Why Disney (Probably) Won't Save Netflix's Marvel TV Shows
Don't expect the Mouse House to rescue the likes of Iron Fist and Luke Cage.
There's been a bloodbath in the Netflix corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that's not a reference to Daredevil Season 3.
While the latest season of the show about The Man Without Fear debuted to critical acclaim - and rightly so, because it's excellent - its also arrived on Netflix while a storm waged in the background, with Iron Fist and Luke Cage both being cancelled within a week of each other. That's now been followed with the much more devastating news that Daredevil itself has been scrapped by the streaming service.
While Netflix have been a bit more ruthless with cancelling series in the last year or so - after a good few years where it seemed like everything and anything could get a renewal - these still came as a shock: on paper, the Marvel series seemingly represent some of Netflix's biggest, buzziest shows, and the MCU brand is so huge that it's almost unthinkable an outsider would decide to reject a piece of that pie.
Of course, the few facts and figures there are to go on - social media mentions, Google Trends, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes etc, since Netflix don't release ratings data - do suggest a downward curve for most of the Marvel shows, and there's concern for the future of what's left too. That has led to people talking about Disney's influence, and whether they might save any of them for their own streaming service, which is set to launch next year. It's easy to see the thinking there, but also it's probably not going to happen.