Marvel Studios Exec on Canonizing ‘The Defenders’ Saga in the MCU: “We Should Just Do It. Let’s Do It”

The release of ‘Echo’ show brought several new things to the MCU. It was the first show to air under the Marvel Spotlight banner and the first character-driven R-rated show. Despite the relatively unknown character helming it, it achieved decent success. The most groundbreaking thing about ‘Echo’ was the fact that the showrunners were forced to canonize Netflix’s ‘The Defenders Saga’ and add it to the official MCU timeline.

Yes, doing this opened up some potential plotholes that will presumably be ironed out in future projects, but it had to be done. Kingpin played a massive role in ‘Echo’ and his backstory played a massive role, the showrunners had no choice but to add Netflix’s shows to the MCU Timeline despite not referencing them at all in prior Disney+ projects. Brad Winderbaum explained their train of thought in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

We finally said it out loud. 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.

If ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ is truly a continuation of the Netflix show, it wouldn’t make sense not to reference all characters and events that took place in the shows that were directly connected to it. However, despite the blanket statement that all ‘Defenders’ Saga shows are now canon, older reports state that it’s yet to be decided what is canon and what is not, with characters eventually being recast.

Yesterday we covered how if Ghost Rider is to be introduced to the MCU, it’s going to be a different version of him with a different actor, despite the character already debuting (and presumably meeting his end) in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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