Warning: some spoilers for Daredevil and The Defenders ahead!
With the recent release of Daredevil Season 3, I was immediately interested to see what was to come of what used to be a favourite show of mine. Unfortunately, Season 2 was quite a disappointment. Aside from the introduction of Frank Castle, who went on to have his own show The Punisher, Season 2 left much to be desired. The heavy reliance on the mysticism of the Hand gave the season a totally different, campier tone from its predecessor, which was more gritty and realistic. It was precisely the grit, coupled with some of the best fight choreography I’ve seen on TV, of Season 1 that made Daredevil such an awesome introduction into the Marvel Netflix Universe. Season 2 was bogged down with too many plotlines, many of which were a little far-fetched, coupled with a super whiny Matt that made the show almost unbearable to watch at times.
However, upon the arrival of Season 3, reviews from critics and friends alike were flooding in on its success to returning to the roots that made Daredevil so good to begin with. Since I’m only five episodes in to the show, here are my first impressions of Season 3. There’s still a lot of set up happening, so while I have a sense of what might come, I only have a preliminary conclusion about Season 3. I can already say that, judging by the tone so far, it already feels much more authentically Daredevil than Season 2.
It is back to its gritty routes, particularly with an incredibly jaded, “back from the dead” Matt Murdock being nursed back to health for the first couple of episodes. If you’ll remember from either watching The Defenders or looking up the summary online like I did (no shade to Defenders, but it was too Iron Fist focused for me), Matt blew up the sinister Midland Circle in the end, causing the building to crash atop him. While all his friends believe he is dead, the final scene shows a battered Matt awakening in an orphanage, surrounded by nuns.
Storyline
Circling back to past storylines, or framing the current one in a similar structure from a past one, doesn’t always work successfully. It can become derivative and boring. However, it seems a smart move to do with Daredevil Season 3 to revisit some of the things that made Season 1 so strong. This begins with Matt’s healing process in a Catholic orphanage, the one where Matt grew up after his father’s death. As Matt slowly regains his hearing and heals from his devastating wounds, it almost feels like an origin story: we see a clumsy, barely able to walk blind man persevere his way through the pain, eventually regaining his superhuman fighting skills through gruelling hardship in a way we’ve never seen of Daredevil before.
Sure, in Season 1 we saw Matt get his fair share of beatings before he became fully confident in his skills, but the fight skills were always there (thanks to his childhood with Stick). In Season 3, however, Matt is almost a broken shell of himself, rising again only through religious epiphanies and an urgent, briefly suicidal, need to become Daredevil once more. His outfit even hearkens back to his early days, of a makeshift black mask and stealthy black attire.
Another way this season seems to be revisiting the past is by once again, zeroing in on the major villain from Season 1, Wilson Fisk (also known as Kingpin in the comics). This was a smart move, because Vincent D’Onofrio’s Fisk is incredible: dynamic, terrifying, and yet somehow draws a twisted empathy from the audience. Fisk is childlike, and Fisk is calculating. Matt’s return to existence as Daredevil is primarily due to Fisk’s prison reassignment – he has moved into a guarded penthouse suite in exchange for giving the FBI information on crime in Hell’s Kitchen. Fisk is motivated to do this because his partner, Vanessa Marianna, is at risk, so the FBI promises not to charge her with any crime for the exchange of Fisk’s information. Already, we are seeing a new Fisk (whether or not this changes as the season progresses, I don’t know), but this is a Fisk who finally has something he would risk sacrificing his own freedom over.
Characters
The orphanage introduces to us an interesting character named Sister Maggie, a compelling presence that will likely make more appearances, with the potential to become an important figure, throughout the season. Season 3 also brings about the introduction of FBI agent Ray Nadeem, who is on the Wilson Fisk case ensuring Vanesssa’s safety in exchange for Fisk’s information. Nadeem is an interesting character, already a major presence. It’s clear he’s a good guy, a family man with crippling financial debt due to paying for his sister-in-law’s cancer treatment. However, after Fisk gives the FBI false information about Matt Murdock being involved in criminal activity, Nadeem starts to aggressively probe Foggy and Karen for information. Of course, seeing as Foggy and Karen have been prominent characters since day one, we root for them, thus rooting for their well being as opposed to a character like Nadeem’s.
Essentially, as it stands, Nadeem is a middleman. We are also introduced to a character/potential antagonist named Benjamin Poindexter (known as Bullseye in the comics), going by “Dex”, who is also an FBI agent but with a much more sinister past. Clearly a skilled, lethal force, my impression of Dex is that he battles with a serious dark side and is revealing to be more and more creepy/off-balanced than he initially seems. It’ll be interesting to see how his character contrasts to Fisk’s, in terms of pure villain hood.
I’m super excited to keep watching and see what unfolds. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I think Season 3 is off to a really strong start. The fight choreography is better than ever. The violence is artful, the pain visceral. The storyline, though layered, seems to be moving along cohesively. Though it’ll likely be hard to top Daredevil’s hard-hitting first season, I have a feeling it will come in as an extremely close second.
~ Z ~
