When Marvel Television launched Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist on Netflix, it was at a time the streaming service didn't have countless original TV shows and movies available to subscribers. Back then, it was pretty much just House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, so these MCU-set stories proved massively beneficial to the platform.
However, it was only a few years later that each series was cancelled in quick succession, even though it meant they didn't get proper endings. At the time, there were rumblings that this might be a result of Disney's plans to launch its own streaming service (which we now know as Disney+), and Daredevil star Vincent D'Onofrio confirmed as much during a recent interview with Marvel News Desk.
"I don’t think any of us were okay," the actor said of the news Daredevil had been cancelled. "I think that we were like, 'Oh okay, we had a hit show and now it’s gone.' You know, at the same time the group #SaveDaredevil started to rise, we started to learn the reasons why that happened and so we understood what Marvel was doing because Disney+ coming out."
"You know when you’re in this business a long time like we have all been, it kind of made sense business-wise. What didn’t make sense to us was why we wouldn’t continue that show or the idea of how that worked and how well it worked," D'Onofrio continued. "Conceptually, I think we were disappointed but I think we all understood what was going on and it was sort of was inevitable."
The most likely reason Disney+ didn't launch with Daredevil season 4 is because Marvel Studios was never involved creatively with those Marvel Television TV shows. They stepped in to stop Jeph Loeb and company using characters they had plans for, but that was about it. Now, Kevin Feige is in charge of everything, and he clearly has plans to use these heroes and villains in very different ways.
Charlie Cox's reprised the role of Matt Murdock for a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, while D'Onofio returned as a much stronger Kingpin of Crime for the season finale of Hawkeye last month.