Lots of familiar faces will appear in Marvel’s Defenders miniseries

Matt LiparotaBy
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Supporting cast, assemble

It seems like just yesterday that Netflix’s Daredevil flip-kicked its way onto the scene and into our hearts, ushering in the promise of an Avengers-level mega-crossover that seemed like it would take forever to get here. Now, with three series, four seasons and a bunch of hours of binge-watching down, Marvel’s Defenders team-up miniseries is actually happening.

We learned last month that Sigourney Weaver herself will take on the assembled heroes – Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, Mike Colter’s Luke Cage and Finn Jones’ Danny Rand/Iron Fist – as the miniseries’ as-yet-unnamed antagonist. That’s a big get for the series, but since then we’ve also started to learn who’s coming on board to fill out the supporting cast; basically, the supporting casts from the other shows.

Marvel’s Defenders Twitter account confirmed earlier this week that Simone Missick and Deborah Ann Woll will join the cast, reprising their roles from Luke Cage and Daredevil, respectively. 

Missick will reprise her role as Misty Knight, last seen disillusioned with her role as a NYPD detective at the end of Luke Cage‘s recently released first season. Woll returns as Karen Page, who ended Daredevil‘s second season estranged from her friends at Nelson & Murdock, and apparently ready to head off and join Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle in his own Punisher series.

The Defenders Twitter account also announced yesterday that three more supporting cast members would join in on the action – Carrie-Ann Moss, Eka Darville (both of Jessica Jones fame) and Daredevil‘s Elden Henson will reprise their roles.

After her life basically fell apart at the end of Jessica Jones‘ first season, we last saw Moss’ Jeri Hoggarth hiring Henson’s Franklin “Foggy” Nelson onto her fancy-pants law firm as Daredevil‘s second year wrapped up. Darville’s recovering drug-addict Malcolm last appeared at the end of Jessica Jones‘ first season, joining up with Jones’ Alias Investigations as an assistant.

That, of course, is not all. Earlier today, that same Twitter account announced three more supporting cast members – Jessica Jones‘ Rachel Taylor, Daredevil‘s Scott Glenn and Rosario Dawson, who’s had roles in every series to date.

Taylor plays Patricia “Trish” Walker, Jones’ adoptive sister and best friend, who helped the titular heroine take on David Tennant’s Kilgrave in the show’s first season. Glenn is Stick, Murdock’s mentor who seems to be preparing Daredevil for some (surprisingly yawn-inducing) ninja war. Dawson has popped up in each series as Claire Temple, a nurse who’s been known to patch up super people and was last seen in the early stages of a romantic relationship with Cage before he was carted off to prison.

That’s nine cast members announced this week; on top of the handful of already-known stars, the Defenders cast is getting pretty large, and that doesn’t even include characters from Iron Fist who’ll likely hop on board by the time Defenders launches sometime next year. Of course, we don’t know how central a role these various supporting characters will play – it seems likely that most of them will be glorified cameos a la Gwenyth Paltrow in the original Avengers. Of course, Knight ended Luke Cage‘s first season in a pretty good position to become a vigilante in her own right, and Walker had a couple of feints toward her comics role as the superheroine Hellcat in Jessica Jones, so maybe they’ll end up playing larger roles. 

It’ll be around a year before we get there, though, if Netflix’s previous release schedule is anything to go by. We’ve got the first season of Iron Fist dropping in March, so it’s likely we’ll see The Defenders sometime in fall 2017 (though we do know the first season of the Punisher series is on the way next year as well, so maybe it’ll come sooner than that). In the meantime, Marvel mega-fans can catch Dr. Strange on Friday (but not before reading our review!).

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