Has Disney+ Censored The Defenders Saga?

One of the more surprising moves by the Disney+ streaming service has been adding Marvel's slate of Netflix shows: "Daredevil," "The Defenders," "Iron Fist," "Jessica Jones," "Luke Cage," and "The Punisher." Though the shows all strived to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, they are all undeniably R-rated ventures, presenting much darker material than typical Marvel movies. Disney+ has kept its streaming service relatively family-friendly in North America, perhaps the "edgiest" piece of content it carried previously being Fox's "The Simpsons."

The question many fans have after the announcement that "the Defenders Saga" would be migrating to Disney+ is whether the company would censor the content in any way to better fit its more clean-cut image. There would be plenty of material to choose from since shows like "Daredevil" and "The Punisher" contain fairly gruesome instances of violence, while cursing was a regular staple on "Luke Cage" and "Jessica Jones." The two lead characters even share a sex scene in "Jessica Jones."

Disney has a massive number of companies under its umbrella and had previously pushed edgier content to Hulu, but the Defenders Saga presented a problem, being so directly tied to the MCU. However, Disney seems to have compromised for a content warning. According to a report from IGN monitoring the adult-oriented content, Disney+ appears to have kept all the adult material in the Defenders Saga intact, although the streaming service now asks subscribers to confirm whether they want to be able to access the full slate of its streaming library, including the shows with more mature content, by setting individual profiles to either TV-MA or TV-14.

The MCU canon had previously directly brought its R-rated shows into the fold, with Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio), making an appearance on the Disney+ series "Hawkeye" and Charlie Cox reprising his role as Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, in the film "Spider-Man: No Way Home."