Forget this fall’s Doctor Strange or next summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – as anticipated as those films are, the new Marvel Cinematic Universe releases that are really making fans tingly all over are the next few installments of the Netflix Marvel universe: Luke Cage will bow this week, the much-delayed Iron Fist follows next spring, and the “Phase 1” finale that is the Defenders miniseries lands in the latter half of 2017.
Given that The Defenders looks to recapture much of the magic that the initial Avengers had four years ago for audiences, everyone has been clamoring to get as much info as possible on Marvel’s next Big Thing. We’ve already seen a teaser trailer and heard of certain characters’ return, such as Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville), but now comes something that just may be a little more potentially dramatic.
Actress Simone Missick recently sat down with The Wrap to chat about her character, Misty Knight, on Luke Cage. When asked if viewers could expect to see the character again any time soon, Missick responded, “I believe I’m safe to say that I will be on The Defenders.” She then jokingly went on to say, “Spoiler alert! If I lose my job because of this interview, sorry! I was supposed to be on The Defenders, until I got fired.”
In the Marvel comics universe, Misty starts off life as a New York City police officer before she is injured in the line of duty and loses her right arm. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr. in the movies) takes pity on her, designs a robotic arm replacement that provides her with – but of course – super-strength, and launches the character on a superhero career that would see her set up her own, Jessica Jones- (Krysten Ritter) style detective agency and start up a romance first with Iron First (Finn Jones) and then Luke Cage (Mike Colter) himself.
Such source material is precisely what makes her involvement with The Defenders so exciting. Although Misty Knight won’t feature her trademark bionic arm when Luke Cage begins, it’s possible that she’ll get her superhero origin story at some point in the following miniseries (if not by the end of Luke’s first season, that is), making her an ally to the vigilante group and dramatically opening up her narrative possibilities. And given that the character played a role in the famed “Shadowland” storyline, it increases the likelihood that our recent guess that this arc will be used as the basis for Defenders is right on the money.
Then again, given her supporting character company of Foggy and Malcolm, it’s also very possible that her involvement will amount to nothing more than what Pepper Potts’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) role in The Avengers was – which is to say, rich in shared-universe consistency and continuity, but little in actual plot or character development. Maybe, in fact, this analogy is more apt than what it seems to be on first blush: Perhaps Luke and Misty start their romance during the events of Luke Cage, and she serves as nothing more than motivation for him to join up with the other Defenders, just as Pepper did for Iron Man in the blockbuster film.
Daredevil season 1 & 2 and Jessica Jones season 1 are now available on Netflix. Luke Cage season 1 will arrive on September 30th, 2016. The Defenders and Iron Fist arrive in 2017. Release dates for Jessica Jones season 2, The Punisher and Daredevil season 3 have not yet been announced.
Source: The Wrap