So it’s become pretty clear that Daredevil Season 2 has fallen into the typical Marvel trap of having too many pots on the boil at the the twin plots of the Punisher and Elecktra have been a bit too much for Daredevil to juggle. In fact, for lack of a better description, it seems that it’s suffering from “middle film” syndrome as it selflessly sets up further shows at the expense of its itself as supporting characters and plot points pile up in order to get their turn on screen.
However, one episode short of the season finale we finally find resolution to at least one of those clashing story threads as the Punisher story reaches its climax and Jon Bernthal prepares himself for a solo run of his own. However, with the switch of having the Elektra storyline take the wheel again, it’s time for the Hand’s villainous plan to finally make sense. Keep you’re crib notes from season one handy, we going to dig deep into some lore to straighten this thing out and a fucked up Stick is our guide…
It seems that Stick’s been something of a naughty boy as Elektra returns to New York following the attempt on her life that her old teacher ordered. She’s pissed, she isn’t taking no for an answer and she’s looking to poke lots of nasty holes in as many of Stick’s vital organs as she can – but on the other hand, Stick doesn’t exactly seem particularly remorseful, so they fight. It’s a mean fight too and it’s ultimately broken up before it goes too far by Matt, who shows up with the aim to get to the bottom of this, whatever the hell it is.
After getting them both to his apartment and lashing Stick to a chair to minimise the risk of the curmudgeonly old fuck making things worse, Murdock gets his former mentor to ginally spill the beans, but as usual the news is all bad. Remember back in season 1 when Stick enlisted Daredevil to help him track down a legendary weapon called Black Sky and it just turned out to be a kid? Well Elektra is actually Black Sky and the reason Stick took her into the Chaste as a child in the first place was to try and use the Hand’s exalted weapon as a tool against them and it explains why she was ostracised by her peers in the organisation (she was feared and hated because she was the enemy) and it also explains why Stick tried to have her killed recently when she flew the coop.
With her life turned upside down, Elektra is horrified, but when Stick is taken by the Hand and tortured, she has no intention of helping Matt get the mean old bastard back.
Meanwhile, speaking of people who are used to having their world turned upside down, Karen Page is trying to find an angle to write her story after once again seeing first hand how much of a vicious animal Frank Castle can be before he was seemingly killed in an explosion. However, her plan of writing an exposé of Castle’s former life leads her back to Marine Commander Ray Schoonover only to discover that he was the mystery crimeboss known as Blacksmith all along. Thankfully (for Karen, not so much for Ray) the Punisher is still alive and well and now we have a pair of tough choices on our hands. Will Frank kill the man responsible for the deaths of his family and become and agent of vience forever and will Elektra kill her former teacher if Daredevil manages to save him? Decisions, decisions….
It’s something of a relief to get this far, because we’ve now come far into the season that it’s mercifully time to drop a couple of plot points at they reach their natural conclusion. The main one is the Punisher story line, which opened the season insanely strong before having to share vital narrative real estate with all the other stories. However, it’s fair to say that thanks to some truly hard hitting violence and a typically powerhouse performance by Bernthal, we may actually have our best Punisher yet. OK, do the whole riddle of the Blacksmith was hardly a head scratcher (of course it was going to be the character played by Clancy Brown – he’s fucking Clancy Brown!), but the closure it brings from seeing Frank utterly ignore Karen’s pleas to spare him and have him splatter his brains all over the wall with barely a glance is tne final full stop in a pretty bad ass plot. Rest assured I am all over his solo show when it starts – although I’m still waiting for that fucking skull emblem!
In comparison, the Elektra storyline hasn’t fared quite so well, starting in the wake of such a quartet of such powerful opening episodes, her introduction ended up slowing everything down to a crawl until the arrival of the Hand and Frank Castle’s trial started everything back up again. It’s not really the fault of the character, or actress Elodie Yung, who gave us an appropriately spiteful and ferocious Natchios, but as season 2 has to do the heavy lifting by picking up snippets from season 1 while still having to set things up for The Defenders, she’s been doing the best she can.
Still, any episode that puts us back in the company of Scott Glen’s gloriously punchable Stick is OK with me and now that all the secrets are out, everything finally makes sense. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the show’s current problems suddenly melt away (sorry Nobu, you’re no Wilson Fisk), but it certainly help rush you through a d we even get the added “pleasure” of watching Stick try and withstand a torture scene straight out of a Takeshi miike movie.
Of course, watching wooden needles driven under a blind old man’s fingernails may not be for everyone, but it does managed to convey the fucked up father/children role the stern son of a bitch has with Matt and Elektra rather nicely. Whether they want to admit it or not, Stick really is a father figure to them both and Murdock simply can’t cut those feelings as quickly as Elektra. However it pays off in a rather wonderful moment when Daredevil is having a spot of bother with that pesky Hand. It seems that they’ve gotten wise to the fact that Daredevil can fight them by tracking the sounds of their weapons, do they now simply fight hand to hand as they have the ability to mask their tell-tale heart beats. But while Murdock is getting his ass handed to him, his hearing picks up Stick whispering tactics to him from numerous rooms away and after tracking the Hand whenever they exhale, he’s able to finally best them.
However it’s Charlie Cox’s triumphant roar at the end of the fight that reminds you exactly why he’s so relatable as the vigilante. After being behind the eight ball for so long, whenever he finally managed to score a well earned win, he can’t contain his emotions from having a “fuck yeah” moment that makes him so human and it’s exactly this humanity that manages to win Elektra back over when her darker instincts seemed to be taking over.
With a final episode to go, I’m not exactly convinced that a string of awesome comic book moments can help this season land it’s finale as gracefully as the first, but I wouldn’t dare stop now.
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