Do Marvel’s Netflix superhero series share a secret symmetry with the main movies?
Daredevil and Iron Man might have more in common than we realise…
Other than the odd reference to “the Green Guy” and some fallout from “The Incident”, comics giant Marvel has managed to keep their Netflix shows and films family separate, with the “street-level” heroics of Daredevil, Jessica Jones et al far removed from the high-flying antics of Thor, Captain America and friends.
Or so we thought – because one perceptive fan has noticed an eerie similarity between the Netflix series and the movie universes, centring on how the individual superhero series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist) correspond with films in Marvel’s first phase prior to the original Avengers movie.
Basically, each of the Netflix series performs a similar function to each of the films, building up to the upcoming Defenders crossover as the movies originally built up to the Avengers.
You can see below how the original reddit post explains it:
Factoring in the fact that the latest Marvel/Netflix series Iron Fist has in marketing described its lead as The Last Defender, a clear riff on final Phase One movie Captain America: The First Avenger, and this whole thing starts to look really spooky.
Now, as many fans subsequently pointed out this might not be sheer coincidence. Marvel knows what works when developing superhero franchises, and it could be that they deliberately structured their Netflix series in a similar way to their successful Avengers project.
Then again, Iron Fist was originally supposed to air before Luke Cage (the latter’s popularity from appearances in fellow series Jessica Jones meant his series was bumped up), meaning that this whole sense of symmetry is probably more of a lucky accident than anything.
That, or it’s something else to do with the Infinity Stones. It’s always the Infinity Stones.
Iron Fist is streaming on Netflix now
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
