The Defenders: How Claire Temple Fits into the Series (original) (raw)

Published on January 16, 2017 03:00PM EST

Photo: Myles Aronowitz/Netflix

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Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) has been the Nick Fury of Marvel's The Defenders for a while. She's appeared in each of the stand-alone series to varying amounts of screen time: In Daredevil, she nursed Matt (Charlie Cox) back to health and fought off ninjas; in Jessica Jones, she saved Luke (Mike Colter) after Jessica (Krysten Ritter) shot him in the head; and in Luke Cage, she saved his life again by, uhh, boiling him, before ending the season by ripping a tab off of Colleen Wing's (Jessica Henwick) ad for a self-defense class.

Naturally, the nurse will see a lot more action when she arrives in The Defenders — and according to Colter, some of that action will involve grabbing "coffee" with Luke. The pair's romance is going strong after the two shared a kiss in the season finale of Luke Cage, Colter teases to EW. "Anytime you're smitten with someone and hanging out with them for the first time, there's a spark," he says. "That newness makes everybody excited."

But what about Claire's romantic history with Matt? Colter isn't concerned, joking that Claire never really had anything with his fellow Defender. "Daredevil didn't have a romance [with Claire], we didn't see that," the actor deadpans, vigorously shaking his head. "I didn't see it. My story is that she spent the night and then she slept in another bedroom. So I'm sorry, I need some kind of evidence that Claire and Daredevil did it. This is just hearsay. She's my girl." (And if you're wondering where this leaves Luke and Jessica, who had a messy relationship on Jessica Jones, Ritter's wondering, too. "I don't think I can tell you," she says, adding that the pair, aside from crossing paths in their first scene with all of the Defenders together, haven't had a conversation yet.)

Of course, the resourceful Claire won't just be a love interest when she arrives in The Defenders. Showrunner Marco Ramirez says Dawson has worked hard to stay true to Claire's character and story, which offers enough material to create a whole other series. "She would come up and say, 'This is how Claire would sound,' and I'd be like, 'You know what? You know her very well, so absolutely, that's how she sounds,'" he says. "Rosario has been in 10 to 15 episodes of this. There could be a full combined season of Claire, the show." Marvel's Claire Temple? We'd watch.

Marvel's The Defenders hits Netflix this summer.