The Defenders may have come home earlier than anticipated. As per the streaming giant’s original agreement with Marvel, the studio would only gain the freedom to work with the stars of the Netflix side of the MCU two years after their cancellation. However, MCU Cosmic’s Jeremy Conrad recently revealed that he’s heard Marvel already has clearance to use Daredevil again. And now, we can add some further good news to that.

According to sources close to WGTC – the same ones who told us about Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk being in the works, Taskmaster being Black Widow‘s main villain and the Guardians having a cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder – the studio has got the rights back to all of the Defenders characters now, not just the Man Without Fear. We don’t have the full details yet on how exactly they got them early, but we can say that Marvel has managed to wrangle things to get DD, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, the Punisher and Iron Fist back under their roof.

Netflix cancelled Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist in late 2018 and Jessica Jones and Punisher in early 2019 and as mentioned above, originally we had heard that it’d take two years from the shows being cancelled for the rights to revert back. This is a surprising development, then, but clearly Marvel’s lawyers have been working hard behind the scenes and apparently, all we’ve got to do now is sit tight and wait for these five street-level superheroes to turn up again in the MCU.

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As we’ve reported before, three out of five will likely reprise their roles, as it’s believed Marvel intends to bring back Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter and Jon Bernthal, respectively. However, Finn Jones is probably out as Danny Rand, with the Fist being rebooted, potentially in a Shang-Chi sequel. The same goes for Luke Cage, with Mike Colter done as Power Man.

It’s speculated that Marvel has pulled this deal off so that they can slot Daredevil into Spider-Man 3, which was due to shoot this summer. If that’s the case, the Hornhead is the priority, but all the Defenders will return in time, and how exciting is that?