DAREDEVIL Writer Weighs in On Cancelation; Thought It Was "Too Big To Fail"
When Daredevil was surprisingly cancelled by Netflix, there was an ongoing meeting in the writers room about where they were taking season four. As we already reported, season four was already planned out and the creative team was getting to work.
One of the writers in that room the day it was cancelled was Tamara Becher-Wilkinson, who wrote the season three episode that focused on Karen Page. io9 recently talked to her about what it was like to be in the room when the team got the bad news.
After saying that she thinks the Marvel universe on Netflix has come to an end, she talks about how it all went down. She was actually in the middle of creating a writing schedule for season four when they got word:
“[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.”
I can only imagine how crazy that must’ve been. Season three was bombarded with nothing but great reviews, and everyone on the team thought the show was safe. Becher-Wilkinson explains that she thought is was too big to fail:
“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.”
Obviously, nothing is safe, no matter how great it is. There’s talk of Marvel Studios completely rebooting the shows and starting from scratch on Disney+, but that has not been confirmed. As of right now, Marvel hasn’t officially revealed what they are doing, just that they look forward to more adventures with Daredevil.
Becher-Wilkinson went on to praise the team who made Daredevil what it was:
“Everyone who’s ever worked on [Daredevil], they’ve built something really special. And the way [the Marvel/Netflix shows] interacted with each other, it was really cool and unique [and] that didn’t exist anywhere else on TV. Sure, there are other superhero shows, but there weren’t other superhero shows like the shows that Marvel put onto Netflix. And it’s sad to think that all the episodes that exist now, that’s all there’s ever going to be.”
It’s still sad that we won’t get to see the story of Daredevil continue and that they won’t get to play with Bullseye more in the storyline that was set up for Netflix.
It will be interesting to find out what exactly Marvel has planned for these characters now that Netflix has ditched them.
