto the famous video streaming platform all in one go.

This well-received and long awaited addition to the already wide range of shows and movies comes to complete one of the most interesting and flourishing cinematic universes of our generation: the Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Since the screening of the first Iron-Man movie in 2008 starring Robert Downey Jr , Marvel’s cinematic board of directors led by Kevin Feige has cranked out twelve movies and five TV series and, in current development, more than eleven other movies and at least three new series.

Since the very beginning, the movies’ sector has been divided into phases. The Phase One, called Avengers Assembled, gathered all the stories that eventually led to the great choral movie, The Avengers.

Phase Two started off right after 2012 and culminated in the 2015 film Age of Ultron where the main characters from the previous movies, once again, assembled together to defeat a common enemy. Ant-Man (2015) started out our current Phase Three and it will take us straight through to the grand finale where the Avengers’ trilogy will be eventually completed by the two-part movie Infinity War.

In the meantime, the MCU has managed to expand itself beyond the big screen into our houses and our laptops.

The experiment called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. proved that superheroes belong to the small screen too. It was the first attempt from Marvel to drag a different kind of audience into the mix. The results where initially very promising: creating a TV series that would follow in perfect parallel to the events of the main movies and the reaction it had on fans consequently, was something nobody had never seen before.

As a keen supporter, I am genuinely excited about this whole shared universe (like it always happened in the comics). I have devoted myself to watching every single episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the very beginning.

Listening to characters from the small screen talking about Captain America and The Avengers, was something I couldn’t believe was real. Sometimes, throughout the series, some characters from the movies, like Nick Fury and Maria Hill, would pop up in the series just to prove that this was all part of something bigger.

I believed it.

What eventually brought me down was the lack of crossing over between the movies and the series. I would have loved to see more crossovers. I would have happily seen the characters from TV cleaning up the mess Thor had made in the movie or fighting against an inner crisis inside the Agency whilst at the same time, Captain America was battling the same events in the movie. I started to feel something was missing.

It’s clear that some of the reasons are the lack of budget for the small screen, but I would have loved to see at least Captain America helping the Agents out sometime. Some characters from the TV shows, however, are expected to make the big jump to the movies - at least when the Inhumans storyline will be dealt with - in 2019.

After the S.H.I.E.L.D. disappointment phase ended, my interest was eventually teased again when the Netflix’s universe came along.

Back in 2014, Marvel signed a few contracts to bring some “minor” characters to the well-known streaming platform. That’s when some of the greatest superhero’s stories were born.

First was Daredevil, the mighty Hell’s Kitchen’s blind fighter. Then it was Jessica Jones’ turn. Netflix has proven to be the best platform to let a little cinematic universe breed within the bigger one.

At the current state, three other tv series are in the developments for Netflix and rumours of a fourth started rising through the net recently.

What we know of this little universe is that everything takes place in the infamous area of Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan NY.

Up until now, no crossover has been made, but still Rosario Dawson, an actress who spent most of her time stitching Daredevil up after his fights, has been spotted in one episode of Jessica Jones, proving the audience that we all live in a bigger universe.

Both Matt Murdock’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones will eventually team up together with Luke Cage and Iron Fist in a mini series called The Defenders. According to upper management, they will constitute a secret parallelism to The Avengers.

If Tony Stark, Captain America, Thor and so on, are well-known superheroes to the general public, The Defenders will be that group of heroes who act in secrecy and without much attention by the mainstream media.

Daredevil has already premiered with its second season and Luke Cage (a character that first appeared on Jessica Jones) will premiere with his own series at the end of 2016.

In March 2014, Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television, stated that the series would begin filming after Iron Fist, being the fourth of the new individual series. By March 2015, it was instead slated to be the third of the individual series, beginning production after Jessica Jones. Regarding Iron Fist, instead, by March 2015, it was expected to be the fourth of the individual series, entering production following Luke Cage.

The assembly-like series called The Defenders is set to begin filming after all of the individual series have had their first season. This would actually mean that it is more than likely that series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones will be in theirs fourth and third season, respectively, when the mini-series cross-over will premiere.

I have started to appreciate what Marvel (in conjunction with Netflix) is doing about these less-super-more-human heroes. I easily binge-watched all the first season of Jessica Jones and Daredevil in less than three days and I’m extremely appreciative of the style and tones of these two series that don’t really belong to the more colourful and comic-like style of the movies.

Netflix’s series narrate stories of homicides and reveal lives ruined by local mafia and crazy powered people. It is the most “Batman-ish” side of the MCU and I started loving it because of this exact difference.

Because of the unpredictability of the Marvel Netflix series, this allows the writers to build up a more consistent structure which contains more intriguing stories.

The Defenders and their world of suffering and emancipation will hopefully join the bigger universe in 2018/19 when the whole of the Marvel world will need to assemble all of its forces in order to fight Thanos, the main villain of Phase Three.

I would personally (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) love to see my favourite small screen Netflix characters on the big screen, fighting along with the big name heroes we have come to know.

And if this isn’t going to happen, I will live happily anyway, knowing that the characters I have come to know on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen belong to a much darker side of the Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, the one that no-one wants to rouse.