Not only has Netflix gained ground in critical circles, but the streaming service is also becoming quite the newsmaker, with an increasingly intriguing upcoming slate of original features. You might have noticed that their recently announced release schedule didn’t have the Marvel series A.K.A. Jessica Jones on it. Sadly, that’s because we almost certainly won’t be seeing it in 2015 at all, countering previous claims.
Netflix surprised us by revealing Daredevil, the first of the interconnected Marvel series, would be debuting in April instead of May. And according to USA Today, Netflix’s plan is to roll out each Marvel series “about a year apart.” Which means it might feasibly be 2019 by the time the mash-up miniseries The Defenders airs. I was really hoping Netflix would be the place where Marvel would free up the reins on the over-arching release timeline that the film side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe adheres to. But I guess it won’t be.
Of course, “about a year” could easily mean eight or nine months, cutting down the overall time for this quintet of series to come together in full. So maybe we’ll be seeing Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones to kick off 2016, rather than having to wait until the spring. Still, the intentions to spread them out are kind of the problem.
Far be it for me to pass judgment on how Netflix‘s business model works, but part of my excitement for this experiment was to get a set of Netflix series that weren’t spaced as far apart as regular TV series, so that attention spans wouldn’t give up by the time the next one comes out. Perhaps something will happen in A.K.A. Jessica Jones that ties directly into Captain America: Civil War, which comes out in May 2016, making it necessary for that series to hit Netflix at that time, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
As well, this year-apart release schedule makes it hard to grasp how these series will get multiple seasons. Would Daredevil Season 2 get released in another four or five years, after the Defenders miniseries, or would it come in a year or two and debut in between the first seasons for A.K.A. Jessica Jones and Iron Fist? Is the Defenders already planned out perfectly, or are the writers waiting to see how far along these separate series get in their own timelines before pulling it all together for one big adventure? Maybe this incessant questioning is the kind of reaction that Netflix is hoping for, since it’s what keeps people talking.
Of course, Daredevil needs to actually be a really great show in order to keep people’s interest for A.K.A. Jessica Jones up until 2016 anyway. Find out how Stephen S. DeKnight does when Daredevil premieres on April 10.
