After three seasons, Netflix has announced that it has canceled Daredevil.
“Marvel’s Daredevil will not return for a fourth season on Netflix,” the company announced in a statement. “We are tremendously proud of the show’s last and final season and although it’s painful for the fans, we feel it best to close this chapter on a high note. We’re thankful to our partners at Marvel, showrunner Erik Oleson, the show’s writers, stellar crew and incredible cast including Charlie Cox as Daredevil himself, and we’re grateful to the fans who have supported the show over the years.”
The puzzling portion of the announcement, however, was, “While the series on Netflix has ended, the three existing seasons will remain on the service for years to come, while the Daredevil character will live on in future projects for Marvel.” Jessica Jones season 3 is wrapping production, and Punisher season 2 is complete, so it’s possible Daredevil would show up in one of those series. But the bigger speculation seems to be if there’s a possibility for the series to move over to Disney+.
It seems glaringly obvious now that Netflix is ending its relationship with Marvel seeing as this is the third series it has canceled. And really, who can blame them? With Disney preparing to pull all of its licensed content in the lead up to the launch of Disney+, why should Netflix continue to do business with the House of Mouse? This isn’t like the old days any more where Netflix was trying to make a name for itself with original content. It has more original shows now than it knows what to do with, and probably has far more lucrative deals for those series.
While the loss of the Marvel series are a sad moment for fans, from a business perspective it makes complete sense.
Even ignoring the cryptic statement from Netflix, I would write off Daredevil quite yet.
