The Real Reason Marvel Added Daredevil & Other Netflix Shows To MCU Canon
The decision to bring Netflix's Marvel shows, aka the Defenders Saga, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe fold has yielded interesting results. Charlie Cox has returned, and Daredevil's MCU timeline already features projects like "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," and "Echo." Kingpin actor Vincent D'Onofrio is also making moves in the MCU, and Jon Berthal's Punisher will return on "Daredevil: Born Again." Who knows what's next? At this point, the MCU could bring back two of the best Marvel Netflix villains: Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes (Mahershala Ali) and Kilgrave (David Tennant).
Even though the project to bring the Netflix shows into the MCU proper has been going on for a while, the powers that be have been fairly tight-lipped about why they're doing it. Now, Brad Winderbaum, "X-Men '97" executive producer and Marvel Studios' head of streaming, has revealed that the need to make sense of the MCU Disney+ timeline and the impending "Daredevil: Born Again" are the main reasons for making the Defenders official canon.
"We finally said it out loud," he told to The Hollywood Reporter. "Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we're like, 'We should just do it. Let's do it.' It was also spurred by the redevelopment of 'Daredevil: Born Again', once we started to really lean into some of the mythology and backstory that was established in those Netflix shows."
The attention the MCU movies required sidelined the Netflix Marvel shows
According to Brad Winderbaum, one of the key issues that prevented Marvel Studios' big shots from paying too much attention to the Defenders Saga before was simply the fact that they were frying far bigger fish at the time.
"When the Netflix shows were coming out and being made, we were building towards 'Infinity War' and 'Endgame'," he said. "We were trying to balance all of these film franchises and get them to culminate onscreen in these two epic movies. So, at the time, to say, 'Alright, we're also going to take this television show and wrap our heads around that,' it would've been too much, even though we were communicating back and forth."
When the Disney+ side of things eventually progressed to a point where the MCU started bringing the Netflix shows in the mix, one part of the delay to confirm their canon status was simple — from Winderbaum's point of view, at least. It didn't occur to him before the "Echo" press junkets that people wanted a separate announcement instead of just rolling with the situation once Daredevil and Kingpin started turning up in MCU shows.