Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, TV | Tagged: daredevil: born again, VisionQuest
Marvel Needs a Live-Action TV Future Beyond Daredevil, VisionQuest
It’s beyond disappointing how Disney doesn’t see potential in doing more Marvel live-action TV beyond Daredevil: Born Again and VisionQuest.
Article Summary
- Daredevil: Born Again and VisionQuest may be Marvel’s last major live-action TV bets, leaving Disney+ thin on MCU series.
- Daredevil: Born Again season 3 leaks fuel hope, but Marvel’s silence raises fears this Defenders revival ends there.
- Marvel has sidelined TV growth despite characters like Elektra, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Blade, and Ghost Rider.
- For a platform built on originals, cutting back on Daredevil-adjacent Marvel TV makes Disney+ feel oddly empty.
Remember when Disney and Marvel at least pretended to care about putting out regular content on TV? We once had promising shows like Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Wonder Man, Ironheart, Echo, Hawkeye, and (ugh) Secret Invasion. It’s hard to keep track these days of what’s intended to be a limited series, just to have one season, or shows that get canceled outright. Even a renewal isn’t a guarantee anymore, as those behind Wonder Man found out. As Disney continues to roll out D23, we’ve seen our first look at the much-anticipated ending of the WandaVision trilogy in VisionQuest, with the returning Paul Bettany and James Spader making his physical live-action MCU debut as Ultron, just voicing the character in the second Avengers film. While we haven’t seen anything official on Daredevil: Born Again, that’s assumed safe for now, as Marvel is officially rolling back on their TV commitments. My question is: in light of the current announcements, what are we doing?
Why Marvel Dropping Their Live-Action Commitment to TV Beyond Daredevil and VisionQuest Makes No Sense
While we know Marvel’s filmed the third season of Daredevil: Born Again with set leaks aplenty, with Getty getting shots of Elodie Yung‘s Elektra and Iron Fist star Finn Jones captured on set alongside Mike Colter (Luke Cage) and Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones), the studio remains silent. Kind of like Star Trek: Picard season three, which VisionQuest creator Terry Matalas was behind, it feels like Marvel’s compiling a best-of hits from Netflix Defenders shows to deliver one last hurrah, and then what?! Nothing? Don’t any of the aforementioned here deserve a revival of their respective Netflix shows or a Yung-starred Elektra series?
Just like Paramount has no plans to do Star Trek TV anymore after it rolls off the final two seasons of Strange New Worlds and the final season of Starfleet Academy, which is quite depressing considering how many faces behind the franchise have to pretend everything is fine to celebrate the franchise’s 60th anniversary while no active production exists, not even the upcoming, still-in-development post-Kelvin Star Trek reboot. We have no active plans beyond Daredevil and the single season of VisionQuest, as we have no idea whether the Charlie Cox-starred series will continue beyond season 3.
Meanwhile, there was literally no conscious effort to build up Robert Downey Jr.‘s Doctor Doom in the current phase of the MCU aside from that nothing burger post-credit scene in Fantastic Four: The First Steps (2025), since it was a literal detour from the Jonathan Majors debacle of Kang, and recasting the character was never an option or anything. As a side note, John de Lancie voiced the character in X-Men ’97. Aside from the questionable further commitment on the theatrical side, we have a new Ghost Rider film with Ryan Gosling and a new X-Men reboot film, but in a universe that wide, you can’t afford to build up a character or two with their own live-action Disney+ shows? Are you kidding me?! I would even consider doing the Mahershala Ali-starred Blade(or whoever they’ll recast) as a TV series. It WAS done before by David S. Goyer in 2006. I wouldn’t even mind a fucking special, as they did Jon Bernthal‘s The Punisher: One Last Kill.
When you’re trying to sell a streaming platform, it’s understood that, on top of that vast library of legacy content, there would be a focus on new original programming. What happened? I haven’t even gotten into the squandered potential of Star Wars shows beyond The Mandalorian, Andor, and Ahsoka, quitting on every other live-action show. Is your justification for Disney+ subscribers now just to manipulate Marvel and Star Wars fans with fewer breadcrumbs you offer now, and hope that those who decide to skip your theatrical releases will wait for the films to come out on the platform? At least Paramount has the sad excuse of tying itself financially to its attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. This is beyond pathetic for Disney to just stop caring about TV, because the fanfare wears off quickly when we have nothing to look forward to.
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