If there’s an inherent problem with the Netflix Marvel shows, it’s probably the fact that the streaming giant never seems to quite be able to get the length of its individual seasons right. While Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist all had thirteen episodes runs that often saw the pace drop every time for at least three episodes per season, The Defenders seems to be having the opposite problem of having too little episodes to play with. With only eight episodes to whip up a massive threat, juggle four leads and drip feed a weath of supporting characters both already established and new, the time has come for the show to suddenly realise it’s only got two episodes to wrap this up.
However, not only does the unhelpful episode count become apparent at this point, but the other thing the Defenders universe seem to have trouble with is creating a sense of scale that the budgets of the cinematic entries of the MCU manage to create as standard.
Never mind ninja armies and little old ladies with superpowers, the biggest threat to the Defenders right now could be their own creators.
Thanks to Elektra shooting for the moon, the surviving fingers of the Hand are in utter disarray. Not only did she ultimately succeed in her mision to capture Danny Rand in order to use his Iron Fist to open the mysterious structure that lays at the bottom of the massive hole under Midland Circle, not only dis she manage to lay out the remaining three members of the Defenders after killing Stick, but she’s also managed to score an impressive promotion after stabbing Alexandra in the back and taking control of the Hand herself. It’s a ballsy play and while Bakuto, Madame Gao and Murakami adjust their expectations accordingly, the thoroughly rousted team of Murdock, Jones and Cage awake to find themselves in police custody under suspicion of murder due to the couple of dead bodies (Stick and Sowande) found at the scene.
The questioning is led by Misty Knight who is getting pressure from her superiors to either make an arrest or get these pesky vigilantes out of the way of the NYPD while they investigate the Hand with little success, but soon it becomes apparent that the only ones who can save Danny and New York are the Defenders and they have to break free and go it alone.
While the Defenders (with Collen Wing and Claire Temple in tow) engage the remaining upper members of the Hand, deep beneath the streets of New York, Elektra attempts to manipulate Danny into opening the structure, first with words and then with fists, but after she manages to succeed in her task, we finally find out the guarded secret behind the Hand’s immortality and how it’s connected to K’un-Lun.
Now that we’re getting near the end and the show is racing toward its climax, you can’t help but notice that many aspects of The Defenders are now struggling to take the strain. Plotting, characterization, logic and action are all struggling to keep up with the fact that the show seems to have suffered a spot of mismanagement with the time it has left and while the show deploys a rather sizable action sequence to try and pump up the excitement quota, the growing cracks are now too large to ignore.
For a start, the show now seems to be utterly unsure of how Elektra’s powers work or even what they are and even though individual members of the Defenders have fought the Black Sky to a standstill, she suddenly now has the ability to lay out three of them simultaneously – including the superstrong one with unbreakable skin who once took a bazooka blast. Also, even though she’s made a huge, grandstand play to murder Alexandra and take control of the Hand, I’m not entirely sure what she’s hoping to get from it other than ruling over a criminal empire that she’s known absolutely no interest in before – remember, she’s already extremely wealthy and no explanation is made to explain why her brain is still set to “evil” even though she’s got her memory back. Obviously the real reason is that the writers are hastily trying to build her up as an uber villain after foolishly writing off Sigourney Weaver at least an episode too early, but while Elektra as a classic comic character has the chops to rule, the show just haven’t done enough to sell it on screen.
Elsewhere, the show speeds past some vital character points that, if they were addressed in their own shows, would be incredibly important. The act of Foggy Nelson bringing Matt’s Daredevil suit to him in the police station and essentially giving his friend his blessing to go save the city is a huge moment, but the Defenders zips past it much in the same way they’ve mostly failed to address the sizable past between Collen Wing and Bakuto and vague hints about Jessica and Luke once being in a relationship.
Elsewhere, the plot twists itself into awkward shapes to set things up, such as Wing discovering the stashed C4 on her own by accident, despite there being an entire subplot concerning Jessica finding it and even though Coleen is gifted with ninja like stealth, the fact that she manages to smuggle a ton of the stuff out of a police evidence room during a busy period isn’t handled with the care it needed to make it a bit more feasible.
However, while the enthusiastic deployment of “comic book logic” can be forgiven as a partially necessary evil, the fact that we finally get a full showdown between three of the Defenders and the three remaining fingers of the Hand means the show now has the opportunity to fully bust loose and attempt to deliver a gargantuan action sequence that will be worthy of every bit of set up we’ve been enjoying. Disappointingly, either the show’s budget didn’t allow for the sequence to be planned and shot in a way that could have been special or someone couldn’t be arsed to teach everyone the choreography and as a result the fight ends up being weirdly blocked and way over-edited in a way that’s more annoying than exhilarating. Worse yet, the fight between Iron Fist and Elektra has been shot in the perpetual gloom of a subterranean cave, which is hardly the best look for a fight that’s vital to the plot. OK, so no one was expecting the show to give us something on the scale of the airport scene from Captain America: Civil War, but what is supposed to be a massive moment for the team – not to mention the show in particular – ends up feeling more like a pieced together brawl from one of the later Taken movies rather than the TV, superhero blowout we were all hoping for.
It checks all the boxes it needs to and gets the show to where it needs to be (under a giant dragon skeleton, apparently), but it does so at the expense of some of the things that made some of the mid-season episodes so much fun. Still, we’re in the end game now, so for better or worse, we’re sprinting toward the finish – let’s just hope the Defenders can salvage more than just New York City.
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