Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel TV chief Jeph Loeb had this to say when asked about a potential Misty Knight spin-off series for Netflix after the character makes her debut in the upcoming Luke Cage series next month, as played by Simone Missick:
“We’re very lucky in a sense that our casts are so rich and deep and so diverse. We certainly have plans for all of our characters. A lot of it has to do with exactly how many shows Netflix is actually going to let us make. We’re up to six now. At a certain point, we have to be careful that we’re not becoming the Marvel channel on Netflix… [Although we would not be mad about a Misty Knight series]… But I think Netflix is being very selective in terms of where we’re going. That being said, Simone [Missick] just knocked it so far out of the park that we’re still trying to find the baseball. It’s somewhere out there traversing the globe. So it’s really great. And I can tell you that what she’s doing on Iron Fist, it’s just incredible. The fans are really going to love it.”
So what can we conclude from all that? We can say with certainty that Misty Knight will also be making an appearance in the Iron Fist series – something we didn’t know before today (at least, there’s been no formal announcement of this that I’m aware of). And based on his excitement, we can assume that she plays a sizable enough role in the series to have some significant impact. Although we should also expect that she’ll have much screen time in the Luke Cage series as well. What we don’t know at all is whether she will get her own spin-off series. Marvel clearly wouldn’t mind it, but, as Loeb says in the above quote, it’ll be up to Netflix to decide ultimately.
The THR piece also feeds the possibility of a spin-off series by noting that Missick is already a fan favorite, even though we haven’t seen her in action yet, as she got the strongest, most enthusiastic cheers during the Luke Cage Comic-Con panel last month, when she was introduced – even more than the star of the series, Mike Colter, received. Also, fans have taken to social media en masse, calling for a Misty Knight spin-off series, which is apparently what prompted the question to Loeb in the first place.
But her appearance in Iron Fist’s series should probably have been expected, given that, in the comics, the character is romantically linked to both Luke Cage and Iron Fist/Danny Rand (who will be played by Finn Jones in the series).
Simone Missick is playing a variation of Misty Knight, so don’t expect an exact adaptation of the character from comic to screen. According to the Marvel wiki, Misty was seriously injured preventing a bomb attack when she was a police officer with the NYPD. Her right arm was amputated and rather than take a desk job, she resigned from the police force. Tony Stark (Iron Man) provided her a bionic arm which endowed her superhuman strength. In the Netflix series, she launches a detective agency, helping Cage.
Missick previously said this about the character she plays: “[Misty Knight] is so larger than life, and being able to put the voice to it for the first time is exciting… and then the writing was so rich. It was like, every day that you open the script, you’re like, ‘I really get to say this today? I get to do this today? I get to kick ass today?’ So it was a lot of fun.”
“Luke Cage” premieres on September 30, 2016 on Netflix – a weekend that I’m sure will see many of us locked inside our various homes, binge-watching what we hope will be an excellent much-anticipated series.
Showrunner and executive producer Cheo Hodari Coker has said this about the series: “It’s very sophisticated. I mean, it’s got a ’90s hip-hop vibe, but it’s really forward-thinking. We have Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad doing the scoring for us… We have a lot of different musical appearances, but at the same time, we’ve got the Marvel action. We’ve got drama. I would like this to be, I mean, I know this is heavy but, ‘The Wire’ of Marvel television, because we really deal with a lot of different issues.”
Mike Colter plays Luke Cage, in the series. Mahershala Ali is Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes, an adversary for the title character to battle against. Simone Missick is Misty Knight. Alfre Woodard plays a variation of another Luke Cage nemesis known as Black Mariah. And Theo Rossi is Shades (aka Alvarez), a career criminal and a nemesis to Cage.
Below you’ll find the most recent teaser trailer for “Marvel’s Luke Cage” as well as a teaser for the series that will bring all 4 characters (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist) together as The Defenders in a separate series, “Marvel’s The Defenders,” that will premiere in 2017.
Watch both teasers below:
