Jessica Jones season 4: Why isn’t it happening at Netflix?
Let’s begin by examining what happened here in terms of the initial headlines. Earlier this year, Netflix confirmed that the upcoming season of Jessica Jones was going to be the final one. This came after the streaming service already canceled the majority of their other Marvel shows, including Iron Fist, Daredevil, and Luke Cage. It didn’t come as a surprise at the time the news came out, mostly because there was no reason for them to keep Jessica Jones and cancel every other Marvel property they have (doesn’t make it any less sad though…).
The reasoning behind all of these moves is fundamentally similar. It most likely all has to do with the complicated financial arrangement between Netflix and Marvel’s parent company Disney. Because Disney does not own Netflix, they don’t receive the same amount of profit for their properties that they would if they were storing in-house. Because Disney has their own streaming service coming up in Disney+, it makes a little bit more sense for them to try to ship most of its programming directly via their own service — they’ve already got plenty of them in the works, including series featuring Loki and Scarlet Witch.
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With all of this spelled out, it does seem as though Disney was open to keep Jessica Jones and their other Marvel series around at Netflix. This is why the streaming service’s own prerogatives come into play. Whether it be a licensing issue or whether it’s just Netflix looking to get away from Marvel altogether, they were the ones to make the final decision that they wanted to move forward without these sort of shows on their service. There are conspiracy theories out there aplenty, including that this is somehow punishment for Disney+ getting into the streaming arena in the first place. We don’t think that is necessarily the case, but it’s fairly clear that they didn’t want to continue to pay licensing money to Disney when they have a roster of other shows that they can find success with. Netflix are the ones who pulled the plug on Jessica Jones more so than anything that Disney did themselves.
The part of this that makes it rather complicated (at least from the outside looking in) is that Netflix doesn’t release viewership information for any of their shows. With that in mind, it’s hard to gauge just how popular Jessica Jones or any other property was. There has been some speculation that the performance of these shows tapered off a little bit over time, and we know that Jessica Jones in terms of critical acclaim has not been the same show that it was in season 1 with Kilgrave as the main villain.
For some more information on Jessica Jones…
Be sure to visit the link here! Meanwhile, let us know in the comments whether or not you wanted more seasons beyond the three that we’re getting. (Photo: Netflix.)
This article was written by Jessica Carter and you can follow her on Twitter here.