After three seasons and 39 episodes, Daredevil has been cancelled by Netflix, along with Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Charlie Cox, who played Matt Murdock in Daredevil and The Defenders, has now cast his mind back to the “very exciting” conversations he’d had about season 4.
Daredevil premiered on Netflix back in 2015, seeming to usher in an exciting age of collaboration between Marvel and the hugely popular Netflix streaming service. Cox’s performance was at the heart of the show, and the success of the series was used as a springboard to bring other such series to life.
But now, times seem to have changed, and a lot of Marvel’s Netflix shows have been cancelled. Jessica Jones and The Punisher are the only ones still going, and some fans feel it’s only a matter of time until they get the chop too.
So far, Daredevil‘s cancellation has come as the biggest shock of the lot. Here’s what Charlie Cox originally said to Entertainment Weekly about it:
“A lot of us really expected to keep going, and I certainly did. The truth is, I felt like we had a lot of stories to tell, and although I understand [the cancellation], I’m very saddened by that. It’s just how business works. But also, these characters mean a lot to people. It’s weird to think there’s a chance I won’t be playing Matt Murdock ever again. That’s a bizarre feeling, because that character has been such a huge part of my life for the last four and a half years.”
And now, in an interview with Inverse, Cox has revealed a little about the conversations he had – with regards to the show’s potential fourth season – prior to the cancellation:
“They’d had a preliminary conversation with me about what might happen and who might be involved or what the story might be. That was exciting me and what I heard was very exciting. So, I had a vague sense of what the show might be. I had some idea. […] I was looking forward to Wilson Bethel kind of getting to inhabit the character of Bullseye. Season 3 was kind of an origin story for the character and how Agent Poindexter becomes that character. So I was looking forward to having a season where he really embodies the Bullseye persona and what that dynamic would be between Bullseye and Daredevil.”
The show’s fans, of course, are hoping that the show can live on elsewhere. While the cancellations have been coming thick and fast at Netflix, Disney has announced its own streaming service (called Disney Plus), which is expected to launch this year and feature new Marvel shows: they’ve announced that series are in development about Loki, the couple Scarlet Witch and Vision, and the duo of Bucky and Falcon.
Here’s hoping that they Disney can find space for Daredevil and his chums on their new streaming service, too. We’ll just have to wait and see to find out. Right now, it’s unclear whether Marvel is allowed to simply uproot these Defenders shows and relaunch them elsewhere, or if Netflix holds the legal rights.
As we hear more, though, we’ll be sure to let you know.