Daredevil fans were understandably taken by surprise at Netflix’s decision to can the show. After all, while Iron Fist and Luke Cage had already been cancelled, it’s arguable that both of those had had iffy moments in their run and that the audience simply might not have been there for them.
Daredevil though? The show had just screened its third season, which was generally considered the best yet. Critics and audiences alike had praised it for capturing the essence of the character, not to mention that it had set up many potential ongoing plotlines for a fourth season.
But while fans were surprised, you might expect that behind the scenes, they had an inkling that this was coming. Well, not quite, according to writer Tamara Becher-Wilkinson, who described in an interview with io9 the moment the creative team first heard the bad news:
“[Showrunner Erik Oleson] got a call asking him to go down to see the Marvel executives, and I jokingly went ‘Ooooooooh,’ like a third grader does when someone gets called to a principal’s office. Then, he waited for everybody to gather back in the writers’ room and he said, ‘Netflix has decided not to move forward with season four.’ And that’s all I remember, you know. I kind of missed the details because I was, like, so surprised.
The reviews were so overwhelmingly positive that I thought there was no way they would cancel it. I don’t know how well it does on Netflix or anything like that…[but] it was surprising to me they would cancel something that was so well received. I thought it was too big to fail.”
Yikes, that sounds like a bad time. What will really sting for fans of the show is that they were busy developing a fourth season, to the point of finalizing the writing schedule for it. You might think that they’d be given a little more notice that the show was coming to end so as to give their characters a little more closure, but it sounds like when the axe fell it was swift and brutal.
And the rest of Marvel’s Netflix shows? Well, we’re going to get another season of The Punisher and Jessica Jones, but Becher-Wilkinson says the writing is on the wall:
“If I was a betting woman, you know, my guess is that it’s the end of the Marvel universe on Netflix.”
Tell us, were you just as shocked as the writers were in regards to the cancellation of Daredevil? Let us know by commenting below.