Marvel on Netflix: news, reviews, and trailers on the streaming service’s MCU shows

Before Disney Plus, Netflix’s Marvel TV shows were pushing the edge of MCU-adjacent content on streaming, but soon, you won’t be able to watch Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, or The Defenders on Netflix anymore.

News of the pending removal surfaced earlier today at What’s on Netflix, as viewers noticed flags on the shows in the Netflix app. Spokespeople for Netflix and Disney who declined to be named publicly have confirmed to The Verge that Netflix’s license ends February 28th.

Significant spoilers ahead for season 1 of Jessica Jones.

The horror and superhero genres approach the world from opposite directions. Horror is meant to make the audience feel disempowered and terrorized. Superhero stories, by contrast, make viewers feel empowered and triumphant. Both genres often set out to give the audience the same thing — a big, satisfying burst of catharsis — but in different ways, and for different reasons.

Warning: Significant spoilers ahead for the previous season of Jessica Jones.

“Giving a shit sucks,” super-strong PI Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) says in the third season of her Marvel Cinematic Universe series Jessica Jones. That’s practically her mantra for this final season of the show. She’s a hard-drinking loner, she’s angry and bitter, and that’s practically her brand. Keeping this philosophy in mind lets her stay a bitter loner even as she turns more and more into a conventional superhero by trying to play by the rules and help people who need it.

The final season of Netflix’s Marvel show Jessica Jones is almost here, and its kickoff trailer teases a dynamic fans are familiar with: Jones versus creepy villain.

The trailer doesn’t provide many clues about what the upcoming season has in store. The 35-second video focuses on a creepy voice threatening to kill Jessica Jones as she hangs out in her apartment-turned-detective agency. If you slow down the trailer enough, however, you do get a glimpse of this season’s menace.

Spoiler warning: This review reveals major plot points from The Punisher’s first season, and it lays out storylines from season 2.

In the first episode of season 2 of Netflix’s Marvel Cinematic Universe series The Punisher, a character asks revenge-driven vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) when he lost his family. He responds, “There are times where it feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like a million years ago.” That’s a telling answer from a character weighing whether he can finally move past the tragedy that transformed him into the antihero The Punisher. Unfortunately, showrunner Steve Lightfoot also seems conflicted about how much The Punisher’s past should define his future, and that indecision produces a season that can’t fully commit to its storylines or themes.

At the end of The Punisher’s first season, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) got a new lease on life after tangling with a group of corrupt military officials who covered up war crimes in Afghanistan. But as we saw in the first teaser for season 2, that clean slate he earned is short-lived. The first full trailer for the second season shows Castle being pulled out of retirement and into another bloody vigilante battle.

Castle is brought back into action when he helps a young woman, Amy Bendix (played by Giorgia Whigham), who is attacked in a bar. “What was I supposed to do?” Castle asks her. “I had to get involved.” That fight kicks off what looks to be a bloody season for the Punisher. The incident puts Castle and Bendix in the crosshairs of a classic Marvel comics villain named Jigsaw, the alter ego of Billy Russo, who went up against Castle in the finale of the first season.

Like the first two seasons of Netflix’s Daredevil series, the third season loves to show its hero getting beaten up. For the first few episodes, Daredevil, aka Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), is convalescing after the events in Netflix’s Defenders crossover miniseries, and the camera lingers lovingly on his battered face and body, watching him stagger about the screen in an ecstasy of infirmity and pain. When he’s somewhat recovered and back battling bad guys, the fight sequences are grinding, extended affairs. Viewers are meant to feel it viscerally every time a nose shatters or a rib cracks. Murdock emerges from each conflict bloodied, bruised, and exhausted — and in one notable instance, with a pair of scissors sticking out of his chest.

Daredevil depicts Matt Murdock in pain because enduring that pain is what makes him a hero. He’s not alone, either. Whether it’s Daniel Craig laughing and joking through a brutal testicle-whipping in Casino Royale, or Bruce Willis pulling broken glass out of his bare feet in Die Hard and continuing to fight, men in action movies and television series are constantly expected to shrug off tremendous damage, including being shot, stabbed, and graphically tortured. These narratives of stoic anguish make it seem natural and unremarkable for men to coldly ignore pain in real life. And at the same time, the trope usually makes women’s suffering seem uninteresting or marginal.

Just a week after it announced that Iron Fist wouldn’t return for a third season, Marvel has revealed that another of its Netflix shows won’t continue: Luke Cage. The series aired its second season earlier this summer.

Marvel and Netflix confirmed to Deadline that the show “will not return for a third season.” The cancelation comes as a surprise, as it was widely expected to be renewed for an additional season. Unlike Iron Fist, which Marvel indicated might continue on in some form, this reads as a definitive end for the series. It’s a shame, because Luke Cage has consistently been held up as one of the better shows in the franchise, while Iron Fist was widely panned.

Marvel’s Iron Fist won’t get a third season. Disney has confirmed that it has canceled the show, but hinted that it might not be the end of the road for the superhero.

Iron Fist is one of several in a joint Marvel/Netflix shared universe, set alongside Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and The Punisher. It follows billionaire Danny Rand (Finn Jones), who reappears after vanishing fifteen years ago, who trained as a monk to become a martial arts master known as the Immortal Iron Fist. The series just aired its second season on Netflix back in September, and coupled with a new showrunner, it improved over its lackluster first season.

Spoilers ahead for The Defenders and the general plot of Daredevil season 3.

After nearly dying at the end of Netflix’s 2017 crossover miniseries The Defenders, Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) needed some downtime. As season 3 of the Netflix series Daredevil begins, Matt (Charlie Cox) returns to the church where he was raised and takes some time to heal physically as well as mentally and spiritually. Murdock wasn’t the only one who needed to do some soul-searching after Daredevil’s uneven second season and The Defenders not quite living up to its hype. The Man in the High Castle showrunner Erik Oleson took over Daredevil this season, and he’s brought new life to the series by going back to the concepts that make its first season so excellent.

After a two-year wait, Netflix’s Daredevil is finally coming back. The streaming service released a short teaser that reveals that season 3 will premiere on October 19th.

We last saw Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) in Netflix’s crossover series The Defenders, in which he teamed up with the other Netflix Marvel heroes — Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist — in a battle to protect New York City from the Hand, a supernatural criminal group. At the end of that series, Murdock appears to have been killed when a building explodes around him, although we learn soon after that he survived the blast.

Warning: mild spoilers ahead for the overall plot of Iron Fist season 2.

At the end of season 1 of Netflix’s Marvel series Iron Fist, Rand Enterprises partner Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup) and master martial artist Davos (Sacha Dhawan) sit down to talk about the superhero Iron Fist, aka their mutual acquaintance Danny Rand. Danny (played by Finn Jones) views both characters as his siblings. Joy is the childhood friend from New York who he desperately wanted to reconnect with when he returned home after spending a decade training in the mythical city of K’un-Lun. Davos is the surrogate brother who gave him his fondest memories during his otherwise harrowing time being forged into a fighting machine by abusive monks. Despite those deep connections, Danny has left both characters bereft. He’s partially responsible for the death of Joy’s father and the destruction of the city he and Davos swore to protect. While they have little else in common, Davos and Joy foreshadow the central conflict of the second season by coming together to discuss the fact that their lives would be a lot better without Danny in them.

After a couple of teasers, Netflix has released a full trailer for the upcoming second season of Iron Fist. This time, it seems Danny Rand will be going up against another student of K’un-Lun: the Steel Serpent.

After the events of the show’s first season and that of The Defenders, and with a bit more control over his powers, Danny Rand (Finn Jones) has taken on the role of protector of New York City, fighting low-level bad guys on the streets along with Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick). He’ll be facing off against a new threat this season, in the form of Davos, a rival from K’un-Lun played by Sacha Dhawan (An Adventure in Space and Time).

At San Diego Comic-Con last week, Marvel announced that the second season of Iron Fist will begin streaming on Netflix on September 7th. Netflix released a new teaser for the season today, hinting that we’ll get to see a bit more of Danny Rand’s past — and the classic costume his character is known for.

The teaser shows off Rand (Finn Jones) walking down a street in New York City with Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), which dredges up old memories of his time at K’un-L’un: a brutal fight. When Wing if everything’s okay, he replies that he just had a bad memory, to which she says that it’s in the past. “I hope so,” he tells her.

Today at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that Iron Fist would return to Netflix for its second season on September 7th. The news was accompanied by a short teaser showing Danny Rand (Finn Jones) fighting on the streets of New York City.

The teaser hints that Danny and the city will face some sort of larger conflict, and he sees it as his duty to protect his new home. The show comes shortly after the larger Netflix team-up show, The Defenders, and it follows the sophomore seasons for Netflix’s other Marvel shows Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage.

Spoilers ahead for season 2 of Luke Cage.

Netflix’s MCU shows haven’t had much luck with second seasons. Jessica Jones season 2 never found its center, while Daredevil season 2 started strong, then devolved into nonsensical battles against endless streams of ninjas. Luke Cage seems to have finally broken the streak. While season 2 is far from perfect, it not only avoids the sophomore slump, it surpasses season 1 through a relentless focus on how both its heroes and villains are defined by their families.

The first couple of trailers for the second season of Netflix and Marvel’s Luke Cage seemed like they were meant to get fans hyped about the new villains the bulletproof protector of Harlem will be facing. By contrast, the most recent trailer wants to reframe the new season altogether. This time around, it seems like the black women of Luke Cage will be taking center stage.

“You don’t need to be bulletproof to be a superhero,” Mariah Dillard tells a new protegée, likely Tilda Johnson (aka Nightshade). “Black women have always had superpowers, turning pain into progress.”

Jessica Jones series creator / producer / writer Melissa Rosenberg has had a busy career in film and TV, most notably as the screenwriter who adapted most of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels for film, and as a writer and producer on the serial killer drama Dexter. She’s done producing work on a number of other shows, including Party of Five and The O.C., and she wrote the dance movie Step Up. But she says that over her entire career, Marvel head of television Jeph Loeb, was the first person to ask her the simple question “What do you want to do next?” Given that freedom, she said she wanted to create something like a female Tony Stark: a damaged, complex, compelling character who also had superpowers. Marvel brought her Alias, Brian Michael Bendis’ comic about a traumatized and angry journalist-turned-hero-turned-private-investigator, and she developed the series for ABC, which ultimately rejected it. But Netflix eventually revived it, and in November 2015, the first 13-episode season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones appeared on the service.

Jessica Jones has been a winner with critics and fans, but they’ve waited years for a second season, while Netflix and Marvel focused on other related street-level superhero shows: the Jessica Jones spinoff Luke Cage, the little-loved Iron Fist, and Daredevil, which premiered months before Jessica Jones in April 2015, and got its second season in March 2016. In August 2017, the crossover series The Defenders pulled the characters from all four of these shows together for a single story. And on March 8th, Jessica Jones’ second season finally arrived on Netflix. Just before the premiere, I talked to Rosenberg about how she constructed the second season differently from the first, what she thinks about similarities between this season’s plot arc and The Defenders, and what would be necessary before Jessica could join the ranks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe hero lineup.

Season 1 of Netflix’s street-level superhero show Jessica Jones had one primary villain: Kilgrave, a mind-controlling monster whose ugly history with the heroine drove most of the action. But season 1 had another, more complicated villain: Jeri Hogarth is a high-powered attorney played by Carrie-Anne Moss, best known as Trinity from the Matrix movies and the duplicitous Natalie from Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In the original Marvel comics, her character was a fairly bland and reliable older man, but in Netflix’s version of the story, she’s a scheming power player who keeps working to get Jessica under her control — and keeps causing disasters in the process, including a number of deaths.

Like everyone else in season 2 of Jessica Jones, Jeri Hogarth is dealing with the fallout of her season 1 choices and trying to define who she is. But while Jessica Jones is struggling with the past, and her best friend Trish is concerned about the future, Jeri is dealing with both. A diagnosis of ALS means she’s facing the loss of physical control and eventual death. Her season 1 affair with an underling has her law firm partners trying to oust her from her own company on a morals charge. And her initial choices in season 2 just lead to more conflict — between her and Jessica, but also for the show in general. I spoke to Carrie-Anne Moss about the new direction Jeri is taking in season 2, but the conversation rapidly turned to something that interests her more: the ways things are changing for women in Hollywood.

Netflix released season 2 of the Marvel series Jessica Jones on March 8th (International Women’s Day), giving fans the chance to start their weekend binges early. But given that season 1 dropped back in 2015, viewers may need some refreshers before diving in. A lot has happened in Jessica Jones’ world since her debut, including a spinoff show for Jessica’s brief love interest Luke Cage, two more MCU series set in the same world (Iron Fist and The Punisher), and the miniseries The Defenders, which brought Jessica back to reluctantly team up with Luke, Iron Fist, and Daredevil.

In season 2 of Jessica Jones, Jessica is hunting for clues to her past. Here’s a quick guide to everything you need to know going in. (Spoilers for Jessica Jones season 1.)

The villain, not the hero, dominated the first season of Jessica Jones. Kilgrave (played by former Doctor Who star David Tennant) was a chilling enemy who used his mind-control powers to abduct and rape the title character, leaving her as an untrusting, rage-driven mess who was determined to do everything she could to keep him from unleashing the same horrors on others. The first season ends with Jessica (Krysten Ritter) killing him, but her trauma is still with her. In season 2, she’s still trying to control her own fate, raising the question of who she is when she’s free of his influence — and by extension, what her show can become without him.

The first five episodes of the 13-episode Netflix series, provided to critics for advance screening, don’t answer either question in a positive way. Season 2 opens with Jessica back to work as a private eye, struggling to reconcile whether she’s a hero or a killer. Stopping Kilgrave didn’t erase her trauma, and she’s coping by drinking heavily, having meaningless sex, only taking cases that don’t require emotional investment, and generally trying to alienate everyone around her.

Luke Cage is returning for season 2 on June 22nd. Netflix announced the news today with a 26-second teaser, in which Cage helpfully reminds viewers that he can’t be burned, blasted, or broken.

The first season of the series premiered in 2016, giving Cage — who first appeared as a character in season 1 of Jessica Jones — the spotlight as a hero defending the streets of Harlem. In the time since we saw him last, Luke Cage has become a local celebrity. “But being so visible has only increased his need to protect the community and find the limits of who he can and can’t save,” the trailer description reads. “With the rise of a formidable new foe, Luke is forced to confront the fine line that separates a hero from a villain.”

Netflix is back with a full trailer for the second season of Jessica Jones, the Marvel series about an angry street superhero dealing with a traumatic past. The first teaser was released in December, but the new trailer gives more of an impression of what to expect when the show returns on March 8th.

From the look of things, Jessica (Krysten Ritter) will focus on exploring the death of her parents and the mysterious experiments that led to her powers. She also seems to be dealing with the traumatic fallout of the events of the first season and her fight with her nemesis, the Purple Man. The aftermath of The Defenders — which merged Marvel’s Netflix shows Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones — seems to factor in as well.

Turk Barrett is having a bad day. Despite having no notable powers of his own, he seems to tangle with New York City’s vigilante heroes like Daredevil or Luke Cage on a regular basis. In Netflix’s latest Marvel show, The Punisher, Turk finds himself with a gun to his head as he tries to reason with the city’s most volatile antihero. “I’ve done nothing to you,” he says. “I’m just a guy trying to make a living.” Frank Castle’s mercy arrives in the form of a swift pistol whip to the back of Turk’s head. He’s out cold.

In the comics, Turk Barrett is a small-time criminal operating out of Hell’s Kitchen, which usually puts him at odds with the local neighborhood vigilante, Daredevil. The on-screen version of Turk, played by actor Rob Morgan, has built a reputation across Netflix’s shows as a down-on-his luck arms dealer who often doubles as an unwilling informant. When Daredevil or Luke Cage are looking for information on shady deals, they often make a slap-filled visit to everyone’s favorite punching bag.

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for a Punisher TV show. A little over a month after one of the worst mass murders in American history, in a country where mass shootings come at the rate of roughly one per day, the arrival of Marvel Comics’ favorite gun-wielding, spree-killing angry white man on Netflix is awkward, to say the least.

The Punisher has always been an antihero, a not-quite-good guy with a gun whose motivation for murder is initially sympathetic: bad guys killed his family, and justice has to be dispensed. When the Netflix series begins, however, he’s fresh from completing his quest for vengeance, and everyone on his original hit list is pushing daisies. If this were a movie, we’d be at the end, and it’d be time for Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) to put the guns down, get a lot of therapy, and move on with his life. But he can’t, because then Netflix and Marvel wouldn’t have a show, so he has to keep killing.