When Daredevil first premiered on Netflix in 2015, it was a darker, sleeker, and more daring tonic to the increasingly stagnant and bloated Marvel movies. With a compelling villain in Wilson Fisk and an intriguing Catholic morality, the show was more stylish and thoughtful than Marvel's usual fare. When Netflix's second Marvel series, Jessica Jones, turned out even better, it left a lot of promise for Daredevil's second season. And yet, without Fisk, the series had an uphill battle to climb to live up to its own reputation, and in spite of the fascinating introduction of The Punisher, this second season has failed quite dramatically to keep up the pace.
Spoilers for Daredevil season 2 follow.
After helping take down Wilson Fisk, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) are at odds with each other over Matt's superhero identity, Daredevil. However, when a new, more violent vigilante named Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), better known as the Punisher, emerges on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, they find themselves fighting up hill when they decide to defend him in court, particularly at the behest of their employee Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), who thinks there's more to Castle's story than meets the eye.
In spite of that description, Daredevil never really takes the opportunity to be a legal drama. Some of the show's most compelling moments are in the courthouse, but these are few and far between, albeit clumped together in the middle of the season. Instead, much more of the show chronicles the nighttime conflict between Matt as Daredevil and Castle, which is as ethical as it is physical. Although there are a variety of generic gangsters for both to deal with, more of their beef is with each other, and they spend nearly as much time debating their methods as they do in hand-to-hand combat. Above all else, the show uses the Punisher to examine the morality of vigilantism, and although this is relatively well-trodden ground for a superhero property, it's a promising foundation which brings up potentially challenging questions.
However, most of the debates had about the Punisher's methods consist of some of the the show's worst dialogue, as having the characters stand around and talk about the show's themes does a poor job of spinning these themes into a proper narrative, and while the plot does ultimately reflect these themes, the way they're communicated never really rises above these flat conversations. Matt, Foggy, and Karen all have different experiences with Castle, and thus all see him in different ways, and on the surface this should lead to some solid character drama, but when an episode in the middle of the season has Matt and Karen engage in yet another poorly-written debate about the morality of Castle's actions, it becomes distracting. This show is many things, but it's not subtle, and these arguments hammer in both sides' talking points with the force of a jackhammer.
Over the course of the trial, Karen becomes increasingly important to the point of overshadowing Foggy as her own investigation of the Punisher leads her to discovering his identity as well as his past as a father who barely survived a bullet to the head before mysteriously disappearing from the hospital. As the series progresses, Castle reveals that his family was murdered, and Karen begins to increasingly desire answers for the questions brought up by his past. Moreover, as Matt's secret vigilantism causes him to push Foggy and Karen away, and as Foggy leaves her out of the loop, Castle becomes the only man in her life who isn't lying to her. She hopes for him to take a chance at redemption, while he recognizes her as the only one sympathetic to his plight. This relationship is maybe the show's most nuanced and interesting.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Matt's relationship with a character introduced later, Elektra Natchios (Élodie Yung). Despite being introduced in a flashback-filled episode, the relationship between Matt and Elektra never plays out as particularly significant, and as long as the show's focused on Frank Castle, Elektra constantly feels superfluous to the plot. Elektra's defining element is a penchant for bloodlust, but when Castle is already in the show and covers the same ideas about violence with much more depth, this aspect of her character adds very little, and when she finally does become relevant to the plot, it's only to put further strain on Matt and Karen's budding romantic relationship.
Eventually, the Elektra subplot leads to a more conventional villain for the show in the form of the Hand, but they're little more than generic ninjas with a vague mystical element that's never really explored. Having one of the main antagonists of the show be so faceless does more harm to the show than good, and they increasingly take the spotlight away from Castle to the point that the ethical debate around vigilantism has completely vanished by the last couple of episodes. The villain problem isn't new for the MCU, but the previous two Netflix villains were excellent, and in as joyless a show as Daredevil, having such a bland antagonist requires a lot of heavy lifting on the protagonists' side.
Unfortunately, the most promising parts of Matt's character arc go absolutely nowhere, and by the end it seems that the show is actively missing its own point. In the finale, Matt confides that Elektra is the only person he feels truly "understands him," and this isn't presented as the pinnacle of Matt's delusion - instead, the implication is that Matt has done absolutely nothing wrong, and that Karen and Foggy were the ones who were wrong to not accept his actions. When Foggy first brings up his concerns, it seems he has a point, but by the time the final credits roll, the show seems determined to dismiss whatever that point may be.
Furthermore, Castle's own story also flips itself near the end. His primary motivation is to take revenge on the person responsible for his family's murder, and eventually he's led to it being an unintended result of a sting organised by the same attorney who prosecuted his trial. However, this sting was done to draw out a drug lord called the "Blacksmith," and at this time the show begins wavering in its commitment to depicting Castle as morally ambiguous and instead prods him into a sort of heroic role. It's a testament to how absurdly overstuffed this season is that the actual reveal of who the Blacksmith is comes completely out of left field, but it's this increasingly heroic Punisher which not only seems to contradict the show's own themes, but which also contributes to a feeling that many of these plot threads were just setting stuff up for future Netflix series, like the upcoming Defenders crossover.
On top of all of these dramatic failings, the show's much-lauded fight scenes are increasingly uneven as the show goes on. There are a good handful of strong fights, with the standout being a brutal slaughter from Castle after he's been incarcerated, but many of the fights blend together, perhaps as a consequence of there being so many faceless enemies and such little variation in the fight styles. The best fight scenes come from a variation in setting, such as the aforementioned prison scene or an earlier scene where the camera swings wildly a staircase as Daredevil punches a horde of thugs. Unfortunately, this camera swinging at times becomes distracting, and sometimes I wished the shot would just stay still and let the choreography speak. The final confrontation is especially disappointing, as the camera zooms out to encompass multiple fights occurring at once and thus cause each of them to leave less of an impact.
It's unfortunate that the second season of Daredevil wound up like it did, as it wasn't without potential. Most of the Frank Castle storyline was solid, but whenever the narrative shifted towards Elektra or the Hand, the show becomes much less engaging, near the end, the show becomes so overstuffed and misguided that what little does leave any impact goes against everything the season had been working towards up to that point. Thus far, this is easily the lowest point of the Marvel Netflix shows, especially in comparison to its excellent predecessors, and it's a cause for concern for future shows as well - but if the movies could recover after the messy Age of Ultron, then the Netflix shows could very well still rebound after this mess.
6/10
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+ Fascinating ideas about the morality of vigilantism.
+ Compelling relationship between Karen and the Punisher.
+ A number of solid fight scenes.
- Grows increasingly overstuffed as it goes on.
- The Hand and Elektra are uninteresting.
- Many fights blend together.
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