Looking back on the Marvel Netflix series, it is difficult to escape comparison to their current counterparts on Disney+. Both streaming services give their own takes on the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it exists on the small screen, and yet, it's impossible to ignore the problems suffered by the likes of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher. In fact, their biggest obstacle appears to be the one Disney+ took as its greatest lesson.

With almost every Marvel series, Netflix compulsion to fit the 13-episode format hindered the ability to provide consistently engaging entertainment. Taken as a whole, they proved that the future of streaming needed to adapt to a different model; Disney+ created a new mold that works, based on learning from those mistakes.

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The Marvel Netflix shows were certainly not without their strengths. As comparatively grounded and darker installments, the street-level stories of heroes like Daredevil and Luke Cage fleshed out a much-needed dimension of the MCU rarely seen on the silver screen. Certain characters and storylines stand out as remarkably strong, and yet in reviewing just how much content there was from Marvel Netflix it's amazing how much of its bulk consisted of forgettable, tedious, or redundant storylines. Out of the 14 seasons of Marvel programming that Netflix produced, all but two clocked in at 13 episodes long.

The arbitrary dictation of episode length resulted in every Marvel Netflix series sharing the same problem. Hollow storylines without much content would often inflate to take up more space than they deserved, such as much of the plot involving the mystical ninjas of The Hand that stretched out throughout Daredevil, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. Side characters like Jeri Hogarth or Malcolm Ducasse, enjoyable in small doses, would take up narrative space barely irrelevant to the main story merely for the sake of treading water. In looking back over the seasons years later, it is remarkable how much of it proves largely forgettable, and immediately apparent how strongly Disney+ corrected the problem with its own Marvel series.

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Out of the five seasons of MCU content Disney+ produced in 2021, not a single one clocked in at more than nine episodes. Episode length was also far more variable, but more often hovered around thirty minutes rather than Netflix's 45. The result is that each one proved comparably far more engaging from start to finish, with mysteries that could be teased and delivered on without wearing out their welcome and side characters with just enough backstory to gain insight into their motivations without tedious overindulgence. At the same time, the Disney+ shows also pack in far more characters with far more fanciful concepts, packing way more content into considerably less space.

The result is that audiences were left wanting more rather than twiddling their thumbs until the finale, and they told self-contained stories that nevertheless left room open for further expansion in the MCU. Even after 14 seasons of Netflix Marvel content, it is not entirely clear why the Black Sky introduced in the first season of Daredevil was supposed to be so dangerous, or who Madame Gao really was. By comparison, WandaVision managed in a single much smaller season to answer a dozen different major questions, provide discrete arcs for its characters, and yet still leave Wanda Maximoff in a place where fans will be fascinated to see where she heads next.

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Mr. Hart and Mrs Hart confront Wanda and Vision during dinner Wandavision

In part, Disney+ benefitted from coming after the Marvel Netflix shows both because of the former's ability to learn directly from the latter and because the landscape of streaming television changed as a whole in the past few years. Even Netflix's 13 episode seasons were, at the time, nearly half the length of a standard cable broadcast season.

But as binging and streaming become ever-increasingly familiar concepts to audiences, viewers' relationship to what they want and what their expectations are improved. Future TV iterations of the same characters from Netflix Marvel will very likely be all the better as long as they heed the lessons the mistakes of the past proved, meaning that future iterations of Daredevil or Jessica Jones will only get better.

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