By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
A decade before Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wesley Snipes made superheroes cool again as Blade, the Daywalker. 1998’s Blade includes the coolest opening sequence of any vampire movie and it launched a trilogy, so it makes sense that Marvel would milk it for all its worth.
2006’s Blade: The Series tried to keep the good times rolling, and if you forgot it existed, that’s by design, as Disney probably doesn’t want a series with this much blood, guts, and nudity to be associated with modern Marvel. Well, that, and Snipes didn’t return as Blade, marking the only time anyone else has played the live-action Vampire hunter.
Blade: The Series Picks Up Where Trinity Left Off
Replacing one of the coolest dudes on the planet is a tough job. Whoever stepped into the sunglasses of Blade would be constantly compared to Wesley Snipes. The rapper Sticky Fingaz answered the call, and while he looked the part of a muscular superhero, he couldn’t emulate the attitude. Blade: The Series picks up after the events of Blade: Trinity, and was written by the same man, David S. Goyer, though outside of the title character, there’s no real connections that mattered.
Blade: The Series introduces Christa Starr (Jill Wagner of Wipeout), a U.S. Army soldier coming home from the Iraq War to solve the mystery of who killed her brother, Zach (David Kopp). It doesn’t take long for the series to reveal that Marcus (Neil Jackson), an upstart Vampire noble, was behind the murder and that Zach was secretly an ally of Blade’s, working to take down the Vampires of the House of Cthon. She’s also, judging by the reactions of every man who enters her vicinity, the most beautiful woman they have ever seen.
Christa is the real main character of Blade: The Series, which eventually cuts the title character down to appearing in maybe 10 minutes an episode by the end of the first, and only, season. For most shows that would be a bad thing, but Wagner’s performance as Christa and her on-screen chemistry with Neil Jackson, the man behind Marcus, is so good, the show becomes better as it shifts the focus.
Disney Wants Nothing To Do With Blade: The Series
What makes Blade: The Series stand out even today isn’t the fairly generic plotlines, like a vampire-killing virus, people from Blade’s past wanting revenge, or a vaguely Eurotrash vampire jockeying for position as the new ruler of the Undead, it’s what the series was able to get away with showing on screen. Blade aired on Spike TV, a cable channel but not a premium cable channel, and yet it was able to get away with showing copious amounts of blood and nudity.
During its run, Blade: The Series was a hit, posting excellent numbers for the newly rebranded cable channel. Millions tuned in each week and you couldn’t get away from the commercials while trying to watch CSI marathons or 1000 Ways To Die. The show was canceled not because it wasn’t being watched, but because it was expensive, with a price tag close to a million dollars (or more) per episode.
Before the cancelation, Blade: The Series had namedropped other Marvel characters affiliated with the 90s group, the Midnight Sons: Moon Knight and Dr. Strange. One can only imagine that any version of those characters appearing on Spike TV would be as dark and gritty as their 90s comics counterparts. Remember when Dr. Strange wore a mask, used elemental magic, and was known simply as Strange?
Today, Blade: The Series is hard to find anywhere. Apple TV+ has the series available to purchase, but it’s not on Hulu, Disney+, or anywhere else you might find Marvel shows. It’s the last relic of how Marvel would license its characters out before the start of the MCU, and proof that no matter what Blade says in Deadpool & Wolverine, there were two Blades, and odds are, there will only ever be two Blades.
