With a Thanos-like click of his fingers, Kevin Feige is reportedly planning to render every single existing Marvel TV show non-canon and reboot the characters for the MCU. According to our sources, this means that, as far as MCU continuity is concerned, the thrills of Daredevil never happened, the Runaways never ran away, the Punisher didn’t punish anyone and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.may as well have stayed at home. Instead, the characters used in the Marvel TV shows will be rebooted, either for inclusion in the Disney Plus lineup or perhaps on the big screen.
For those that have been watching the awkward relationship between Marvel Studios’ film and TV divisions, this isn’t wholly surprising. Despite early claims that the Marvel TV shows would be as crucial to the MCU’s ongoing story as the films, most quickly realized that they weren’t. In the end, the crossovers between them amounted to a few references to the Battle of New York and the odd throwaway line that mentioned things like ‘the big green guy’ and so on. By the later seasons of the Netflix shows, they weren’t even bothering to CGI Avengers Tower into the New York skyline and Thanos’ Snap went bizarrely unmentioned.
Their separation is largely the result of the long feud between Kevin Feige and Marvel Entertainment President Ike Perlmutter. The two have repeatedly clashed on political grounds, with Feige wanting to introduce a more obscure and diverse cast of heroes to the films (a philosophy that’s resulted in huge success stories like Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther), while Perlmutter argued for more traditional white, male heroes. With Feige’s work bringing in billions at the box office, he won the fight and Perlmutter was sidelined by Disney and tasked with overseeing the less prestigious TV projects (with Jeph Loeb handling the creative aspects).
Now, with Kevin Feige newly installed as Chief Creative Officer at Marvel, it seems he’s clearing house and wants to do his own takes on the Marvel TV properties. There are reports he’s eager to start with Ghost Rider, but with the rights to the Netflix characters reverting wholly to Marvel Studios in 2020, I’d expect to see a new and fully MCU integrated Daredevil before too long.
And on that note, our sources – the same ones who recently brought us accurate scoops such as Wiccan will debut in WandaVision, General Ross will appear in She-Hulk and the Inhumans will show up in Ms. Marvel – say that the Man Without Fear is likely to be played by Charlie Cox again. From what we understand, Feige still wants Cox as Daredevil, Jon Bernthal as the Punisher and a few more actors to reprise their roles, but for the most part, the TV characters will all be recast and whether they’re brought to life by a new performer or not, they’ll all be rebooted, with the super producer basically wanting to wipe Marvel TV’s efforts from continuity/existence.
There’s a lot to digest here and the specifics of how it’ll all work out are still unclear, but our sources tell us that Feige doesn’t care for these shows at all and is happy to just pretend they never happened. Which, quite frankly, is probably for the best.