ABC renews AGENTS OF SHIELD and picks up AGENT CARTER

News from the Marvel TV front: ABC has renewed the hit show (?) Marvel's Agents of SHIELD for a second season as the season finale approaches. Perhaps more exciting for people who like shows that have the potential to be less boring than Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, they've also picked up Agent Carter (also detailed in that link above), a show focusing on Hayley Atwell's Agent Peggy Carter from Captain America: The First Avenger (and from Winter Soldier but like, barely, ya know?). Will it get us more invested in characters than Agents of SHIELD? Will it reference the MCU unendingly as well? Only time will tell.

Marvel partnering with Netflix for new original programming!

Oh man guys, this is a pretty big one. On the heels of the probable success of ABC's Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and the ongoing success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Thor: The Dark World premieres in America THIS VERY EVENING), Marvel has announced a partnership with Netflix to produce four brand-new serialized programs leading to a mini-series event. The four live-action series will be focused on individuals Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, ultimately leading to the mini-series The Defenders which will presumably team the four to fight in Hell's Kitchen.

This is a bombshell of an announcement. Marvel has only recently reclaimed the rights to Daredevil after a long stint with Fox (that saw the creation of Daredevil in 2003 and Elektra, for some reason, in 2005 - check out the "How Did This Get Made" podcast this week for the HDTGM team's thoughts on Daredevil along with special guest and one-time Daredevil writer Ed Brubaker) and the company has been working out ways to celebrate that news. On top of that, rumors of a Heroes for Hire or Jessica Jones series have swirled for the last few years as both of those properties lend themselves more to a lower budget, serialized project than something like Thor or Iron Man. All in all, this is a huge announcement with extremely high hopes and what I would call an extraordinarily high ceiling. Of course, it could always go the other way but LET'S NOT THINK ABOUT THAT NOW, LET'S ALL JUST GET OUR HOPES REALLY REALLY HIGH.