10 Things Disney+ NEEDS To Do With The Marvel Netflix Characters
The Defenders are inevitably coming to Disney+. Here's what should happen when they do.
A frustrating as Netflix cancelling their deal with Disney was, the advent of Disney+ really made it inevitable. It made Disney a direct competitor, so it would've been rather counter productive for Netflix to keep making shows all but advertising the competition.
Even so, the fact the streaming giant included a clause in the contract stating that Marvel wouldn't be allowed to use any characters that appeared in the Marvel Netflix shows for however long after each individual show ends just added salt in the wound.
But now, two years after the fact, that timer is just about up, meaning that we might just see projects featuring the MCU's darker and grittier residents be put into the works by the end of the year if all goes well (which it probably won't, but let a man dream).
Now, the idea of these more adult oriented heroes getting moved to the more family friendly streaming site sounds messy at best, but that needn't be the case. There are key areas to improve, but there's also a lot that Disney+ needs to do in order to distinguish their interpretations of The Defenders from their Netflix counterparts (if they eventually do see the light of day).
10. Have Luke And Jessica Be Married Again
As great as Jessica Jones was, there was always something holding it back from reaching the heights of the comics from which it came. And the answer is very simple: Jessica in the Netflix show had basically no emotional anchor. Luke and Jessica's relationship is short lived and more or less goes down in flames by the end of Season 1.
Whether or not they were planning on rectifying that, we'll sadly never know, but the lack of their relationship introduced a problem. Now, there's NOTHING wrong with Jessica's happiness being defined outside of being married, but Netflix's Jessica is SO self-destructive and SO bent on burning bridges with others, that there's no character to take Luke's place. For a while her best friend was acting as that anchor, which is why Season 1 is the best, but Jessica does to that relationship what she does to all the others she forms over the course of the show.
You can have a movie without a constant emotional anchor for your protagonist, that's what, two and a half hours at most and then you're done. But TV shows and comics run significantly longer, and there's only so long you can watch someone be perpetually miserable and self destructive and learning basically nothing. Even Daredevil learned that much, both in the Netflix show and with comics like the Mark Waid run.
Luke and Jessica aren't just one of the best written marriages in comic history, it's a constant source of stability for Jessica that someone in her line of work sorely needs. And if you can't replace it with anything better, just make them married again.