WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Season 3 of Marvel’s hit Netflix series, Daredevil, has been long awaited since the dramatic final episode of Marvel’s Defenders. I like many other Daredevil fans was left feeling devastated, and even a bit betrayed, and soaked in tears after Matt Murdock’s fate was revealed in the end of the episode, we were all feeling Karen and Foggy’s pain. Before we get started on Season 3, let us take a walk down memory lane!
Recap
Season 1: Daredevil
In the first season we learn how Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), just a young kid in Hell’s Kitchen at the time, got his heightened senses. It was through a traffic accident where Matt saved the day by pushing and older man away from the course of the accident and eventually being caught in the middle of it and losing his sight due to chemicals that spilled from a truck. His loss of sight led to the elevation of his other senses. Throughout the season we learn that many of the people close to Matt are unaware of his heightened senses, or ‘powers’, even his best friend and legal partner Franklin ‘Foggy’ Nelson (Elden Henson).
Foggy and Matt are just beginning their legal careers as defense attorneys, struggling to find clients and even an office (SPOILER, they get one in the first episode) Foggy even bribes an old pal, a police officer, Brett, just to get some insight on prospective clients, and it works! Brett tips them on a homicide suspect, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). And just like that they have their office and their first client! Matt and Foggy go see Karen, who is suspected of killing a man she worked with at Union Allied Construction (this place is important throughout the season) she tells them how they went out and had a few drinks and next thing she knows she wakes up in her apartment covered in his blood. Matt instantly believes her, after hearing her heartbeat of course, Foggy has his doubts, early on it is apparent that he and Matt have their differences when it comes to the law. Matt eventually convinces Foggy that she did not commit the crime. Karen’s case introduces us into the dark underworld of a corrupt Hell’s Kitchen. We eventually learn that Karen was trying to be framed by Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofiro) and his associates, who run the underworld of Hell’s Kitchen.
Wilson Fisk, we learn throughout the season is a mobster who runs Hell’s Kitchen, his goal is to rebuild Hell’s Kitchen back from the ashes, after the ‘incident’ (the battle of New York in The Avengers) which almost destroyed all of the city, but in order to do so he has do some dirty jobs, get some people out of the way and some buildings to, LITERALLY. As soon as Matt figures out Fisk’s plan his mission is to protect Hell’s Kitchen from his doom, which leads to many broken bones and blood and many trips to Claire Temple’s (Rosario Dawson) apartment. Claire is a nurse who occasionally patches up Matt after fighting his battles and so far is the only one who knows about Matt’s double life until Foggy finds out, even before leaving the black suit and donning the red devil super suit, which gets him dubbed the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Claire will paly a major part throughout season 1 and 2 and in other Marvel Netflix series, as well as in the Defenders.
Season 1 brings us something new that Marvel had not done before. It was an origin story true to the comic strips, with all the action and excitement that keeps you on the edge of your seat and wanting more, with exhilarating character arches that have a comic book nerds like me smiling from cheek to cheek. It brings the story of a young boy and how the events in his life, being blind and orphaned at young age, shaped the battles he would end up fighting to protect his city. It brought us original characters like Stick (Scott Glenn), who we never imagined back on screen after that god awful Elecktra movie (Jen we still love you!) who practically raised Matt and taught him how to use his powers. The fight scenes in this season are just epic and something that I believe had Marvel fans shaking, especially after that epic hallway fight scene in episode 2 “Cut Man”, where a severely injured Matt takes on about a dozen men in a hallway and beats them all! And the ending is just unexplainably great. Most importantly it let us erase that image of Ben Affleck in that very red suit.
Season 2: Daredevil
Season 2 of Daredevil was not the strongest season, but that does not mean that it was not good.
Foggy learned in season 1 that Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, after finding him badly hurt. Matt and Foggy try to continue life as nothing ever happened yet Foggy can not help but fear for Matt’s life, Matt assures him that he is doing good by fighting crime in the nighttime and that he will be careful. Meanwhile at Nelson and Murdock, Karen, as their office manger, has her hands full trying to manage a growing number of clients and figuring out a way to pay the bills, since they charge no monetary fees.
Wilson Fisk is no longer a threat for Matt or Hell’s Kitchen, since Matt got him behind bars. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen now has to worry about another threat, the Punisher, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal). Frank is out on a vedette of his own for the death of his family and he will stop at nothing, killing everyone who gets in his way. He wipes out gangs in military grade style leaving no one behind. Matt goes out looking for the Punisher, eventually he finds him after he raids a hospital looking for one Matt and Foggy’s clients who miraculously survived one of his hits. Matt ends up taking a bullet by the head after a roof top fight with Frank and remains unconscious until Foggy finds him. Matt ends up losing some of his senses due to the injury and sets him back for awhile. Meanwhile, Foggy and Karen try to set up a deal for their client Grotto, they strike up a deal with the DA but with the condition of using him as bate to capture the Punisher, this plan fails as Grotto and Frank escape. Matt goes missing again, this time Frank captures him and has him tied up to a chimney, while Foggy franticly searches for him all over the city. This scene with Frank and Matt really challenges Matt’s true values and what he stands for. The Devil’s of Hell’s Kitchen does not kill, he believes in redemption and second chances, the Punisher on the other hand is out for revenge and to punish anyone whose done wrong. Season 2 quickly turns into a gang land series with all the different gangs in the city rising up against each other and the protagonist? None other than anti-hero Frank Castle aka the Punisher. This season became an introduction to a Punisher series, it took us throughout his personal vendetta and his infamous trail. Bringing the Punisher into the scene really highlighted some characters like Karen and Foggy and casted a shadow on others like Matt. Once Karen figured out the Punsher’s story she quickly told Matt and Foggy in hopes that they would take up his case, but Matt already knowing the Punisher’s identity and Foggy having chased ambulances after his massacres were not comfortable with the idea. Karen then decides to dig up more information on the Punisher and find out who he is and she does. The Punisher gets caught. This is the climax of the season and it almost seems like the end of it all. Karen and Matt take it to the next level and it all seems so sweet and too good to be true and it was.
Matt’s past comes back to haunt him, and it comes back in the form of Elektra (Elodie Yung). Elektra, is Matt’s toxic love interest and she brings up the worst in Matt. Nelson and Murdock take Frank as a client and with Elektra back in the picture Matt’s priorities go down the drain. He abandons Karen, Foggy, and Frank on the trail. Frank gets locked up, but he escapes with the help of none other than Wilson Fisk.
Meanwhile Matt is out with Elektra fighting the Yakuza and the Hand, and some familiar faces from season 1 show up like Stick and Nobu. Nobu who is the head of the Hand and is out to bring about an ancient revelation and Elektra is part of that plan. News of Frank escaping reaches Nelson and Murdock and soon hell raises with the Punisher being framed and Matt going to vist an old friend, Fisk.
In the end of the season Frank carries out his mission, making way for a Punisher series, the fate of Nelson and Murdock is uncertain, Karen finds a new career path, and Matt faces a tough decision and the loss of someone he thinks he loves.
Season 2 in no doubt turned into a Punisher show with a hint of Daredevil. But again this season proved that Marvel was more than just the superhero movies we see on the big screen, it showed that they had much to offer and that they are not finished here. Season 2 still gave us the classic blood and action expected of Daredevil from season 1 but maybe it gave us a bit more with the Punisher in the mix, we even got a hallway fight scene in episode 3 “New York’s Finest”, this time with an epic twist that almost made it seem like we were in a video game, and we saw more into Matt’s background with flashbacks of his past occurring frequently. It was not the best but it showed potential and kept us asking for more.
Defenders
Finally here were are where all four of New York’s vigilante superheroes meet, and become the Defenders.
This Netflix miniseries takes place after the events of Daredevil season 2, Jessica Jones season 1, Luke Cage season 1, and Iron Fist season 1 and brings together, Matt Murdock aka the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen whose identity is still a secret to the world, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) who recently received a lot of attention after taking down Kilgrave (David Tennant), Carl Lucas or Luke Cage (Mike Colter) who gained widespread praise in Harlem after making the streets safer, and Danny Rand aka the Immortal Iron Fist (Finn Jones) who shocked the world when he returned from the dead and took back Rand Enterprises, all to fight against the growing threat of the Hand who are set out to finally bring upon and ancient revelation.
In Defenders Nelson and Murdock no longer exist, Foggy went on to work with a large law firm, Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz, while Matt is working by himself and recently won a case against a big corporation using harmful chemicals, and Karen is now working for the New York Bulletin after her extensive work in the digging up information about Wilson Fisk’s past and the dirty deeds of the DA during the Punisher case, and she now knows about Matt’s ‘night job’ .
Not much has change for Jessica, she is still trying to get her life together and put her apartment back together as well, her relationship with Trish has since improved and Trish is trying to steer her in the right direction by convincing her to keep helping people with her powers. Her private investigator agency, Alias Investigation is still in between clients, she takes up a new inestagtion searching for a man who may have connections with the Hand.
For Luke Cage things seem to be going a bit better, he just finished a prison stint for escaping in the past, and the people of Harlem loves him. Him and Claire are still in a relationship. For Danny Rand he and Colleen Wing are in search of the Hand and what they are planning.
Eventually all four of them are brought together by Stick and Danny is all in for them to fight together, but Matt is hesitant because Stick has been trying for years to get him to fight this fight and after he and Elektra tried and failed he was done with the Hand. Jessica and Luke are simply uninterested and do not really believe in the Hand.
In the end they all end up working together and find out that the Hand has its influences deep in New York and their fighter and defender is none other than a resurrected Elektra, which hits Matt hard when he finds out she is alive and is convinced he can get her to fight on their side. Something about Elektra makes Matt forget about everything and only focus on her, that is what almost gets him killed. After he finally gets to her in the undergrounds of the Midland Circle building he and the Defenders manage to wipe out every Hand fighter, the building explodes and Jessica, Danny, Colleen, and Luke manage to get out in time, Matt stays behind and the building falls. Elektra dies, Matt’s body is not recovered and he is believed to be dead. A funeral is held for Matt, Foggy has already accepted the fact that Matt is dead but Karen believes that he is missing.
The moment we all witnessed that building go down on Matt and Elektra we were certain that Matt was gone for sure and that this was it for Daredevil. I remember crying hysterically and hoping it was not true and after seeing Matt back at the orphanage, there was automatically a sense of relief.
Defenders was pretty different than the big superhero team-ups we are so used to seeing, but we got to see a small team fight a big fight to protect the city they all so love.
Season 3: Daredevil
Here we are, we finally made it to Daredevil season 3. Oh how anxious we all were to find out what in the world had happened to Matt freaking Murdock!
It has been five weeks since the season premiered so hopefully I do not spoil it for anyone!
Matt Murdock is alive and well! Well, not exactly well, he’s lost some of his senses and is badly injured, I mean a whole building fell on top of him so…
Season 3 is based on the ‘Born Again” comic arch and it definitely was as good. After months of Matt being MIA, he finally wakes up back in the orphanage he lived in as a kid and is under the care of Sister Maggie (Joanne Whalley) who he later finds out is his mother. Foggy has put him in the past, but Karen still hopes for the best, she has even been looking after his apartment and paying the bills. It was Matt who reached out to Foggy just to let him know that Matt Murdock is now in the past and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is his future and to warn him about Wilson Fisk being out of prison.
Yes Fisk, officially the Kingpin, is no longer behind bars after striking a deal with the FBI, through Special Agent Nadeem (Jay Ali), on the condition that he is under house arrest in a fancy penthouse and gives the FBI intel on other crime organizations. This poses a threat to Matt, as Fisk had told him that he would get revenge on him by hurting those he loves aka Karen and Foggy!
With the Devil suit being completely destroyed, Matt once again dons the black mask again and sets out to get to Fisk and end him once and for all. Yet there are many obstacles in his way, one is FBI Agent Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), who caught Fisk’s attention after helping him get to safety after being attacked while the FBI was relocating him. Fisk manipulates Dex, who is kind of crazy, to pose as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen which is another obstacle for Matt because then Dex starts killing people in the suit framing him for murder.
Season 3 was darker than previous seasons. Matt was trying to rebuild his life, a life without the people he loved because that way he could protect them, but by doing so he was causing them pain, and after finding out about his mother (which was a surprise for all of us watching even though we knew it all along!) he ran from his past instead of hearing from Maggie, which tore her apart when she saw that he was gone. In this season Matt was right he was not Matt Murdock he was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen trying to take control of his city again but it was hard when someone as good as a fighter as Dex is in his way.
This season proved that Daredevil was not going to fail like Iron Fist and Luke Cage did just hours before the season premiered. Season 3 proved that Daredevil was as strong as it was in the beginning creating character arcs that were strong and would be able to flourish not just in one season but throughout the series like Karen and Foggy and introduce new ones like Dex, while also having time to showcase their backgrounds. In this season we get to know more about Karen’s past and for any comic book fan it was exciting to see it play out on screen. For Foggy we got a bit more on his family how his family ended up getting their hands unknowingly dirty with Fisk. And for Dex as a new character it was exciting to see that he may very well become Bullseye and Matt’s next villain in a hopeful season 4. For many comic fans it was apparent that this may be so for Dex through the flashbacks and tiny hints, like the bullseye symbol on his baseball cap and duh the way he uses random objects as weapons and always gets his target, but the most exciting part was the ending where it makes it a done deal and even brings hope that we maybe getting new characters from the comics as well, and even a bigger hope for Marvel’s future.
Season 3 proved that Matt is not out to kill as much as he felt that it made sense, it showed that Matt can stick to his values and while protecting the people he loves and taking the city back. This season also did not fail in bringing us the action and certain unexpected, but expected, deaths of characters. It was hard to watch Matt fight his battles and nearly get killed in the process because he was not all ready yet, but it was also exciting to see him still kicking ass in his lowest. Bring Dex also gave us more exciting fight scenes, like the one in the Daily Bulletin office and in the church. It also finally gave us Kingpin, with Wilson Fisk finally donning the white suits and oh it was great! Season 3 also gave us hope for the future of the show and even Marvel.
I guess we have to wait another 2 years to see what is coming next.