Disney+ to host all six Netflix Marvel shows and AGENTS OF SHIELD from mid-March

Disney+ will add all six of the Marvel Netflix TV shows and ABC's Agents of SHIELD to their roster on 16 March.

The package includes three seasons apiece of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, two seasons apiece of Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher, the team-up mini-series The Defenders and all seven seasons of ABC's Agents of SHIELD. That's 20 seasons of television, totalling 297 episodes, that will be making the jump to the service.

The fate of the Netflix shows was initially unclear after Netflix confirmed they were leaving the service a few months ago. However, the appearance of the Netflix version of Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, played by Vincent D'Onofrio in Hawkeye and the appearance of Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home, played by Charlie Cox, suggested that those shows were going to be brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.

The fate of the two well-regarded ABC series Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter was a lot more ambiguous. Agents of SHIELD had gone to some lengths to tie itself in with the MCU, featuring guest appearances by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Jamie Alexander as Sif, reprising their roles from the film series, alongside lead actor Phil Coulson, with Clark Gregg reprising his role from the films, and Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter.

Avengers: Endgame saw a tie-in with Agent Carter, with James D'Arcy reprising his role as Jarvis in that movie. However, the final seasons of Agents of SHIELD saw a splintering away from the events of the films, reportedly due to the film team not wanting to give the TV crews any secret information about the movies for it fear of leaking.

Agent Carter is not, so far, joining Disney+ in the United States, but it is already available on the service in other countries, including the UK.

To accommodate the new shows, which feature swearing, violence and more adult content such as sex and drugs, Disney+ will be enhancing its parental controls in the US. In the UK and some other countries, Disney+ operates an adult-oriented subchannel called Star TV, which is likely to host the shows outside the US.

The Punisher: Season 2

Frank Castle has left his old life as the Punisher behind him and has hit the road, travelling across America in search of something else. A pitstop at a bar leads to mayhem and a bloodbath, as hired assassins try to take down a teenage girl for reasons even she doesn't understand. Castle becomes her reluctant protector, at the same time his old nemesis, Billy Russo, escapes from custody back in New York and goes on a new rampage.

The first season of The Punisher wasn't part of The Plan that Netflix had originally developed with Marvel, but emerged due to the overwhelmingly positive reception to Jon Bernthal's portrayal of the character in a guest spot on the second season of Daredevil. The result was a very strong season of television (and a notable improvement in the Netflix-MCU's form at a time when the franchise seemed to be declining hard), although also one that seemed to leave it in up in the air where a second season could have gone.

The second season, intriguingly tries to do two things simultaneously. The first is tell a completely new story totally divorced from any previous events. In this storyline, a bunch of killers are on the trail of Amy (Giorgia Whigham), a petty young criminal who has stumbled across a secret which...isn't that big a deal, actually, but by the time that comes out the mayhem has escalated out of control (an interesting take the show doesn't really explore much). Frank's latent paternal instincts kick in and he ends up agreeing to protect Amy from her pursuers, though he grumpily insists throughout the season this is because they're now on his trail and his code requires him to kill them all before they can kill him. This storyline sees the pair targeted by born-again hitman John Pilgrim (a superb performance by Josh Stewart). It's a relatively strong story, although a bit overfamiliar: we're firmly in Logan/The Mandalorian/The Last of Us/God of War/BioShock/Terminator 2/Aliens territory here, complete with the kid breaking down the taciturn badass's barriers and him reluctantly tutoring her in weapons use and self-defence. But hey, the actors sell it really well.

The second storyline is a straight-up continuation of Season 1. Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) is in hospital, "hideously disfigured"* by Castle in the Season 1 finale, and suffering from memory loss and nightmares. Homeland Security agent Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah), still recovering herself after Russo shot her in the head, thinks he's lying and biding his time for a chance to escape, an obsession that endangers her career. Russo - spoilers! - escapes and goes on a rampage, abusing the goodwill of fellow US military vets and a sympathetic psychiatrist (Krista Dumont, played by Floriana Lima), and a number of competing interests attempt to track him down, with Madani eventually dragging in Castle to help out.

Having two storylines unfolding in tandem which have absolutely nothing to do with one another is a odd take, but a strangely effective one. The Netflix Curse - the urgent desire to stretch a story out to thirteen episodes completely regardless of how much story you have - has laid low several of the Netflix-MCU shows but intercutting between two strong narratives means this problem is minimised, with some episodes developing both storylines and some focusing on one to the exclusion of the other. The problem of the season feeling a bit on the long side for the story it's telling is certainly still there (at ten episodes this would have been pacier and punchier), but at least they try to overcome it.

The season features great performances - Bernthal is stellar as usual, and Revah, Barnes and Whigham are outstanding - and pretty good writing, as well as effective stunt work. There's a few gunfights and action sequences that rank almost among the best in the Netflix-MCU (not quite up there with Daredevil's best fights, but not far off), and the visceral nature of the violence is at times uncomfortable, which for the Punisher is as it should be. The show continues to ask hard questions of government and military accountability - the plight of veterans left to fend for themselves is another story continued from the first season - and also continues to avoid giving pat answers.

The main weakness is perhaps a feeling of redundancy: the season spends a lot of time mopping up dangling loose ends from Season 1, which sometimes lead to repetitive scenes (Frank gets beaten up and shot - again - but ultimately triumphs; Madani gets in over her head; Russo goes nuts). The season also peaks early: the best episodes are the first three, with Frank on a road trip through Michigan and Ohio culminating in an Assault on Precinct 13-aping shootout at a police station. The rest of the season is still good, but more predictable.

The second season of The Punisher (****) is entertaining, though also brutal and hard-going at times. It is driven by excellent performances and better pacing than most of the Netflix-MCU shows, but sometimes repeats some motifs and ideas from the first season a bit too readily. The show is available to watch worldwide on Netflix now.

* He has, like, two shaving scars and a slight gash in his forehead which is barely noticeable.

Marvel regains TV rights to the Netflix Marvel characters

Marvel has regained, in full, the TV and film rights to the characters from Netflix's Defenders universe: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher, plus the crossover event series that linked them together.

Netflix collaborated with Marvel, via their ABC production arm, to make three seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones apiece and two seasons apiece of the other shows, plus the event crossover mini-series, totalling thirteen seasons of television produced in just four years. Netflix co-funded the series in return for transmission rights, but ABC - owned by Disney - actually made them, and a two-year exclusivity contract was put in place so that the no-one else could make shows or movies featuring those characters after the contract ended. Today, that limitation for both Jessica Jones and The Punisher expired, returning control of the characters to Disney and Marvel Studios.

Disney's plans for the characters remains unclear. Of the group, only Daredevil and The Punisher were known to a wider audience before production started, but the shows did bring a new level of fame to the other characters, particularly Jessica Jones and Iron Fist's supporting character, Colleen Wing. Based on the contract, it appears that Marvel are free to bring the characters back with the same actors playing them, but it's less clear if they can refer to the events of the Netflix shows.

One notable issue is that, so far, Disney have kept all of their MCU output in the "family audience" category. The Netflix Marvel shows were very much not in this category, with swearing, sexual content and much more graphic violence than we've seen in the MCU to date. One possibility would be to create bring back the characters but with a more familiar MCU style or tone. Another, potentially more interesting, possibility would be to keep the adult tone and create a sort of M-rated MCU, which these characters could inhabit alongside Deadpool, whose forthcoming third film (but first under the MCU banner) has been confirmed to be an adult-oriented film. One can imagines Disney continuing these shows on Hulu, which is rumoured to be taking on a more "adult Disney" role, and on the Disney Star service internationally (a sub-channel of Disney+ featuring somewhat more adult programming).

It's also unclear what will happen to the existing shows. Netflix are currently streaming all of them as normal, but their distribution rights are no longer exclusive and they could appear elsewhere, such as on a Disney streaming service.

Rumours have circulated that Charlie Cox's Daredevil (whose rights expired much earlier) has already been seen on the set of the third Spider-Man film, currently shooting, and the MCU powers that be have already confirmed that they strongly considered portalling the Defenders in from New York City at the end of Avengers: Endgame before deciding that would be too random for people who hadn't seen the shows, indicating that Marvel Studios are well aware of the popularity of these versions of the characters and are certainly considering ways to bring them back.

Marvel is not lacking for content on Disney+ in the meantime, however, with WandaVision currently airing, soon to be followed by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and What If...?, with Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk in production and Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, Ironheart and Armor Wars in pre-production (a further series, Wakanda, has been announced but is unlikely to go into production until after Black Panther 2 is released).

Netflix cancels THE PUNISHER and JESSICA JONES

In the biggest non-surprise story of the year so far, Netflix has decided to terminate their four-year collaboration with Marvel. They have now cancelled The Punisher just after the release of its second season and Jessica Jones ahead of the launch of its third. This follows the cancellation of Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Daredevil last year.

Marvel pinned the blame on Netflix, saying the streaming service had the final say on whether to renew the show or not. Netflix in turn have blamed Marvel for trying to change their contractual agreement (most notably by reducing their seasons from 13 to 10 episodes, as every single viewer urgently wanted). However, it's hard not to see the real reason here: in autumn this year Marvel's parent company will be launching the Disney+ streaming service with a number of new shows, including mini-series focusing on MCU characters Scarlet Witch, Vision, Loki, Winter Soldier and Falcon, not to mention multiple Star Wars shows and Disney's immense back catalogue of TV series and films. Netflix decided it was not worthwhile to effectively be promoting a rival service's characters for them.

Marvel's statement is interesting, however, confirming that they will be exploring these characters again in the future. Whether that is directly continuing these shows with the same casts - which they can do after a two-year break - or some kind of full reboot is unclear.

Counting the still-to-air Jessica Jones Season 3, the Marvel/Netflix collaboration has chalked up 13 seasons and 161 episodes in less than four years, which is quite impressive. Some of the seasons were exceptional (in particular the first season apiece of Daredevil and Jessica Jones), although others were not, and the big team-up in The Defenders fell a little flat. Given the sheer speed at which the shows were producing episodes, which saw some fans fall off the bandwagon, and the increasing variance in quality, the cancellation of the shows is perhaps not entirely the disaster it would have been a couple of years back. Still, Daredevil had gotten his mojo back in the third season and Iron Fist's second season was a great improvement over the first, so there are some regrets about seeing where these stories woudl have gone.

The final season of Jessica Jones and the Marvel/Netflix universe is expected to be released in the next couple of months.

The Punisher: Season 1

Frank Castle, the infamous "Punisher", has hunted down and killed everyone involved in the murder of his wife and children. He thinks he can move on to another life, working construction in New York, but it's not long before the past comes back to haunt him...and he discovers that there may have been more behind his family's murder than he first thought. It's time for the Punisher to return.

Jon Bernthal's tortured, intense portrayal of the Punisher was the highlight of the second season of Daredevil, with a hugely positive viewer reception, so it's not surprising that Netflix and Marvel quickly moved to commission a dedicated series for the character. The Punisher, as a character, has always been a hard sell for a mass audience, as he is an ultra-violent vigilante willing to dispense lethal force to punish criminals rather than bring them in for trial and incarceration. After three mostly weak action movies featuring the character, Netflix seem to have found a way of depicting and humanising the character by seeing him through the eyes of other characters: Daredevil and his allies on that show and a new collection of characters on the new series.

The arrival of The Punisher comes at an awkward moment. In corporate terms, the previous two Netflix shows - Iron Fist and Luke Cage - both suffered serious problems writing, pacing and characterisation. The team-up show The Defenders, which united Iron Fist and Luke Cage with Daredevil and Jessica Jones, was fun but a bit lightweight, with a fairly underwhelming set of villains. More politically, the arrival of a series which could be said to glorify firearms and violence at a moment in the United States history when gun violence is, once again, squarely in the news could have been deemed insensitive.

On the first point, The Punisher can relax. It's the best-paced and best-characterised series in the Netflix roster since the first season of Jessica Jones, effortlessly outpacing Iron Fist, Luke Cage and The Defenders in quality (as well as the second season of Daredevil). The Punisher has a murky story to tell about black ops, illegal activities in the CIA, power politics in Homeland Security and the morality of using violence to answer such crimes, but it does so in a methodical, logical manner. It's not afraid to spend an entire episode setting up a character's backstory and dedicates one episode to a series of flashbacks to American military operations in Afghanistan. Another is based around Frank and another character, David Lieberman (aka "Micro"), trying to work out if they can trust one another, which is difficult as they are both paranoid loners. In fact, the relationship between the two characters is the centrepiece of the season and is extremely effective, light-years from the gimmicky, "the Punisher gets his radio guy" story it could have been. A superb touch is that Micro's family is still alive (although they think he's dead) and Frank sees a way through them of redeeming himself by saving them so Micro can - eventually - do what Frank cannot and go home.

The Punisher's other characters are equally excellent. Amber Rose Revah is outstanding as Homeland Security Agent Dinah Midani whose prominent side-story could have gone in one of two equally cheesy directions (an unwitting thorn in the Punisher's side or an outright ally) and instead steers a more interesting and nuanced path between the two options. The Expanse's Shohreh Aghdashloo is also very good in a small supporting role as Dinah's mother, and the casting is outstanding as they look like they could easily be mother and daughter. Deborah Ann Woll returns as Karen Page from Daredevil and The Defenders, albeit with significantly less screentime, and is as great as usual, combining toughness, intelligence and resourcefulness behind an apparently vulnerable facade. Ben Barnes is also great as the military vet turned corporate security expert Billy Russo, combining a smooth businessman's spiel with more raw moments of genuine anger from his past experiences.

These characters and the story advance with an ease and depth that most of the other Netflix Marvel shows (which come nowhere near filling their thirteen-episode runs with interesting stories) can only envy. More debatable is the show's relationship with violence and the stance it takes with regards to the issues of gun control in the United States. It's a very gory show, easily the most graphically violence series in the Marvel/Netflix canon, despite the fact that Castle goes surprisingly long periods without massacring lots of bad guys. The violence is handled very matter-of-factly, with less emphasis on "cool" shots and action scenes (well, one "cool guys don't look at explosions" shot excepted) and more on combat being ugly, quick and painful. So the show does a reasonable job of not glorifying violence, even when it does have quite a lot of it. The gun control issue is more interesting, as Karen Page is - despite being a card-carrying liberal social justice advocate on every other front - a firm believer in her right to carry a concealed weapon (after her experiences in previous shows, unsurprisingly) and puts this point across forcefully several times. The show seems to want to get into this debate but ultimately dodges the issue.

The other main thematic debate carried through the show revolves around military veterans. The US treatment of its vets is a hot political issue (as it is in the UK for that matter) and the show manages to avoid grandstanding instead of showing the reality for the returning soldiers on the ground: variable levels of support in how they readjust to civilian life. Russo finds a way of adapting his battlefield skills to (apparently) honest employment back home, Curtis Hoyle becomes an insurance salesman and a mentor to younger soldiers suffering from PTSD, O'Connor is a boastful blowhard and Lewis Wilson's early attempts to find a way of readjusting to life back home gradually deteriorate until he becomes a menace to society and those around him. This storyline has been controversial, with Wilson becoming a homegrown terrorist, but the series does enough to show that his choices and his way out is not the right one and could have been averted with more support and understanding.

The first season of The Punisher is not flawless. Castle's solution to absolutely every problem being the deployment of ludicrous amounts of firepower is true to the character, but risks becoming a bit one-note, and there is as an at times comical disparity between how much damage our heroes can take in combat and keep trucking, and bad guy goons who go down with a single hit. But these problems are relatively minor.

The first season of The Punisher (****) is a surprisingly nuanced story that tackles a number of important issues, from veteran rights to gun violence, whilst delivering a well-paced (if maybe more slow-burning than most were expecting) story through the eyes of a number of well-drawn characters. Freed from the baggage of the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher shines, and hopefully this will be the model for the Netflix shows going forwards. The series is on general release on Netflix worldwide.

RIP Steve Dillon

Legendary comic book artist Steve Dillon has passed away at the age of 56.

Dillon was a comic book prodigy. He sold his first professional work at the age of just 16, for the UK Hulk Weekly comic. He later drew the Nick Fury strip in the same comic. In 1980 he designed the iconic Doctor Who Magazine comic character Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer, and went on to draw many of his appearances in the title. He also worked on the 2000AD comic, particularly the Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and ABC Warriors strips.

In the 1990s Dillon formered a working partnership with writer Garth Ennis, first on a run on Hellblazer and then in their own collaborative title, the enormously popular and critically-acclaimed Preacher (which has recently transitioned to TV as an AMC series). Dillon has also been acclaimed for his long-running work on The Punisher.

Dillon's work was straightforward but packed with character, incident and detail. I'm less familiar with his US work, but I was a big fan of his work on the Doctor Who comic, particularly his creation of Abslom Daak, and his 2000AD period. He will be missed, as he has gone far too young.

Netflix greenlights PUNISHER TV series

Netflix has greenlit a TV series of The Punisher. Spinning off from the second season of Daredevil, The Punisher will be Netflix's sixth TV series based on characters from Marvel Comics (following on from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Defenders) and will see Jon Bernthal reprising his critically-acclaimed role as Frank Castle.

Steve Lightfoot, who worked on Hannibal as a writer and producer, will produce, showrun and co-write the new series.

Based on Netflix's scheduling and the lead time for their projects, it's unlikely we will see the first season of The Punisher until late 2017 or early 2018.

Finn Jones cast in lead role in Netflix's IRON FIST TV series

Netflix have cast Game of Thrones actor Finn Jones (Ser Loras Tyrell) in their upcoming Iron Fist TV show. This is the fourth of six TV series they have planned with Marvel, following Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, with The Defenders and possibly The Punisher to follow.

Jones will be playing Danny Rand, a New York kid trained up in supernatural martial arts in a mysterious city. He returns to New York to fight crime, and presumably team up with Luke, Jessica and Daredevil at some future point.

The series, which will be run by former Six Feet Under producer Scott Buck, is expected to enter production in the summer to air in very late 2016 or early 2017. The second season of Daredevil airs next month, and a second season of Jessica Jones is expected to start production imminently to air around November. Luke Cage's first season just wrapped shooting and is expected to air in the summer.

JESSICA JONES renewed for a second season

Marvel and Netflix have confirmed that Jessica Jones will be returning for a second season. The show, part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was released on 20 November 2015 and attracted widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, direction and unusually mature way of dealing with adult themes in a superhero setting.

Jessica Jones is the second of five shows Netflix and Marvel are developing. Daredevil already aired its first season at the start of the year, and its second season will be released this March. The first season of Luke Cage will debut later this year. Iron Fist will likely debut next year, with the key characters from all four shows then joining forces in a Defenders mini-series, likely in 2018.

Netflix and Marvel have also indicated they are looking at expanding their series roster with a new series based on The Punisher. The infamous Marvel anti-hero has been featured in several films but nonve of them have really taken off. However, Netflix and Marvel are excited about the character starring in the second season of Daredevil, where he will be played by The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal, and are actively discussing a new series featuring him. Whether the Punisher would then play a role in the Defenders TV series or would be completely unrelated is unclear.

Netflix and Marvel have previously hinted that Ghost Rider and Blade TV series could also be in in development, the latter possibly with the involvement of Wesley Snipes (who played the character in three films). However, so far those two series remain unconfirmed.

An airdate for the second season of Jessica Jones has not been announced, but assuming it starts filming in March or April, it could be released in November as with last year.