(Note: This post contains spoilers for the finale episode of “The Defenders.”)
The latest Marvel show to come to Netflix, “The Defenders,” unites almost all of the superheroes that have appeared on the streaming service to face a threat that none of them can handle on their own. But in addition to advancing the stories of four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s existing heroes, “The Defenders” also sets the stage for another to show up in the future.
That hero is Misty Knight (Simone Missick), who has been part of the Netflix Marvel orbit for a bit now. A detective for the New York Police Department, Misty worked with Luke Cage (Mike Colter) in the past. In “The Defenders,” she’s his go-to person he goes to as he tries to solve the mystery of who’s recruiting kids from Harlem into their criminal enterprise, and then getting those kids killed.
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Misty is a big part of “The Defenders,” where she’s continually hassled by her superiors for not keeping Luke and the other heroes from interfering in the NYPD’s investigation into The Hand. In the final episode of the season, Misty gets the setup for her eventual transition into superhero-dom. She follows Luke, Danny Rand (Finn Jones), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) and Daredevil (Charlie Cox) to Midland Circle, the building where The Hand has set up shop in New York.
When Misty enters the building, she finds Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) and Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) planting C4 on the building in order to bring it down on The Hand’s underground dig site. Claire and Colleen are fighting off soldiers of The Hand, led by one of the organization’s leaders, Bakuto (Ramón Rodríguez), when Misty arrives. She saves Claire from being killed by the sword-wielding Bakuto, but he cuts her arm off as they fight. Comic fans will recognize Misty losing her arm as a key moment.
Claire and Colleen manage to save Misty before the building is destroyed, and Colleen finds her in the hospital sometime later. She mentions that Danny owns the hospital, and that it has some cutting-edge programs that’ll help her recover. It’s a big hint about where Misty, and the new arm she’ll get, are headed next.
In the Marvel Comics, Misty is also a police detective and loses her arm in a bombing. She leaves the force to avoid a desk job, and later receives a state-of-the-art bionic prosthetic arm to replace the one she lost. That arm comes from a familiar source: Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Misty will be getting her new arm with the help of Danny Rand, but the effect is likely to be the same. In the comics, her bionic arm gives Misty a dose of super strength and, paired with her formidable detective skills, makes her a formidable hero.
The comics also see Misty often working with the Iron Fist, Luke Cage and, in particular, Colleen Wing. In fact, the two women team up to form the superhero duo known as the Daughters of the Dragon.
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Between Misty almost getting the full origin story treatment in “Luke Cage” and “The Defenders,” and Colleen struggling with not being allowed to fight alongside the more-super Defenders in the last episode of the series, it’s not a stretch to imagine the two characters striking out on their own as the Daughters of the Dragon. Marvel’s head of television, Jeph Loeb, also previously mentioned that Misty could get her own spinoff from “Luke Cage.” With the conclusion of “The Defenders,” all the seeds are planted for that possibility.