Let’s not lie to ourselves here: Season 1 tanked. What we
all hoped for in terms of serial storytelling, moral musings, and catholic self
guilt were only remotely satisfied. Not to a degree that could turn off a
viewer to the show entirely but to leave us wanting more. The running story
took too long to develop. The ancillary characters seemed to add next to
nothing to the story. It seemed to suffer from the idea of it being an origin
story for both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. Season 2 takes all of this and
chucks it aside.
Season 2
honors the episodic format in what I would argue is the most episodic a Netflix
serial has been ever. Nearly every episode ends with a big revelation, in the
middle of a fight, or right before all hell breaks loose. This season fully
embraces it’s temporality and honors it’s weekly comics format in a way that’s
not tiring.
Part of the
show’s momentum is it’s new players, and boy are they good. I’m a huge fan of
Jon Bernthal. To me the guy could do no wrong. His performance as Frank Castle
aka The Punisher drags the show (and Daredevil, at times) kicking and screaming
into both moral grey areas (the use of a vigilante) and some of the best fight
scenes we’ve seen in a long time. The show’s best move is to make Frank
Castle’s story integral to the whole plot. Daredevil fights The Punisher at
night while Matt Murdock (and lawyer friend Foggy Nelson) defend him in court
by day. It’s a fantastic setup that neatly develops all the characters involved
(in this season Foggy goes from annoying best friend to genuine character with
hope and dreams of his own by way of this trial.)
Player
number 2: Elodie Young as Elektra couldn’t have helped lighten the show any
more. For being a ‘darker’ Marvel property Daredevil/Matt spent wayyyyyy too
much time brooding in season 1. Elektra (who comes into play after The Punisher gets taken
off the streets) shows us a new side of Murdock. She’s the bad girl to Matt’s
stiffness. The two of them together lighten all of the scenes with her devil-may-care attitude about breaking the law. She’s the
perfect foil for Karen Page (both romantically and story wise.) Both of these
new characters bring new levels to our neglected Foggy and Karen that we’re
genuinely interested in their development.
The only
thing the show genuinely suffers from is an unclear ending. I won’t spoil the
show for you (too much) but the evil Ninja Cult, The Hand takes a literal
faceless value. It’s mission (to ‘activate’ Black Sky?) so obscure and vague
there’s no real sense of stakes there. Also, for highly trained Ninjas they go
down as quickly as minions in a Power Rangers episode. To the end, a big battle
is nice but it doesn’t particularly feel satisfying since we’re unsure to what
extent the good guys won or if this is all part of an even bigger setup we’re
gonna see pay off in Season 3. It’s fair to say that our attention was so
invested in The Punisher and Elektra we are forced to return to a more
Matt-centric finale, where everything services his growth as a character, and
it feels artificial.
The show is
all around much more welcoming of it’s source material. Plenty of frames looked
like near identical replicas of comic book panels. Where there was darkness or color
before there is texture and sensation now (as opposed to just mood.) We see
Daredevil interact with his powers more. We see every secondary character
develop individual arcs. The best arc has to be Frank Castle (with a great 3
episode cameo from Wilson Fisk). While the first season wanted to talk about
justice and corrupt systems in a literary manner this season seems to delve
more into vigilantism in a pure pulpy way (lots of times debates happen, and
then fights as if the fights are just extensions of the debate.) I’d say
Daredevil Season 2 has embraced more it’s source material’s aesthetic and
benefits over all from it.
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| Here's a photo of Elektra and Punisher enjoying a milkshake. |
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