Disney Plus has restored the missing tributes from The Punisher and Luke Cage.
The two Marvel shows made the jump from Netflix to Disney Plus, and on their new streaming home, The Punisher ended up missing a message honoring Marvel legend Stan Lee, while Luke Cage was without a tribute to Reg E. Cathey, who played Cage's father in the show.
"I mean, why do this?" Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker wrote on Twitter about the apparent edit. "Reg E. Cathey was part of the heart and soul of Season Two. We didn't feel obligated to dedicate the season to him just because he died -- we felt obligated because we loved him and he was a galvanizing force." Both tributes were removed unintentionally.
This isn't the first time a show has been changed, then switched back, on Disney Plus. A different, less violent version of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 3 mistakenly replaced the normal episode on the streamer, but was soon fixed.
The Punisher and Luke Cage are both part of the Defenders Saga, which is the new name for the Marvel Netflix shows. Whether they remain MCU canon or not hasn't yet been definitively answered, but there are clues that they are part of the larger universe after all – Charlie Cox appeared as Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his Kingpin role in Hawkeye.
"They're trying their best to keep Daredevil as part of the canon," D'Onofrio told 12DOVE. "Hawkeye is part of the canon of what we did at Daredevil." A Daredevil reboot is also reportedly in production.
We'll have to wait and see if any more Defenders characters make the jump to the MCU, but in the meantime, check out our ultimate guide to Marvel Phase 4 for everything else the MCU has in store for us – and if you're not signed up already, subscribe to Disney Plus here.
