This article uses previous information from season 1 of Daredevil and season 1 of Jessica Jones, as well as this season of Daredevil, and any known information regarding future seasons of said previous shows, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. Reader discretion is advised.
There WILL be spoilers!
Now that most people on here have watched Daredevil's sophomore season, you're probably still blown away from all the ball-busting shit that happened to Hell's Kitchen, and your interest for the future has now peaked. With a lot of unanswered questions, from Frank Castle's vague journey for the location of a certain David "Microchip" Lieberman to Elektra Natchios' mystical resurrection via the Hand, and what was up with the 40-story deep hole? What is the meaning of exsistence, will we take the chance to change our lives for the better and do what these fictional heroes always strive to do, to make the places we grew up at safer for our children and friends, risk our lives, do what is morally right even though it is lawfully wrong? Or will we just curl up under our cotton covers and cry as we wait eagerly for 6 and a half months for the warm embrace of "Sweet Christmas" to kiss our ears again, to humbly wait until 3 in the [frick]ing morning for 13 episodes of the jaw-busting-yellow-shirt-hunk-of-meat known as Mike Colter?
Damn right you will. But back to the matter at hand, this stage in the Netflix lineup feels like the Iron Man 2 era, with constant mentions of much, much greater things to come: The Hand, the Chaste, some kind of war between the two, the corn children being drained and having their blood replaced with chemicals (and being total asses), Elektra being revealed as the Black Sky, being submerged within the blood tomb, Wilson Fisk promising to ruin both Daredevil and Matt Murdock's lives, the DA attempting to tighten their grip on vigilantes, at least 2 different experiments on people leading to metahuman powers, two continents apart, some form of military branch involving Super-Soldier type steroid pills, and we haven't even begun to talk about Danny Rand's origin. To make this easy, we’re splitting this into 3 parts: Facts, Theories, Future. Let us begin, shall we?
Facts:
This season saw the addition of 2 new and very important thorns in Matt’s life: Frank Castle’s the Punisher and Elektra Natchios, the Black Hand. We’ll be focusing on the latter for now, as she holds a very important key to either the third or fourth season of Daredevil, or possibly The Defenders in general. Having been trained by the Chaste around 10 years of age, “Eli” was a soft spot for Stick, even making him go to the extreme of killing one of his fellow Chaste members to ensure she lives, despite “the darkness within her”. We heard Stick say the same thing about the original Black Sky back in season 1, episode 7: “the bringer of shadows”. This, as well as Elektra’s constant battle against darkness and her murderous intentions, as well as the Hand’s religious worshipping of the Black Sky seems to indicate that the Black Sky is indeed the Beast of the Hand, the demonic entity that possessed Matt during the events of (ugh) Shadowland.
During episode 13, Elektra is killed by the revived Nobu in a very similar fashion to her demise in the comics by Bullseye. While many of you already knew that, what's important is the ending shot of the season. The tomb/blood vessel, which was originally used to, um, “siphon” the blood of 5 children, now contains Elektra, and as the Hand seal the tomb, two Kanji can be seen. The top Kanji, 蘇, means to come to, to regather the senses, and the other (生) means living. Combining said two kanji creates the literal word for resurrection. “Well, no shit” you’re saying to yourself, that was pretty obvious, Elektra has been known to be resurrected on a few occasions, but her most notable was also her first. In 1983’s Daredevil #190, the Hand stole the corpse of Elektra, placed her within a tomb, and attempted to revive her, only to be stopped by Daredevil and Stone. Matt himself tried to bring Elektra back, but only succeeded in purifying her soul. Jump to a decade later and Elektra has mysteriously returned.
"She looks pretty good for someone who had a foot long rod of metal shoved through her stomach and spine"
Thennnn some stuff with Wolverine and Hydra went down, she fought her evil half (named Erynys), killed her, became possessed by the darkness again, and something about a skrull taking her place happened after that. Comics!
Now, onto Frank. While The Punisher is definitely the breakout character this season, his story actually felt more like a backdoor pilot of sorts. By the end of “A cold day in Hell’s Kitchen”, Frank has killed the Blacksmith, destroyed the Dogs of Hell and the Irish mob, as well as tearing up the Mexican Cartel pretty bad. He also got his signature Skull Vest, as well as a military grade arsenal and CD with ties to his own Q, Microchip. Can’t forget about Max either, so where does that leave him, exactly? Well, we know he’s on the side of good, as evidently shown when he blew the brains out of a few Hand members during the climactic rooftop scene. We also know that his whereabouts are unknown, with our only lead is that he’s searching for Microchip, who Skye on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. mentioned was a member of the Rising Tide. This was done with the intention of Jon Bernthal leading his own show, possibly some time next year? Only time will tell.
With that out of the way, let’s look at Jessica Jones for a moment. Love it or Hate it, Jessica brought in the aspect of actual superpowers within the Street-verse, namely flight, invulnerability, and mind control, and some very nasty organizations. IGH, current acronym meaning unknown, was responsible for the program that gave Will Simpson his Nuclear attitude in the form of his Reds, as well as paying for Jessica Jones medical bills post car crash, hinting that they may have been responsible for giving her her abilities. I’m personally skeptical about this, mostly due to the fact that they never took her in. What, you’re going to give someone the powers of Flight and Super Strength and let them go? Either way, we should also point out that Kilgrave’s powers resulted as a byproduct from his parents experimenting on him due to a brain anomaly, as well as several other children. Is it possible that IGH had a hand in creating Kilgrave? Entirely possible, and they may even be the reason that Luke Cage obtained his powers as well, but we’ll discuss that in our next section:
Theories:
As a boy, Matt was blinded by a Rand Oil & Chemicals truck, blinding him but also enhancing all 4 other senses. Jessica was a teen when her family was killed in a car accident, leading to her finally waking up from a coma and gaining superhuman abilities. Luke Cage was wrongly convicted for a crime he didn’t commit and was experimented on, resulting in his bullet-proof skin. And Danny, well, Danny punched a dragon.
“And THAT’S for the Hobbit movies!”
I bring this up due to a recurring theme: Experiments. While I have to take a pinch of salt when the theory of Jessica Jones being the result of genetic tampering is brought up, it’s not completely random. Why WOULD IGH pay for Jessica’s hospital bills? If she is part of the program, does that mean her and Kilgrave have a much deeper history together than we’re being lead on to believe? Was the hiring of Will Simpson by Kevin merely coincidental, or was there something more? A shady organization tampering with masses at large to provoke some sort of Metahuman gene isn’t unheard of, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an entire arc revolving around tuna cans being the cause of Inhumans, so IGH doing the same isn’t far off.
I want to bring up something quickly: If Jessica is involved with IGH thanks to her powers, as well as Kilgrave, Luke Cage, Will Simpson, and god knows how many more, could they be tied up with Roxxon? Comic wise, Roxxon is infamous for their involvement in the murder of Maria and Howard Stark, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they’re like a long standing easter egg. First appearing in Iron Man, Roxxon was seen briefly in the background of the Malibu area, later appearing in both Iron Man 2 and Thor in the form of a Gas station and Monaco racing sponsor. Jumping to Iron Man 3, we get even more information, as they were apparently part of a massive oil spill that ended with the company not even having to appear in court. Later, we also learn that they played a huge role in the days of the SSR, stealing and developing the weapons of Howard Stark. Is it possible that they still have a somewhat nefarious side and have funded the development of creating Super Soldiers?
In both mainstream and the Ultimate lineup, the U.S. Government and other agencies across the globe have attempted to recreate Captain America, from Project Rebirth’s testing on African American Soldiers (and Weapon Infinity’s creation of Deathlok) to Weapon IV, V, and VI’s experiments on ethnic minorities and criminals (this is where Luke Cage got his powers) to weapon VII’s own Frank Simpson, aka Nuke. The Ultimate lineup actually saw similar conditions in the form of the EDU, lead by Captain Britain, as well as The Hulk, Venom, and Mutants, with places like Iran, Russia, and China contributing to the cause.
In fact, Roxxon themselves got involved.
Fans of Miles Morales may already know this, but Roxxon is responsible for quite a lot of the street heroes and villains, notable examples being the Shocker, Cloak & Dagger (Who obtain their powers the exact same way it is being hinted at with Jessica, right down to the car crash and everything), Spot, Bombshell (both versions, as they were unaware that their original test subject was pregnant), all Spider-Man clones, Prowler, Tinkerer, and more.
So, what are the chances of MCU Roxxon following the same footsteps as comicbook Roxxon? Pretty high, actually. The Japanese branch of Roxxon has been shown to work with the Yakuza and even share members, and may very well be responsible for financing the digging of the massive hole, so the notion of financing a eastern european scientist into creating steroid pills for soldiers, or tampering with young british boys for neural research, or even just licensing out experimental chemicals to Hospitals (Dickish, evil doctors at Claire Temple’s hospital, anyone?) and Prisons is completely in the realm of the possible. Once more, maybe that Rand Oil & Chemicals truck belonged to Danny Rand’s father, as it bestowed Matt heightened senses, almost Super-Soldier esque. I know that’s grasping at straws, but it’s a possibility.
Let’s also talk about the strange phenomenon of Iron Fist for a moment. I know it’s probably NOT going to be the case, but did that Chaste temple feel kinda K’un-Lun-ish? Young students learning to fight, a sense of mysticism, impending war, it's all there. What if Danny ended up being recruited by the Chaste near the (real) Kunlun mountains, and that’s how he becomes the Iron Fist? The creepy blood children this season seem to be The Hand’s way of recruiting children, so the Chaste doing the same could be a way to fight against it. Again, I could be wrong and Netflix could instead opt out for a third mystical asian city in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, right after the Chaste’s unclimbable wall palace and the surprisingly close tibetan palace of the Ancient One, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Future:
What exactly will all of this go towards? Again, we can only wait. We know that Elektra is most definitely the possessor of the Beast, and that she’s coming back during Daredevil Season 3 (COUGH Ithastobebornagain COUGH) with a vengeance. We know that Jessica is going to be dealing with the DA wrapping its hands around her, as well as the disturbing origins of the IGH organization. Matt will have to worry about a lack of food and money, as well as the fact Kingpin is planning on leaving prison soon, and fully intends on ruining the lives of Nelson and Murdock. Karen has her past still haunting her, and Frank is off to continue his one man war on criminals. Madam Gao is still producing heroin, the Hand are coming back with a vengeance, and Kilgrave is- oh wait, he’s dead. So, where does that leave us? Shadowland.
E = Amount of Evil, T = Temperature (Celsius), R = Revealingness level (1 is baseline -t-shirt and jeans)
R= T x E (1 evil = Stilt Man), except those with an additional Y-Chromosome, in which case the formula becomes
-(R) = T x E (1 evil = Stilt man)
In case you’re a tl;dr kind of person, Shadowland was a story in which essentially every Street level hero in the cinematic universe came together to fight a demonically possessed Daredevil. It started off with quite the bang, as Daredevil decided to brutally kill Bullseye following his involvement in the destruction of an office building, resulting in dozens of deaths. While it wasn’t very good, It does share a lot similarities with the Netflix universe. You could easily replace Matt with Elektra as the main villain of the Mini-Series, as it’s unlikely we’ll get a fourth season of Daredevil before Defenders, and even then the third season is leaning towards an adaptation of Born Again, as evident by the previously stated foreshadowing of Wilson Fisk’s hatred towards Matt and Daredevil, plus the ending shot of Matt is during Christmas, the setting of the infamous story. However, Shadowland may not be the only story to influence The Defenders.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Nonbinary, and Gusto, I give thee, Iron Fist: The Living Weapon.
Don’t lie, this is the greatest thing you’ll ever see in your life.
A recent addition to comics, IF: TLW is a darker, more extreme reimagining of the Iron Fist mythos. Following The Immortal Iron Fist run, It includes undead ninjas, the pillaging of K’un-Lun, the return of the Steel Serpent, new revelations about Danny’s father, the decapitation and rebirth of a mother[frick]ing dragon, and a battle that ends with Danny breaking both of his hands. Now, we do have to wait and see if Iron Fist will go ahead and take after the Early run of Iron Fist comics or Immortal Iron Fist or some combination of the two, but as a follow up story, The Living Weapon would make an excellent arc for Danny’s character and one hell of a challenge for the Defenders to face.
tl;dr
The universe is meaningless, Elodie Yung is our God.
-WO