This is tremendously sad, but inevitable, news:
Per Deadline Hollywood, Netflix announced this evening that it has canceled Daredevil, just weeks after the show concluded its critically acclaimed third season. This news shouldn’t be too surprising, but this one is a particularly tough blow for fans.
Clearly Netflix is cleaning house, since this follows surprise cancellations in October of Iron Fist and Luke Cage. That just leaves Jessica Jones and The Punisher on Netflex’s roster of Defenders. Both have new seasons in the pipeline that are currently slated to air on Netflix as planned, according to Deadline’s sources. But they will, in all likelihood, be on the chopping block eventually as well.
This is disappointing, because the realization of Daredevil and Punisher in particular has been absolutely sublime. In an era where we have actors signed up to play characters for a decade in the movies, only getting half as much time with these characters on television feels like being shortchanged, even though we have on balance many more hours of actual screen time with them.
I am hoping that Daredevil at least has a cameo in the upcoming Punisher season. Jessia Jones is an interesting character but doesn’t have the raw resonance of the duality between Frank and Matt, who are in a way the true reflection of Batman vs Superman (even though Daredevil’s philosophy is more Batman-esque, but there isn’t supposed to be a perfect mapping here). These two characters have enormous potential and they at least should be prioritized to survive. The Netflix heroes were never allowed to break into the cinematic universe, despite obvious hooks (Luke Cage at least mentioning Wakanda?).
The Disney streaming service is going to have a lot of Star Wars and MCU filler. It would be incredibly shortsighted of them to abandon Daredevil and Punisher and the rest of the heroes. They are far meatier than anything proposed thus far.