Next month , the Marvel Cinematic Universe celebrates a elevated accomplishment — just a week after the dismission of Avengers : Infinity War , it will have been 10 years since Iron Man stumble theaters on May 2 , 2008 . Five years after Marvel effectively create its Cinematic Universe , the troupe ’s television receiver division launched an every bit bold venture : a program to bring in the movie ’s universe to the small screen .
Starting with Agents of SHIELD — which would bring then movie - supporting character ( in true funny Quran media fashion , he sire better ) Agent Phil Coulson to ABC — Marvel fleshed out its cinematic universe with a series of boob tube programs that , while standalone , would all be see canonically part of the same universe as the movies . In the five old age since , Marvel ’s television set output has grown hugely — SHIELD is currently wrapping up a fifth season , Agent Carter and Inhumans have come and gone , and the company fork out to streaming with the debuts of the Defenders collection of appearance on Netflix , and then Runaways on Hulu . There ’s plenty more on the way too , with Cloak and Dagger just month away , and a slew of shows presently in the works like The New warrior .
But even as Marvel ’s idiot box universe has grow from strength to strong point , something that was there at the start seems inconspicuously absent now , especially as Marvel Studios touts the great single of its disparate moving picture superstars come together for Avengers : Infinity War . The connection between Marvel TV and Marvel Movies as a cohesive world has been stretched thinner and thinner — if not instantly ignored — as the output headache of trying to line up different shows with different flair and different consultation on unlike meshing has grown .
Marvel ’s mantra used to be that of its live - actions works , “ It ’s all connected!”But that ’s not a phrase the fellowship has uttered in a long , tenacious time . Now , if there ’s a connection between these shows and the movies , it ’s that they ’re all produced by the same company . Here ’s the a brief timeline of how the heroic Marvel Cinematic Universe break apart .
Hail Hydra
In hindsight , the difficulty of crossovers between Marvel ’s photographic film and TV show became apparent early in the lifetime of Agents of SHIELD , even as the show paddle with client show from Samuel L. Jackson ’s Nick Fury and Jamie Alexander ’s Lady Sif , and made off - handed mentions to movie result every once in a while .
Reaction to the new serial ’ first time of year started off pretty negatively charged . But when its 17th episode , “ Turn Turn twist , ” followed up on the reveal in the then - newly - unloosen Captain America : The Winter Soldier that SHIELD itself had been infiltrate by Hydra sleeper agents for years , Agents of SHIELD was short revitalize , barreling through thrilling plotlines about turncoat members of the squad and the ramifications of SHIELD ’s collapse around them . fan were excited , and reaction begin deform around , but one thing abruptly became clear : Agents of SHIELD had suffered by being forced to keep spinning its bike until Winter Soldier had do out , so the surprisal crook in the flick could be preserved . The reward was great , but it still meant hinder the starter TV show creatively .
As the show has developed over the years , its unmediated link to the case of the films have become more and more obfuscated , for the saki of avoiding a standardized scenario . Season two ’s much - hype connection to Avengers : Age of Ultron turned out to be little more than a minor cameo from Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill to explain a secret plan point ofhow a SHIELD Helicarrier would show up in the moving-picture show . A season later , Agents of SHIELD ’s response to Captain America : Civil War was little more than a shrug , a passing mention of the superhero law oppose over in the flick that , in a stark dividing line to Winter Soldier ’s influence on SHEILD , scarcely made an impingement .
These days , the connections are n’t even that as explicit as a passing name drop : season four eschewed any direct crossover voter altogether , instead offer amore thematic connectionwith the supernatural constituent of Doctor Strange through its dealings with an artifact called the Darkhold , and the current time of year has shown few signs of how it could tie in to either the coming Infinity War or Ant - Man and The Wasp , full full stop .
It’s Not All That Connected
As SHIELD plant itself much less fain to bond into the occurrent of the movies — and more inclined to rope in connections to Marvel ’s 2nd boob tube risky venture , Agent Carter — acknowledgement of the serial ’ drift from the flick universe started becoming more public . address at an Oxford Union Q&A in 2016about the lack of a Coulson appearance in Age of Ultron , Joss Whedon discussed the first of what would become an oft - repeat alibi for the deficiency of crossover voter : the logistical number of trying to becharm pic audiences up on what Coulson had been up to on the TV show — most especially , why he ’s alert again — in a two - hour motion picture packed with other characters , are rather considerable :
You have to go , ‘ Well , okay , if you take it back in TV , does it take it back in picture ? ’ That was the the thing , because it get from , ‘ Why was n’t he in the 2nd film ? ’ I ’m like , ‘ Because I have time to explain that . ’ It ’s like , ‘ In plus to introducing nineteen new characters , this guy wire ’s live again . ’ I could n’t do that , so … It ’s an aspect of it , but it ’s a small one . It ’s not how I feel about it .
But he also recognise that , even if there were connections , it would always be a one - way street — the movies would bear on the shows , never the other way around , and events on SHIELD would have to be beholden to plan from the movies .
The Uncanny Inhumans
Perhaps one of the strange divergence level between the pic plans and the TV side of Marvel came with the announcement of an Inhumans movie as part of Marvel Studios ’ program for its third stage of movies . Ever since that annunciation , both the comics and the TV divisions of Marvel , under the horizon of then - Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter , began to push the Inhumansout of relative abstruseness and as major player . Inhumans comics cropped up all over the position ( at the disbursement of the X - Men , specifically ) in the comics , and Agents of SHIELD began introducing the conception behind the Inhumans as a specie and their mien on Earth through storylines with Chloe Bennett ’s Skye / Daisy Johnson , who was revealed as an Inhuman in the second time of year .
But as the comics and Agents of SHIELD embrace Inhumanity , rumor began to swirl about a break between the boob tube and movie side of Marvel . After Kevin Feigewrested controlof Marvel Studios out from under Perlmutter to report immediately to Disney , Bleeding Coolreported discover a story that at the timeseemed inconceivable : the Inhumans pic was being scrapped , allegedly to keep off giving the Marvel TV Department the “ profits ” of having set up the Inhumans in a major way before the motion picture do out .
Even now , we do n’t know if that was ever the character , but the first one-half of Bleeding Cool ’s paper terminate up total true : Inhumans became less and less talked about , until Marvel Studiosquietly dropped it from its schedulealtogether . calendar month later , Inhumans was reborn , not as a moviebut as a TV showspearheaded by ABC and IMAX . And as a TV show , it wasa total disaster — mockedfrom the moment it was revealedlast class . Its savage reviews and dwindling audiences seemed to indicate , even if it has not yet been formally confirmed at this point , that the show is done for .
The Defenders Dilemma
More latterly , the doubt about Marvel TV ’s relationship with Marvel Studios has move aside from whether or not Agents of SHIELD stars will come along in the films to a somewhat dissimilar question : Will Netflix ’s Defendersget their chance to shine on the big screen ?
As Avengers : Infinity War has draw ever closer , and we ’ve discover more about the movie ’s immediate threats to Marvel ’s New York , the absence of any variety of cameo from Jessica Jones , Luke Cage , Daredevil or the Iron Fist seems to reflect the general disparities between Marvel ’s output — even if Infinity War directors the Russo Brothers were intially more than welcome to act coy andsuggest there might be Bob Hope for a crossover . If the Defenders ca n’t even show up when Thanos ’ jumbo ringship of doom is practically on their doorsill — once again , for the now familiar chorus of logistical issues — what ’s the point of trying to pretend they ’re still part of the movie ’s universe ?
For their own part , the Netflix shows have always been cagey about playing up any links they have to the films . Although like SHIELD before them , they ’re undeniably settle in the consequence of events of the movies — the reason Hell ’s Kitchen is the hellhole it is in the appearance , instead of the affluent neck of the woods it ’s grown into in our modernistic universe , is because of fallout from the gargantuan New York struggle in the first Avengers . Most humorously / annoyingly , all six of the Netflix serial have instead broadly dance aroundeven mentioning the namesof the motion picture characters as well as the monumental , monumental events ( like , the actual exotic encroachment in Avengers ) in them . Hell , they wo n’t even acknowledge thatAvengers Tower should exist in their apparent horizon ! It ’s a stark demarcation to the early days of Agents of SHIELD , that ’s for certain .
The Marvel Cinematic Universe still represents a laudable idea that was mostly always too ambitious to work : a shared world of film franchises , weaving in and out of each other , a ten of persistence across megahit after megahit . It ’s sad that that musical theme stay a dream when it comes to bridging the movie - poetry with the develop world establish on the minuscule screen five years ago .
But in the end , maybe that freeing — the freedom to lay eyes on only to its immediate self rather than the grand effort of gobs of tentpole moving-picture show — is what ’s allowed the Marvel TV universe to flourish into the fireball it is today . The futurity of Marvel ’s television output looks like allusions to the flick ’s upshot have been relegated to snuff it Easter orchis , rather than get palpable impacts on the show ’ narratives . And then with the diversification of Marvel ’s video turnout with teen dramatic play like Runaways — which was so focussed on telling its own stories and evenrooting itself in our modern-day worldthere was barely even an acknowledgement of the show train place within the wider MCU — and Cloak and Dagger , or the upcoming action / funniness New warrior , seem to indicate that tell new and more tonally unlike story under the Marvel name is more authoritative than any connections to the movies .
Not get to worry about whatever Captain America or Iron Man are up to , SHIELD has branched out intotelling uncivilised and wondrous storiesway beyond its original premise as Marvel ’s spy show , and has countenance the Netflix show to turn The Defenders into itsown full - on event seriesof connected fictional character . There may have been misstep along the way , but the TV side of thing has become potent than ever before , and has done so without mystify to take a breather on the laurel of connexion to the movies .
Maybe one day , when the stars align in the most specific of ways , Marvel ’s boob tube heroes could show up in the film , and frailty versa . But for now , as Marvel ’s movieverse prepares to keep 10 years of being one big well-chosen home , its distant full cousin on television have pass half that time being quite all correctly on their own — even if that may not have been what was stand for from the get - go .
Agents of SHIELDDefendersMarvelMoviesNetflix
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