As we hurtle toward the climax at the speed of Daredevil free falling off the side of a building, there’s a sense that The Defenders is trying to build its stakes by having the war between our heroes and the Hand become something of a war of attrition, with arguments and dissent occurring on both sides of the divide. However, while having its heroes still continue to bicker all the time may help provide the required drama needed to carry us through, I have to say I’m slightly missing the more direct, fan friendly route the movies take. Oh there’s animosity throughout the Avengers too, but it rarely gets in the way of some zippy dialogue and some cool visual moments like Captain America and Thor bang their respective weapons together to create a concussive sound wave. With the Defenders, it seems to be something of a different story as its four members have legitimate trust issues that would make the average Avenger hit up Tony Stark for the money for a therapist, pronto. However, while it provides low hanging fruit for the writers room, sometimes I just wish we all could get along…
In the wake of Sowande’s decapitation at the hands (or hand) of Stick, the Defenders are on the verge of falling apart – already. You see, before he was liberated from his noggin, the villain revealed that the Hand’s plan is to use Danny Rand, or more accurately, his Immortal Iron Fist, to unlock something and it immediately becomes clear that Rand has to be taken out of play for a while to stop the Hand from getting what they want. Danny, of course, doesn’t like the sound of that one bit as resists until a full blown brawl breaks out between our newly formed team. However, no matter how hard the Iron Fist can hit, three Defenders onto one is no real odds at all and the final result sees an unconscious Danny tied to a chair for safe keeping.
While Luke and Stick keep an eye on the slumbering martial artist, Matt and Jessica head out and use their brains to figure out this whole mess from another angle entirely: The dead architect who got Jones involved in this mess in the first place. Back tracking to fight out he not only designed the Midland Circle building, but was fully aware what was located under it – aka. that massive hole that Matt and Elektra discovered back in Daredevil season 2 – and was stockpiling C4 in order to try and sabotage whatever lurks at the bottom.
Meanwhile, as the Defenders seem to be making some progress, the remaining fingers of the Hand are starting to turn on Alexandra due to her mismanagement of Elektra and her inability to get hold of the Iron Fist. However, after her sword twirling, resurrected attack dog finally manages to single handedly lay out the Defenders, kill Stick and capture Danny for the Hand, Alexandra thinks her plan is back on track – or at least it would be if a sudden betrayal leaves the board looking remarkably different.
Ashes, Ashes may be the most important episode yet when it comes to reveals, twists and shock deaths, but while the series’ momentum is still going strong, I have to say, I’m not entirely on board with some of the decisions the writers have made. Way back in the first season of Daredevil, the show prematurely killed off Ben Ulrich, quite an important supporting character in Matt Murdock’s universe and now it’s the turn of both Scott Glen’s Stick and Sigourney Weaver’s Alexandra who both taken off the board thanks to Elektra. Now, I concede that Stick’s passing does come with a load of emotional and dramatic weight thanks to his place as Matt and Elektra’s mentor, but offing the major villain – one played by Sigourney fucking Weaver, no less – may play better on a comic book page, but sending Alexandra off for an early shower two whole episodes before the end seems worryingly foolhardy. Also, no offence to Elodie Yung, while it’s cool that Elektra has her memory back (despite still being evil), have her take the mantle of the main villain over someone who played Ellen Ripley seems like a silly thing to so soon simply because of the presence she brought. Of course, whether taking out Weaver will prove to be a disastrous move or not us something we’re yet to find out, but thankfully the rest of the episode proves to contain enough good points to cover for it.
OK, so I haven’t been overly enthusiastic about the Defenders still being at each other’s throats so deep into the show, but I have to say, the fight between Daredevil and Iron Fist is probably the best fight scene the series has seen so far, even if Danny’s attitude is a bit too illogical.
Yes, I know that Danny’s personality in the show is supposed to be headstrong and naive, but his attitude tends to take him back to the more irritating version of the character we saw back in the Iron Fist show. However, it does mean that the team gets to split and actually finds some much needed common ground as they try to solve the problem from a more cerebral angle, so while a trussed up Danny ends up re-bonding with Luke as the Harlem native watches over him. Meanwhile Matt and Jessica start playing nice and discovering similarities as their notoriously high walls start finally coming down and it finally ties up the dangling thread of that missing architect and his missing stash of C4. Of course, this plot point has long since past its sell by date – we, the audience, had long since figured all this out around about episode two – but it proves to have some life left in it yet as it causes arguably the two more thoughtful members of the Defenders to put their heads together and actually enjoy each other’s company for a hot minute.
Of course, Stick has to do what he does best and ruin everything by taking the hardest route imaginable to solving the problem and after drugging Luke Cage with some funky incense, he goes to kill Danny just as he tried to do the same with Elektra a season before. It’s certainly within character and it definitely creates drama, but it seems like a rather forced decision from the writers, even for a cold-blooded motherfucker like Stick (his timing is incredibly suspect), but we eventually bid Scott Glen’s entertainingly gruff mentor when Elektra returns the favour and fatally ventilates with her sai daggers. To be fair, killing Stick makes more sense than offing Ben Ulrich because the blind leader of the Chaste is far more tied into the Hand storyline than Ulrich was with the Kingpin one and once all this stuff about resurrected villains and immortality is done, there’s literally no need for Matt’s surrogate father anymore.
However, while the episode seems to be racking up the odd questionable plot twist and some noticably careless scripting (Just why is Murdock leaving out so many important details all the time?), thanks to the pairing of the heroes, the damage is negligible. However, I simply can’t shake the feeling that taking out Sigourney Weaver so early on in the game is a mistake the show won’t be able to rectify.
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