Three Seasons In- Daredevil
I started this article series to review online serial fiction. But three weeks in and I’m already writing about TV. Whatever, just roll with it.
I recently finished Marvel’s Daredevil season 3 and I have to say, top-notch. I don’t know if this is the best season of any of Netflix’s Marvel shows but it is certainly close. I’ll have to think about that and do another ranking post of the Netflix MCU.
I was skeptical going into this season. Since Jessica Jones S1, the Netflix shows have seen a steady decline. I was unsure how well the show was going to handle the transition from S2 to the ending of Defenders. The main character being dead but not really is quite a trope. Plus, that end scene of Defenders, revealing Matt Murdock was alive, left me thinking bad guys had found him. There was a line about “tell her he’s awake” which made me immediately think “oh, guess Electra’s alive too…again”.
Fortunately, I was completely off base. Things pick up strong in the first episode. Matt’s alive and recovering. He survived by fluke and luck, nothing cosmic or special. He’s being himself and not telling his friends he’s alive, no tropey stories there.
The season did a great job of never letting up. I felt compelled to want to keep watching. Sadly, I still haven’t finished S2 of Luke Cage because I never felt compelled to watch the next episode. It felt like a chore. And I’ve heard spoilers on the ending, which sounds great. But getting there felt like work. Not so with Daredevil.
All the characters had good arcs and something to do. Foggy didn’t feel like an afterthought this season. Nadeem and Dex were great characters. Watching both of them slowly fall under the thumb of Fisk really served to just show how Fisk was able to get away with everything he got away with. Their whole world slowly unraveled a little bit at a time until there’s a point of no return.
The show wasn’t without its flaws. As soon as Karen took refuge in the church it became obvious Father Lantom or Sister Maggie were going to die in the crossfire. That it took Matt so long to come around to working with his friends got a little bit old.
But I did like that, at the penultimate episode, the three of them are working together again. They do everything right but fail because Fisk has corrupted the jury. Everyone is ready to throw in the towel and kill Fisk. Even Matt. Except Foggy.
In some sense, he’s hopelessly naive. When someone is this powerful and above the law, it seems your only hope is to go beyond it yourself and kill him. Even the police are shrugging their shoulders at the idea. Everyone is saying it. It’s a valid argument to be made. If killing this one guy saves how many other lives, it’s worth doing. Right?
The thing is, Foggy was right. Fisk’s power was making people feel like they didn’t have any other choice. But they did.
There was one scene where all the corrupted FBI agents are in an office together. They all feel defeated and trapped. But Fisk’s power over them was illusory. He only had as much power as they gave him. If they had all decided, right then, to work together instead of for Fisk they could have put him back in prison and saved their families.
That whole story was a metaphor for our world today. We feel trapped by a broken system. But the system is only broken when we think it’s broken. Because it only works when we think it will work. People don’t vote because they don’t think that it matters. And it doesn’t matter because they don’t vote.
Anyways, enough on that. Let’s talk about that prison hallway scene. 11 minutes, uninterrupted single camera. It was amazingly well done. Intense. Exciting. I am so glad things like this are happening more and we’re getting away from split-second jump cuts. They’re still really common but the more scenes like this we can get the better.
The rest of the fights were also great. Daredevil has never pulled its punches in fight scenes (pun most definitely intended).
Overall, highly recommend this season. Season 1 and 3 are high up on the must watch list.
