The Defenders admittedly had its moments, but lets be honest, any major plot thread belonging to any of the individual super characters was promptly sped through in order to follow through with the continuing threat of the Hand and the volatile rise of Elektra to the rank of main villain.
Well, guess what, while the success of the Defenders is questionable, a rather hefty silver lining has proven to be that almost all that stuff involving ninja conspiracies and doomed romances with sai-twirling killing machines are now officially over and done with which allows Daredevil’s solo return to go back to what the show did best – street level crime fighting with a gargantuan side order of Catholic guilt.
But before we dive back into the faith ridden alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, there’s the small matter of getting our battered and bruised lead back up to speed as he tries to shake off the after effects of having a building fall on him. Hey, we’ve all been there.
Immediately after the explosion that ended the threat of the Hand once and for all, we see that long suffering, blind superhero/lawyer Matthew Murdock survived his fiery, subterranean fate and instead is washed back up to the surface by the ever dependable New York City sewer system. Barely conscious and weakly clinging to life, Murdock manages to name drop Father Lantom to a good samaritan and finally awakens, still practically bedridden, weeks later in the orphanage where he grew up after his father’s death.
He’s not exactly in good shape and beyond the healing bones and knitting muscles, he’s gone deaf in one ear which effectly renders him truly blind as his enhanced sense have all but left him. As a result he’s not in a particularly cheery state of mind and while he now truly believes Stick’s warnings that there’s no room in Daredevil’s life for such distractions as friends and loved ones, it doesn’t matter much seeing as he can barely stand unaided, let alone go back out into the night and crack some criminal heads.
However, helping him claw his way out of this pit of despair is the tough talking nun, Sister Maggie, who has run the orphanage back from when Matt was still a child and if you think Stick was the last word on brutally harsh advice, think again. Combating his lapsed faith and lack of self belief with acidic wit and devastating put downs, Maggie manages to build Matt back up and after he sorts out his hearing issues by flushing out his sinuses of all the congealed blood out, he starts to train once again to go back out on the streets and dedicate his life fully to beating the snot out of criminals.
Meanwhile, a still incarcerated Wilson Fisk finds that his attempts to enable his wife, Vanessa, to legally come back to the States blocked, but he may have found a way around that the form of financially compromised FBI Agent; Rahul Nadeem.
So as I alluded to earlier, the Netflix Defenders universe may be cool and all – even though they’ve given up trying to maintain any connections to the MCU altogether – but if I had to be brutally honest, I’d sell almost all the other series down the river if it meant I could focus solely on Daredevil. While the other shows have struggled to maintain a consistent quality of superheroing, the misadventures of Matt Murdock has been the superior show by far and despite a few missteps throughout season 2, my anticipation for a third season had reached fever pitch and now that all that accumulated stuff about the Hand has now been flushed away much like Murdock’s sinuses.
So while this episode spends the majority of its time acclimatising us to this temporary new normal, it really does feel like the show is making a fervent effort to return back to its roots. Thus we get almost an entire episode of a Matt being more bruised than an apple in a spin dryer as he sprawls around, firmly located at rock bottom. His abilities have left him, presumably eloping with his faith, as he wallows in self pity and so it’s down to Joanne Whalley’s acerbic nun to whip him into shape. It’s a great turn from the veteran actress and anyone with more than a passing knowledge of Daredevil’s comics lore will instantly know about her “shock” true identity. However, for now, she kind of plays a verbal, grizzled, Burgess Meredith in a habit to Murdock’s battered Sylvester Stallone and watching her barbs prop him up while he compares his lot in life to trials of Job (“Job was a pussy.”) keeps things feeling fresh and dramatically charged.
You can tell Charlie Cox is enjoying sinking his teeth into a much more cynical version of Matt who simply has lost just too much to give a shit and while he does eventually get himself up to something approaching fighting fit, it seems that his masked return to the streets of Hell’s Kitchen may be something of a bizarre suicide attempt. The show gives us a rather handy shorthand into Matt’s fractured mojo by sticking him back in his older, black costume almost to say that if he ever deserves to put on the red threads, he’s going to have to be worthy of it not unlike Thor and his hammer.
Of course, getting Murdock back in a bitter, more wounded fashion is great and all, but something else that suffered a bit during his time with the Defenders was the quality time we spent with with supporting cast. Firstly, we manage to bounce back in time to a rather important meeting set after season 2 that saw Karen Page and Matt have much needed conversation after he revealed his secret identity to her and while Foggy is starting to move on after Matt’s apparent death, Karen is still holding out hope, even paying the bills on Matt’s ghastly (yet iconic) apartment in anticipation of his return. However, while catching back up with Foggy and Karen is important, one person who didn’t get a role in The Defenders and thus hasn’t been seen since 2016 is Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk and even though he isn’t given that much to do just yet, a scene where he bellows for an entire cell block to shut up only for them to instantly acquiesce is fantastic shorthand to so us that he still carries a lot of terrible influence.
I have a feeling we’re going to get an episode soon that’ll mostly be about Fisk getting his mojo (plus Vanessa) back and I await this with baited breath, however it seems that the key to the Kingpin’s ascension will ultimately be via compromised federal agent Nadeem. Now, while I’m a little loathe to include a random wild card character to a show that seems to gotten back on track the very second it starts, we’ve still a long way to go, with an introduction to certain arch villain on the cards, so Nadeem may prove to be the soul that everyone is fighting over before all is said and done.
Dispersing some of the story and tone issues left over from The Defenders in a single episode, Daredevil’s third time at bat is off to a nicely savage start; and as the show has put its hero in an emotional hole that’s going to something of a bitch to climb out of, we could be in for a hell of a good time.
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