Week 10 Seminar: Paracanon

The work that might count. Films and series a franchise has never said yes or no to, and the canon policy that decides.

12 May 2027

The technique#

Paracanon is work that sits beside a continuity without being clearly in it or out of it. A canon policy is the rule that decides, and says who gets to decide. Without one, the audience decides, and it doesn’t agree with itself.

The cases#

The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) retells Ninjago with different origins and a different city. It never mentions the series, and the series never mentions it. That is paracanon handled cleanly: two continuities, and nobody asks which is true.

Marvel’s Netflix series, from Daredevil (2015) on, are the opposite case. They were made under the Marvel name and never acknowledged by the films. Then Charlie Cox appeared as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and Vincent D’Onofrio as the Kingpin in Hawkeye (2021). Neither appearance said whether the Netflix seasons had happened.

In the seminar#

Write the canon policy Marvel could have published for the Netflix series in 2015, and test it against what happened next. Then revise the draft for your Capstone universe. The Capstone asks you to argue your policy against one a real franchise uses, so note which one you are arguing with.