When Marvel—fresh off the success of The Avengers—made its first foray into the television world with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the big question on everyone’s minds was how connected the TV series would be to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In practice, with S.H.I.E.L.D. now entering its third season, the answer seems to be “very little.” Sure Captain America: The Winter Soldier blew up the entire premise of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the second half of its first season, but the film world continues to kind of pretend like the TV shows don’t exist. But that’s getting a bit more complicated now that Marvel TV has found immense success on Netflix with Daredevil, with four more Netflix series—Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders—on the horizon.

While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter are very much network TV shows, Daredevil proved that Marvel can use the longform format to not only craft more deliberately paced stories, but also ones that may be a bit too gritty or dark for a $200 million feature film. Daredevil creator Drew Goddard recently went so far as to say Daredevil would be Rated R if it were a movie, so clearly with these Netflix shows, Marvel is getting to explore avenues that aren’t readily available to them in the MCU.


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Image via Netflix

But as the Netflix shows find success with enticing casting like Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin and Jon Bernthal as The Punisher in Daredevil's upcoming second season, the question of whether the films and TV shows will intersect grows more relevant. Speaking at a recent Q&A in anticipation of the Blu-ray release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige confirmed that it’s only a matter of time before that crossover happens, but there are certain roadblocks that have to be navigated:

“I think that’s inevitable at some point, as we’re plotting the movies going forward and they’re doing the shows. The schedules don’t always quite match up to make that possible—it’s easier for them, they’re more nimble and faster and produce things quicker than we do, which is one of the main reasons you see the repercussions of Winter Soldier or Age of Ultron in the show. But going forward, and certainly as they do more shows and cast them with such great actors as they have—particularly in Daredevil—that may occur. But the reality of it is by the time we start doing a movie, they’d be midway through a season then by the time the movie comes out they’d be done with the second and starting the third season, so finding timing on that is not always easy.”

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Image via Netflix

Indeed, the casting of Daredevil has been excellent, and with talents like Krysten Ritter, David Tennant, and Carrie-Anne Moss being added to the mix for Jessica Jones, it makes sense that the MCU would want to take advantage of those actors existing in the same universe. And yes, Feige confirmed that the casting would carry over to the MCU—D’Onofrio is Kingpin in both the TV shows and the movies.


But, as Feige points out, scheduling will be an issue, so I wouldn’t expect a crossover to happen anytime soon. Also complicating matters is the fact that Feige has even less of a connection to the Marvel TV world now that he’s reporting directly to Disney’s Alan Horn, while Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter keeps Marvel TV under his purview with Jeph Loeb at the helm.

The main workaround to the scheduling issue I could foresee is that, since the Marvel shows run like miniseries, something like Daredevil could conclude after two or three seasons, at which point a crossover into the film world wouldn’t be complicated by further seasons/story going into production. Of course if it continues to be a hit, Marvel will want to keep mining the show for all it's worth, so it's possible Daredevil runs beyond three seasons.

What about you, folks? Who from the Marvel TV world would you most like to see make the jump to the cinematic universe? Do you want to see a Daredevil movie at some point? Who should direct? Sound off in the comments below.

For more Marvel info from this Age of Ultron Blu-ray event, peruse the following links:

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Image via Marvel