Without closely watching Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, understanding when The Defenders takes place could be confusing. So before we get into The Defenders timeline, let’s breeze through the order of events in the world of Marvel-Netflix.
Of course, Daredevil Season 1 comes first. Next came Jessica Jones Season 1, pretty straightforward. In Jessica Jones, we first meet Luke Cage. At the end of Jessica Jones, Luke’s bar burns down and he moves to Harlem.
Jump to Daredevil Season 2, which released before the first season of Luke Cage , and this is where it gets interesting. They both take place a short while after where Jessica Jones leaves off, meaning Daredevil Season 2 and Luke Cage briefly overlap with one another. This is seen through Claire Temple’s arc (In-depth look at the Luke Cage timeline in relation to Daredevil and Jessica Jones here).
Luke Cage’s bar burns down and he heads to Harlem as Jessica Jones ends. Luke Cage moves to Harlem and starts working at Pop’s barbershop hiding out, and Luke Cage begins, with Claire Temple still employed at Metro-General and the events of Daredevil Season 2 still unfinished. By Daredevil Season 2 episode 11, Claire Temple gets fired from her job at Metro-General and moves to Harlem. The moment Claire moves to Harlem is shown in episode 5 of Luke Cage.
So the Luke Cage finale episode rolls around and we see Claire Temple pick up an ad for Colleen Wing’s martial arts classes, marking the start of Iron Fist, the most recent series to debut. So when will The Defenders pick up? One month after Iron Fist, almost immediately after. In fact, Finn Jones recently said Iron Fist’s storyline is pretty much streamlined right through The Defenders and Jessica Henwick, who plays Colleen Wing, confirmed The Defenders picks back up with her storyline a month after Iron Fist ends.
In other words, The Defenders also takes place a few months after the events of Daredevil Season 2. Another way to put it, less than a few months after Luke Cage, since Daredevil Season 2 and Luke Cage overlap.
“We pick up with Colleen not in New York — which is crazy, as all the shows have been predominantly in New York,” Henwick said to Entertainment Weekly. “We find her a month after we left her. It’s really interesting she hasn’t been able to deal with the emotional trauma she dealt with in Iron Fist. So it builds to a head and she explodes in Defenders.”
So there you have it. The Defenders timeline is very simple, but the series could make for some confusing timelines in the second seasons of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, as well as Daredevil Season 3 (Iron Fist Season 2 is still not confirmed). It’s unclear if The Defenders will address what New York’s heroes have been up to since each of their seasons ended. A teaser revealing a link to a website containing clips from the New York Bulletin suggest The Defenders will try to fill in some gaps.
The biggest question right now is how Luke Cage gets out of jail. At the end of Luke Cage Season 1, he goes back to prison for crimes he did not commit. In Iron Fist , we see Claire Temple has been keeping in contact with him and it’s possible she hooked him up with Foggy Nelson or Jeri Hogarth (who we saw in Iron Fist) for legal help.
As for Daredevil, he’s been taking a break from vigilantism according to the newspaper, which states he’s gone MIA after Elektra’s death. Iron Fist is still trying to get his company back from the Meachums. What Jessica Jones has been doing is the biggest mystery, but let’s be honest, she’s probably washing her traumatic Kilgrave experience away with a bottle of liquor.
Any questions? Sound off in the comments. The Defenders releases on Netflix Aug. 18.
