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Netflix

'The Defenders' Premiere Needs To Get Here ASAP

Fans love when their favorite things come together: chocolate and peanut butter, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, cheese and well, more cheese. They also love Netflix and their acquisition of the Marvel universe, thus allowing viewers to get a chance to see all of their favorite Avengers and Defenders up close on the small screen. After Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and the new Iron Fist, the next one up is The Defenders. And everyone is looking forward to when Netflix's The Defenders premieres.

Netflix released a teaser last summer and reportedly it's been filming recently, but there's no precise date yet for a release, which is very frustrating. It will definitely be coming out in 2017, but apart from that vague promise at the end of the teaser, the exact debut date is TBD. These characters are a bit rough around the edges, which is why they're accessible to people who are obsessed with and pick at every little last detail of the Marvel world (you know who you are). However, at the same time, you don't have to be an expert on all the shows in order to enjoy this melding of the superhero minds. People who sort of have no idea who these characters are should still be able to enjoy the series as much as any diehard fan. You can appreciate them without necessarily knowing any of the backstories.

That's exactly what Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb wanted to do. He told Entertainment Weekly that the idea of the Defenders came to him while watching Iron Man for the bazillionth (OK, just the fifth) time on DVD.

Iron Man is falling out of the sky, and the Hulk is catching him, and my storytelling brain starts to think, ‘If you went over to 10th Avenue and down a few blocks, you’d be in Hell’s Kitchen where there’s a group of heroes who are not really interested in saving the universe, that’s a really interesting place to start a television series.

I agree. So, mimicking what Marvel did with movies — making movies for Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America separately before having them come all together in The Avengers — they worked on a "street-level superhero" TV series. Hence why Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Iron Fist all got their own series on Netflix before they eventually coming together in The Defenders.

Putting them all together was an obvious move, since in the comic books they all had encountered each other, they were all from New York City, and they were all working out their own personal traumas. "We never had any other characters in mind," Loeb said during the same Entertainment Weekly interview. "The differences in their personalities [in the comics] and in how they each see heroism enabled us to tell very different stories. It got us excited about the possibility of putting them together."

They also didn't want these guys fighting aliens or saving the world or something totally unrealistic (not that mind control or The Hand is all that realistic, but I'll take it.) That was a good move, as it's probably why non-superhero fans totally get it.

So sit tight and try to enjoy Iron Fist for now. The Defenders is coming soon.