Defenders Easter Eggs You Missed

After turning himself over to the law at the end of his first solo series, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is fresh out of prison and ready to get back to protecting Harlem in The Defenders. That doesn't mean the events of Luke Cage season 1 aren't still running alongside the first team-up series, however. When Cage is set free with some help from Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) in episode 1, he thanks the Daredevil attorney and tells him he has a bus to catch.

When we see him next, Power Man is admiring the city as the bus takes him towards his "coffee" catch-up with Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), but you probably didn't catch what was written on the side of that bus. Just for a moment, you see an advertisement for the New Harlem Renaissance, which is the campaign being run by Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard), otherwise known as Black Mariah. She and Shades Alvarez inherited Harlem's crime syndicate by the end of Luke Cage season 1.

As leader of the Hand, Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver) has clearly lived an awfully long time. Her age is subtly hinted at throughout the series, first in episode 2 during the scene in which she gets a private performance of some Brahms. When her host comments on the influence of Beethoven in that particular piece, Alexandra responds as if she knew the composer personally. "It's not influence, it was a direct response," she says. "All Brahms wanted to prove was that he could do it to. He was petty like that."

Brahms died in 1897, however, and Alexandra has been around a lot longer than that. In the opening scene of episode 3, we see her sitting alone in a Turkish restaurant. She gives her compliments to the chef, telling the waiter that the dish is even better than she tasted in Constantinople, the ancient name for the city of Istanbul. The waiter corrects her, but Alexandra's rueful smile tells us she really meant Constantinople, which fell in 1453 after an invasion from the Ottoman Empire.

For whatever reason, the Marvel Netflix shows refuse to refer to the Avengers by name. Instead, they get called things like "the big green dude" (Jessica Jones, season 1 episode 3), "the big blond dude with the hammer" and "the old dude with the shield" (Luke Cage, season 1 episode 1). They even take a hush-hush approach to discussing the time the Avengers saved the planet from a Chitauri invasion, referring to the extraterrestrial attack as the "Incident."

In episode 2 of The Defenders, we see Jessica Jones' (Krysten Ritter) best friend Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) hosting her radio show, Trish Talk. Walker is digging into the cause of the earthquake that rocked the city at the end of the first episode, and when she takes her first caller, the worried man references the events of 2012's The Avengers. "It's really scary when something like this happens—what do I tell my kids?" the caller says. "After everything we've been through, we can't help but think it's the Incident or terrorism."

The obligatory Stan Lee cameo comes 26 minutes into episode 3, when the Marvel mainstay can be seen in a few consecutive shots. As Jessica Jones follows Matt Murdock down a busy New York street hoping to learn a little more about him, both pass by a kiosk adorned with Lee's grinning face. Since the release of the first X-Men movie in 2000, he's popped up in practically every single Marvel project.

Lee told CinemaBlend that his favorite cameo was in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, because he actually appeared twice. "The thing I loved about that cameo is, if you think about it, that is the only cameo I've done that had two scenes. It was more than a cameo. It was almost like a role in the movie! So now I'm shooting for cameos that have three scenes, four scenes. Eventually I hope to be the co-star."

This is either a crazy coincidence or an example of the writers behind The Defenders getting super meta, and we prefer to believe it's the latter. During the scene in which Murdock and Jones are trying to find the architect's house, their conversation about the Hand's evil intentions comes to an end when the heavy-drinking private investigator recognizes the door they need—at least, she thinks she does.

When Murdock asks her if she's certain they're at the right house, she responds by saying she's "99 percent" sure. As she passes Daredevil and walks up the stoop, however, she adds: "92 percent. But that's still a lot." It seems like a throwaway piece of dialogue, but that wasn't just a random number. 92 percent is the score the Jessica Jones solo series has on Rotten Tomatoes, which (while not as good as Daredevil season 1) is indeed a lot. 

Another episode 3 Easter egg involving Luke Cage takes place in the Chinese restaurant the Defenders retreat to in order to discuss how to approach their separate beefs with the Hand. It isn't a Marvel reference, however—call it a nod or call it a swipe. Cage tells the gang he isn't "looking for Super Friends," which was the name of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon featuring DC Comics' flagship team the Justice League of America. The show ran for nine seasons over 13 years before coming to an end in 1986, though in the years since it's been parodied countless times.

South Park episode "Super Best Friends" replaced the JLA with various religious figures, and the show has appeared in Family Guy several times, from mock opening credits to cutaway skits featuring the Super Friends' accountant and games of strip poker at the Hall of Justice.

After constantly being told she wouldn't believe what was going on even if the Defenders told her, Misty Knight decides to go see for herself. She stalls her fellow officers at Midland Circle as the heroes do their thing inside, but can't resist the urge to lend a hand—quite literally. The sassy cop stumbles across Colleen Wing and Claire Temple trying to take out Bakuto, and when the Hand man is about to take off Temple's head, Knight pushes her out of harm's way, losing her arm in the process.

For those unfamiliar with Misty Knight's story in the comics, it must have seemed like a pretty horrific way for the character to finish the series, but those in the know were already thinking about what was to come. In the comics, Knight loses her arm during a terrorist attack but is fitted with a new bionic one by none other than Tony Stark, after which she starts the Nightwing Restorations Ltd. detective agency with her new friend and ally Colleen Wing.

With Danny Rand AWOL, the rest of the Defenders find themselves unable to leave the police station in episode 7, with Misty Knight and her superiors demanding answers about the secret group they claim to be chasing. With all their loved ones safe from harm in the station, Murdock, Cage and Jones decide to break out so they can take the final fight to the Hand and rescue Iron Fist. The problem is, the cops took their wallets.

Jones has a Metro card, however, so the heroes hit the subway. All three sit together in front of a poster featuring a silhouetted family holding hands with the words "We're here for you" above them. You can't see what the poster is for from this angle, but when it cuts to a random passenger (reacting to Jones taking a can of beer from a sleeping homeless guy) we see the poster again, and it's for Rand Enterprises.

With Murdock MIA and presumed dead by his friends, super and otherwise, New York is vulnerable. One of the overriding arcs of The Defenders for Danny Rand was that NYC didn't feel like home to him, with nothing able to match up to K'un Lun in his eyes. By the time the final credits roll, however, he's had a change of heart, inspired by Daredevil's love of the city and the way he was willing to sacrifice himself for it.

In the comics, Rand actually became Daredevil for a period and even joined Captain America's side during the Civil War crossover event while still posing as him. Obviously this isn't possible in the MCU timeline, but it's interesting that the last time we see Rand, the showrunners very deliberately have him perched on a building ledge mimicking Daredevil. Could the Iron Fist become the new Devil of Hell's Kitchen? They're certainly hinting at it, but Rand is probably more likely to simply take over Daredevil duties in Murdock's absence rather than assume his identity.