January 11th, 2019
This season of Daredevil is one of those amazing moments in media where you realize why previous entries in the franchise haven’t been quite up to the level you’ve been expecting. Daredevil season 1 was an excellent Netflix series that only lost steam at the very end, with great characters and action scenes that held it all together from start to finish. The rest of the Marvel Netflix shows have ranged from good to terrible, but all have been missing… something. Finally, with this newest showing of Daredevil, we have our answer about what the other series have lacked.
The key is “purpose,” a feeling like the show is actually going places and doesn’t spin its wheels for several episodes because there isn’t enough story to make up thirteen hours. Daredevil season 3 has exactly that: a purpose, a driving force, and a pace that rarely feels as though the show has run out of things to say. Central point of this is Daredevil himself, who is suffering from an immense spiritual crisis and comes to terms with it only to be hit by the tidal wave that is the return of Wilson Fisk to New York. Where as other Netflix heroes (specifically our two canceled boys at time of posting, Luke Cage and Iron Fist) are all “burdened” by their fame and destiny, Murdock’s troubles are a shattering of his faith, both on the spiritual and moral side as he slowly comes to believe that he must physically destroy Fisk in order to stop him. Both Murdock and Fisk continue to have their similar natures highlighted by clever scene transitions, but a third player is added to the mix in the form of Daredevil’s ultimate nemesis, Bullseye.
Bullseye is a big part of this season, with a similar “dead parents, dead mentor, man I’m so messed up” storyline as Murdock and Fisk, but while Matt found help with the church and Fisk just relied only on himself, Bullseye went to actual professional counseling and lives within his own created cage to survive. Watching this play out (and ultimately break down) humanizes the character to a degree almost never seen in the comics, where Bullseye is typically shown as the worst kind of psychopath on the same tier as Joker or Green Goblin, and I don’t know how to feel about it. On the one hand it continues to ground the Netflix series in the reality that no one just STARTS out as a psycho, but on the other hand characters like Bullseye get weaker when you know they’re just humans with a bad hand of cards. You don’t want to humanize Carnage for the same purpose, and I don’t want to be sitting here thinking “oh poor Bullseye” while Daredevil is beating the crap out of him, but here we are.
There are a few weak points in the season though, no question. A rather needless 30 minute deviation into Karen’s past breaks the flow of a very tense series of episodes, Foggy’s girlfriend is nothing but a mouthpiece for the writers to either create ideas out of the blue or open the door for exposition, and our new FBI character’s family just sort of feels there for the sake of having one. I’m also concerned that Daredevil may become the X-men films of the Marvel streaming shows, where they find a formula that works for audiences (considering the relative failure of episodes 5-13 of season 2) and stick with it no matter what. This means more villain/Daredevil parallels, more single take fights, and other things that made both this and the first season so great but will feel like old hat pandering to fans if they’re overused.
All these concerns melt away when I think about some of the absolutely powerful scenes (particularly a soul crushing one with cell phones), great acting, clever use of Daredevil’s powers, and honest to god fight choreography. Daredevil season 3 is a must-see if you liked the first season, if you like Daredevil, or if you like super heroes in general. You can almost skip season 2 and Defenders on your way there, which is a bonus, but if you have seen those two seasons and were disappointed, get ready to have your faith restored in Marvel’s Netflix shows…
Just in time for Disney to cancel them all.
