The biggest challenge for the showrunners of Marvel's The Defenders is going to be bringing together four separately established heroes into one cohesive story. Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez are currently writing scripts for the eight-episode first season of The Defenders, slated to premiere in 2017, and are having fun figuring out how Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist work together as a team.

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"The idea that we get to mix these ingredients is kind of, as a comic book fan and also just as a fan of storytelling, one of the coolest elements of this job -- or of any job I've ever had," Ramirez told IGN at a Marvel press event. "Being able to think about what it means when some of these people are in rooms together for the first time, and how we want to play, and how we want to make it both what fans are expected but also not how they're expected it to happen -- because some of these characters have obviously met each other in the comics -- we just want to make sure that's it as iconic and awesome as it can be."Some of the characters have already started crossing paths in meaningful ways. Luke Cage was introduced in Jessica Jones: Season 1. Daredevil's Foggy Nelson is now working for Jessica Jones' Jeri Hogarth, who will also appear in 2017's Iron Fist. Claire Temple will have a key role in Luke Cage after appearing in both Daredevil and Jessica Jones. It's up to Petrie and Ramirez to keep all those connections straight."In the room we're talking about this character A and character C, and we're like, wait! Have they ever...? Wait, have they ever met each other? And then we'll be like, oh, they have so-and-so in common, and we're like, 'Oh, that's right,'" said Ramirez. "There's weirdly a family tree in our heads and also on the boards. We're like OK, so this person has crossed paths with this person, this person knows who this is and what this person is capable of, and keeping it all accurate has been one of the bigger challenges. ... It makes our jobs easier because we don't have to even worry about creating a new character. So that's really fun, kind of thinking about being able to pull from the canon that already exists, even just in the three years these shows have existed."Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb is helping guide Ramirez and Petrie as they navigate this shared universe. Like with the standalone Marvel films laying the groundwork for an ensemble Avengers movie, the plan for the Netflix shows has been to grow into The Defenders from the beginning."Everyone's asked us, 'What is Defenders about?' and at the end of the day, what it's about is about four people who have an awesome responsibility that particularly want that responsibility, who are brought together to deal with something that no one else can or will," he said. "If that part works, then the rest, as they say, is cream cheese."Expect The Defenders to remain set in New York City, like the previous Netflix series. "It's very much a New York story. It's easiest to talk about it as if it's a story of New York because it's street level. It's never an option for us in these shows to do the Defenders in space," said Ramirez. "The challenge here is we've got four really powerful people teaming together and so we need to come up with something that's worthy of their fists and fury. I think we did, I think we absolutely did. It's really hard, though. They're so powerful when all four of them are together. You're like, who is a challenge?"It's easy to compare the Defenders' team-up with the Avengers all coming together, and the fact that their various stories have been so affected by "the incident" makes the idea of these four heroes having a similar showdown in New York City that much more dramatically engaging. But Loeb underlines that the Defenders are a fundamentally different group of superheroes than the Avengers."One of the things that made the Defenders so unique was, at the end, nobody needs to put on a costume that has a D on it. Nobody needs to have a building that has a big D on it. At the end, provided that they succeed and who knows whether or not they will, they can just tell each other to go... 'Yeah, I'm not seeing you anymore. And I cleaned that up.' That's the fun of being able to take those characters," he said.The trickiest issue for Ramirez and Petrie has been figuring out the tone of The Defenders show, which brings together four tonally disparate series. Loeb teased that the foursome still will be dealing with the same human problems they have on their own shows, and won't suddenly be jumping to "Let's go fight the bad guys.""The tone question is probably one of the most challenging and most exciting parts of this project because we get to overlap the four tones of the four shows and get to see what it looks like when a bit of a 'Daredevil tone' overlaps into a Jessica story and vice versa, or what happens when Luke Cage is suddenly in a scenario that feels kind of like it would have happened on Daredevil instead," said Ramirez. "The tone has really just been about organically blending those all together so that it feels like they're all cohesive and all of a piece. And of course, we're improvising to a certain degree. We're writing these things, and there certainly is a plan in place, and Marvel and Netflix and Jeph Loeb have all had very smart framework for what everything kind of looks like."Loeb added, "The tone of the story is how do we best tell a story where Matt, Jessica, Danny, and Luke can interact with each other no matter what they're doing, and whether it is that they're going to be sitting around talking or whether it is that they're going to be fighting side by side. And what are those pairings like? What is Matt like when he's talking to Danny? What is Jessica like when she has to re-encounter Luke? Or meet a blind attorney who for some reason has the ability to be able to do things that make no sense at all, and who can call bulls**t on anybody that's in that group? So, that's really the challenge and the fun."Once the Defenders do all intersect, the Marvel Netflix shows open themselves up to the same question that frequently gets leveled at the MCU films: why wouldn't [Superhero A] just call [Superhero B] for help? Petrie believes that question will be resolved once viewers see the Defenders in action."It's not about physical proximity; it's about what is that character need at that time," he said. "Jessica is not going to ask for help, you know? And if she does, why would she ask a lawyer?"Ramirez noted, "We want to stay true to these characters and make sure they can all exist in their own worlds independently after they have the adventure of the Defenders. It's mostly just about making sure that everyone's arc is really satisfying on the show."And what about the Punisher? There have been hints that, with Netflix greenlighting a standalone The Punisher series, Jon Bernthal's take on Frank Castle could pop up in The Defenders . Both Ramirez and Loeb stayed mum (Ramirez: "I cannot answer anything there"; Loeb: "You're going to have to wait and see"), with Loeb defending the decision to stay quiet by arguing it's protecting the experience for the fans."We have a responsibility when we tell any story to surprise people. If anybody is coming in and they know all the stuff, and obviously that makes your job harder because your job is to find out everything you can so you can tell everybody about it," he said. "When someone tells you, 'This is how the story ends,' what are they doing? I don't understand. It's like the fun of the story is going on the journey. If what you're going to do is tell me what the journey is, then I don't want to go on the journey. That's the challenge. The challenge is always to be able to tell you guys just enough that you're interested in coming, but also not enough that you don't go, 'Oh, I know where you're going so I don't need to be there.'"Marvel's The Defenders premieres on Netflix in 2017.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz