The Defenders will finally see the street-level superheroes join forces, and now we know where it falls on the timeline: The Defenders takes place just one month after the events of Iron Fist.
Jessica Henwick, who plays martial artist Colleen Wing on both Iron Fist and The Defenders, told EW how and when The Defenders will begin. “We pick up with Colleen not in New York — which is crazy, as all the shows have been predominantly in New York,” Henwick said. “We find her a month after we left her. It’s really interesting she hasn’t been able to deal with the emotional trauma she dealt with in Iron Fist. So it builds to a head and she explodes in Defenders.” I’m guessing that explosion won’t be literal, but you can never be too certain with these shows.
As far as the timeline goes, a one month difference is a bit of a departure from the rest of the Marvel Netflix shows. Luke Cage actor Mike Colter once said that Luke Cage takes place “a few months” after the events of Jessica Jones, while Daredevil season 2 happens concurrently with at least some of Luke Cage, as evidenced by an injury seen on Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple in both shows. Trying to pin down exactly when all of this stuff happens is enough to make your head spin, so it’s probably best to just go with the flow and take it in broad strokes.
Meanwhile, Henwick also teased some relationships in The Defenders that fans are definitely going to be happy to hear about, and called the show “really good.” “I think people are going to love seeing characters interact with each other, they’re going to see Colleen and Misty [Simone Missick], they’re going to love seeing Luke Cage with the Iron Fist, Danny Rand. I think fans are going to freak out.”
That’s great news, but the best news of all is that the first season of The Defenders is only going to be eight episodes long. Marvel’s other Netflix TV shows have had 13 episode seasons, but some fans and critics have felt that they didn’t need to be that length, and therefore suffered from padding out storylines to fill time in order to meet a quota. By trimming the episode count, hopefully showrunners Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez are able to boil the season down to its purest form and deliver knock-out entertainment across the whole season.
Get a load of the show's new poster right here, and see images of the show's villain – the one and only Sigourney Weaver. The Defenders stars Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Rosario Dawson, Mike Colter, and Finn Jones, and arrives on Netflix on August 18, 2017.
Images: Netflix
