Yesterday I spoke about the first half of the season, what I liked, how I felt about it thus far, and what I hoped we’d see for the second half. The first half of the season wasn’t BAD by any stretch of the imagination, even if it did have some pacing issues. I still wonder if they could have done the first four episodes just as three and sped the whole thing along a little, but if they had then I wonder if we’d have missed out on some of the things that made this feel so much like a continuation of all of the solo series and not just a random team-up. Having watched the second half of the season now all I’ve got to say is that any problems I had with the first half were blown away by the second half. The second half delivered all I wanted from this series and more, making it not only an amazingly watchable show with a serious about of rewatchability in it but just as importantly a show that’s meant that I’m now dying to see not only one of the solo series but all of them!
Fair warning, I’m not even going to try to keep this spoiler-light so if you read on I’m going to talk about every twist and turn and all the best bits of the series. So… you’ve been warned. If you’re going to stop here then rest assured that Defenders lived up to what I hoped for from the big conclusion to five seasons of build up with these characters and then some. But if you’re going to read on them let’s get to it and discuss my Talking Points.
The Continuation of the Solo Series
For my first point I’d like to pick up on something I spoke about yesterday, and expand on it now that we’ve seen the series as a whole.
It was genuinely important to me heading into Defenders that this series didn’t take four characters we’ve been introduced to in previous series, throw them all together in some random storyline and have them all acting completely out of character. It’s (unfortunately) something I’ve seen too many times reading comic books as often as I have, and across TV, movies and so much more. When you get a story that focuses on a team-up you tend to sacrifice the individual strengths of characters in order to make them fit into a larger story, or you tend to get a plot that barely features one or more of the characters because the role they play in that story is so minimalistic that you wonder why they were even there. I’m happy to say, having watched the whole thing, that Defenders didn’t fall into any of those old traps. In fact, Defenders felt like Daredevil 2.5, Jessica Jones 1.5, Iron Fist 1.5 and Luke Cage 1.5 in a way that I can’t say that I expected, but that I absolutely loved from it.
Any complaints I had about the pacing of the show in the first half were seriously mitigated by the second half and the fact that these characters that we’d been introduced to previously each had their own solo stories continued in some way. I enjoyed that from Marvel in “The Avengers” in the sense that that movie also felt like a continuation of the stories we’d been told so far, with Captain America’s story ending as it did in The First Avenger and continuing where it left off in The Avengers, along with Thor’s struggles with his brother continuing so beautifully from Thor, and Tony Stark’s brilliance shining through from Iron Man, along with the continuation but revitalisation of the story from The Incredible Hulk, and the sub-characters we’d been introduced to (Nick Fury, Black Widow and Hawkeye) getting a chance to shine. Defenders did the same thing for these characters, but possibly even went above and beyond to continue their solo stories and their solo lives, while also mixing them together in a way that felt true to the characters. Nobody here really acted “out of character”, and any complaints that I might have had about previous series – like Danny Rand’s immaturity and petulance in his own series and again here – played into the plot and made it a better show. In truth if Iron Fist had been anyone BUT the character we got from his own show I don’t think this story would have worked half as well for the twists and the turns that we got.
Even more than the continuation of each series was where Defenders left each character. I honestly got goose bumps at the ending scene for each one, from Danny crouched on the rooftop to Jessica closing her door, I felt like this not only finished this series on a satisfying conclusion for each character but also worked to build up to the next individual series of each one. Hell, if anyone saw that ending and didn’t wonder how this is going to affect Danny and how much he’ll have to grow now as a protector of New York after everything he’s been through, rather than continuing down the path of being a lost kid who’s not sure of his place from his first season, then there’s something seriously wrong with you. For me, it made me want another season of Iron Fist more than I ever have before because now I’m dying to see how he evolves from this point. It also made me REALLY want another season of Jessica Jones, and… well, I’ll get to the future in a little bit when I talk about THAT ENDING!
The Scarf Looked Better
My line of the second-half might just have been this one, although there were some great lines to choose from. For me though, this line, where it came and the fact it just made a brilliant moment even better wins the day.
I can’t continue this blog without talking about one of my wants from the first half and that was the return of the Daredevil suit. He was purposefully avoiding it in the first half of the season and I got the feeling that the tease of it in the crate might be all we see of it this season. It was a big choice to have Matt focusing on being Matt Murdock and trying not to be Daredevil, and when you think about where his previous seasons have taken us and everything he’s been through it made sense for him to be at that stage. I had no complaints about where he was at in terms of the development of the character that we’ve come to know and love. That said, I did REALLY want to see the suit. It was one of my biggest wishes for the second half of the season, along with seeing Danny wearing something that paid tribute to his classic comic book attire, even if it was explained in the plot that it was K’un-Lun training attire, or something similar, to explain away a bit of why it looked a tad goofy. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that. We didn’t get Danny showing off anything more Iron Fist than his chest tattoo (which did, happily, make a big comeback in the last two episodes after his shirt got torn). But we DID get the return of the suit… and oh man, how freaking cool is that suit? Seriously, I love it so much. It’s my favourite non-CGI suit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, second only to how incredibly awesome Tony Stark’s armour looks, and beating out how much I adore Captain America’s suit.
The way it came into the show was fantastic as well, with Trish seeing Daredevil for the first time like it was some urban legend she just saw confirmed before her own eyes and was in disbelief of, and Matt coming to Jessica’s rescue right when she needed him. I loved how that whole scene played out, in that Jessica is ambushed and against someone as bad-ass as Murakami she’s just outmatched. She was never a “damsel in distress” though. I don’t think Jessica is capable of ever being put into that role. But Matt coming from nowhere in the suit, and their subsequent team-up against Murakami, was a fantastic moment for the series with the proper debut of Daredevil in it. They could have treated this moment with series reverence, and I wouldn’t have blamed them for doing so, but one of the strengths of the MCU is that they can have a moment like this, which is as great as it is, and then twist it with a little comedy, and of course Jessica supplies the comedy moment. In one of my favourite moments from the entire series she looks Matt up and down and telling him “The scarf looked better” before adding “nice ears”, to which he replies that they’re horns, before we move on from that brilliant moment with smiles on our faces. Ah, Marvel. You know how to entertain me!
Fractured Leadership
Again, I spoke yesterday about the Hand and how they’d been given a new twist for this series, having seen them previously under the leadership of both Gao and Bakuto. We’d been told they were “different factions” of the Hand in Iron Fist, but this series made the whole Hand mythology in the MCU make a lot more sense.
Being introduced to the idea of the Hand starting out as five former students of K’un-Lun being exiled gave it a lot of credence both in the mythology we were introduced to in Iron Fist and the existence of the Hand that we’d seen in Daredevil. The explanation for how they worked was satisfying as well. There are five individuals who were exiled from K’un-Lun after they discovered a way to both keep themselves alive far beyond normal lifetimes but also bring themselves back from the dead. These five individuals – Alexandra, Bakudo, Gao, Murakami and Sowande – were each bad-ass in their own ways and each played a major part in the show. The fact that each of them uniting also helped bring the Defenders together (Luke Cage discovered Sowande recruiting kids out of Harlem, Iron Fist had previously gone to war with Bakudo, Daredevil had previously had multiple dealings with Gao) felt right as well, and the five of them in unison felt like a worthwhile set of villains. They weren’t the cliché supervillain team-up, where multiple enemies with insane powers try to work together to destroy their collective enemies. Instead they felt genuinely like five individuals who’d each tried previously to seize power now so close to achieving something they all wanted, and working together to make it happen. Well, almost working together. Sowande had a nasty moment where he lost his head and didn’t make it to the group meetings with the others.
The fact that they were so fractured as the leadership though, that at one stage it seemed like Murakami was about to kill Alexandra and take the mantle of overall leader of the Hand for himself, and the fact that Alexandra outright called Gao on having tried to do the same thing in the past, made them seem that much more like the evil “fingers” of the Hand that we’d expect. They divided the world up between them and each of them have been doing their own things, but now with the chance to continue their own existences under threat they needed each other. The fact that Gao, Murakami and Bukudo worked so well together in the final chapters was nice to see as well. Again they each felt that the thing they wanted was so very close, but they all knew that after thousands of years in their positions, and having seen cities rise and fall according to Alexandra, they were at a point of vulnerability that they’d never experienced before and they NEEDED each other now. They made a great unit as well. They were on the same side but far from best friends, much in the same way that our heroes were also on the same side but far from friends. It just made great watching as their union continued to work together, especially with the Alexandra/Gao and Alexandra/Murakami scenes. The best showing of the fractured status of their leadership came in one beautiful moment however, and one that deserves its own talking point…
An Amazing Heel Turn
There’s little better in storying telling when someone you’ve grown to like turns evil. It’s a great moment for every story, but in this story with the most epic heel turn in the MCU thus far, it was played just perfectly.
It wasn’t long before that moment that we almost saw Alexandra and Murakami come to blows. At least he bought her a very nice bottle of wine for her final drink though, right? That was thoughtful! When he told her that he wanted her last meal to be special I sat up a little straighter and felt the goose bumps again. It was a moment that I really wanted to see, as maybe we’d get to see what Alexandra could really do. Then Elektra returned, having left our heroes decimated (I’ll get to that in a moment) with her prisoner in tow and suddenly the main reason that Murakami had for going up against Alexandra was gone. They had the Iron Fist. They had what they wanted. They were close to finishing whatever their evil plot was. And it seemed like the four remaining fingers of the Hand were going to be reunited again with a common purpose, with Alexandra as their leader, and Elektra as their weapon. And ah Elektra, the story we’d seen with your recovery from whatever they did to you was so compelling. The end of the fifth episode, with her curling up in Matt’s bed and going to sleep, was a truly great moment for the hope that there was still good in her. And maybe there was. But it did NOT show when she made her move against Alexandra, did it?
That was another of the greatest moments from the show. Alexandra wants Daredevil dead, “whatever his name is”, and Elektra decides that she’s done being the puppet and wants to take power for herself, and one little stab later she’s no longer “The Black Sky, weapon of the Hand” but now “Elektra Natchios, undisputed leader of the Hand”. To say that nobody saw it coming would be an understatement. I don’t think anyone could have thought that THAT was the direction that remembering who she was would have driven Elektra. It certainly wasn’t where I saw her going. And poor old Alexandra – who’d spilled all her secrets to her pupil, who’d told her everything she’d needed to know, and who’d threatened the man whom Elektra had fallen for the moment she met him, according to the flashback we got with her and Stick – never saw it coming either. In one beautiful moment Elektra announces that her name is Elektra Natchios, no longer the Black Sky, and tells the other three “you work for me now”, and I almost squealed in excitement. But if you thought that that would mean that the Hand would become any less of a threat with someone like Elektra in charge then you’d be wrong. The only one they’d become slightly less of a threat to is Matt… and one has to wonder if Elektra would even be willing to kill her love knowing that she could just bring him back again even if she did.
The moment that Elektra took over it felt like the whole show stepped up yet another gear, and she made an absolutely brilliant leader. I’d have liked to see what would have happened once the other three got what they wanted, if they’d have stayed subservient to her as they were in the arrangement they had with Alexandra or if the Hand would have gone completely to war with itself, with each individual faction trying to take out the others, but maybe that’s an answer we’ll get in the future. After all, no matter what Colleen and Matt may have thought about taking out the building and destroying the Hand’s master plan to mine what was underneath, this DIDN’T finish off the Hand. You could have cut down each of the leaders and it wouldn’t have stopped the Hand as a whole. They’ll reunite in the future, perhaps under five new leaders, perhaps unified under one, but one thing I’m confident of is despite everything we’ve seen you’ve not seen the last of the Hand. What a heel turn though. What a fantastic moment. And damn, do I love Elektra!
Matt Loves Elektra
I’ll stick with the Elektra theme for one more point and that is to talk about one of my favourite subplots, and a continuation of season two of Daredevil, and that’s the story between Matt and Elektra throughout the series.
I’m sorry but I’m a sucker for a good love story. It’s by far one of my girliest attributes. Hell, I’ve even been known to shed a tear or two at the sweetest ones, which most of my guy-friends will probably roll their eyes at but screw you guys, love stories are the best! And Defenders had it’s own very special love story in the strength of the love that Matt still had for Elektra, and that I think Elektra still had for Matt as well. This was on display in the restaurant fight scene where, surrounded by threats, Matt decides to leave the other three and Stick to it while he takes Elektra outside and they have a fight out the back of the restaurant, with both of them being as evenly matched as we’ve seen they are in Daredevil. The fact that she’d hesitated before when it came to killing Matt obviously gave him confidence that she wouldn’t just cut him down, but it’s this fight that we begin to see the re-emergence of Elektra from whatever it was that the Hand did to her when they resurrected her. She was far more than the husk that they promised she was after all, and the moment that he says her name and she just stops fighting and stares at him it was a beautiful moment. She was remembering little by little, and then after her knocking down Murakami and fleeing where did she go but Matt’s apartment, to sleep in his bed where she recovered in Daredevil season 2, and again that was such a beautiful moment.
At that stage I wondered what was in store for her. The other remaining fingers were questioning Alexandra over where she was and Alexandra was lying to protect her new surrogate daughter (which it turned out was a major mistake), but she clearly knew where to go to find her: Elektra’s grave. Matt had said it was dug up, but I’m guessing it had been filled in again since. Elektra standing over her own grave, remembering more and more of her past life, made me hope for her to turn on the Hand, to maybe see that scenario I spoke about yesterday where she ended up fleeing, but what we got instead was so much better. Still, along the way we did get a truly sad moment in the death of Stick, killed at the hands of Elektra with Matt watching on helplessly. Their mentor, and last remaining member of the Chaste, dead at the hands of the Hand’s weapon. The relationship between Stick and Elektra was never that great anyway, and Stick would likely have killed her himself if he thought it would have prevented her from becoming the weapon of the Hand so her killing him seemed like turnabout was fair play, but still, what did you do, Elektra? Yet the love between them survived that. The love between them was on display right until the end… and maybe beyond. But I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s first hit a few more quick talking points.
Hero vs Hero
Not going to lie, another of my favourite moments of the show came not from seeing the Defenders united but from seeing the Defenders fractured. As good as it was to see the fractures in the leadership of the Hand, it was even more fun seeing them in our heroes.
Our first unification of heroes was a fight scene in the first half between Iron Fist and Luke Cage. That was nothing compared to the fight we got at the warehouse between the group. Again however, as much as people seem to dislike Danny’s character in comparison to the others this wouldn’t have been possible without his character being what it is. He has to be petulant. He was to think in such simplistic ways. If he didn’t then he’d have realised that the others were right straight away, that hiding him from the Hand if he was what they wanted made the most sense, and that Stick was right about what Sowande revealed before he got decapitated (also, how awesome was that moment?). If he had been the level-headed, rational thinker that the likes of Matt is then first off his character would have been far too much of a Daredevil clone, and thus a little boring when we’ve already got the complexities of Matt’s character down so perfectly. Secondly, however, if he’d been anything but the sure of himself “protector of K’un-Lun he’d never have been stupid enough to believe that they only wanted to recruit him because “only he” could stop them. Without that we wouldn’t have seen the fight between the group, we wouldn’t have seen the fight specifically between Daredevil and Iron Fist, and we wouldn’t have got the series having one of it’s highlights.
Taking Iron Fist out of the story after the fight was a great thing for the plot, allowing Matt and Jessica to follow some leads, allowing Luke to play babysitter to the still-sure-of-himself Danny (even though he was tied up at the time), and giving me even more hope of seeing a Heroes For Hire team-up in the future, not least of all because of the budding relationship between Misty and Colleen as well, and the fact that Misty is probably going to need a new job when the show is over. Back to the battle between Daredevil and Iron Fist though and it was just perfect. It wasn’t long, it wasn’t bloody, but it told the perfect story, kept you excited to see where it would go, and showed that Luke Cage can take a bunch like nobody else alive! The full force of the Iron Fist on display and it knocked all of them to the ground, but Luke just rolled over like an absolute boss. If that moment of Hero vs Hero was one of the highlights then the next one, also on the Hero vs Hero theme, was another… and one of the saddest.
Stick’s Third Option
It made a lot of sense, nobody can dispute that, and it was perfectly in character for Stick to be the one to think of and attempt to execute his plan… but it was still so very sad.
Before, during and after the fight scene in the warehouse between heroes we saw they really only had two options of how to progress: fight, or flee. Either they fight the Hand and defeat them and stop their plan, or they run and they hide and they ensure that Danny is never found by the Hand. Neither really had too great odds when it came to rates of success. It’s not like they could really hide Danny for the rest of his life, is it? Somehow the Hand would find him. They’re everywhere. They’ve got people everywhere. They’ve wormed their way into so many organisations across the world. And you never know who’s with them and who’s not. So hiding from the Hand wasn’t an option long-term, and fighting them wouldn’t have been too smart either given what they had at their disposal. Ultimately it was the only option available, but Stick sitting there meditating while Luke and Danny talked, with Stick warning Luke that Danny was still dangerous and not to let his guard down, was great. Luke really should have listened about not letting his guard down as well, and I don’t mean with Danny!
What was the stuff that Stick was burning? I’m guessing something that the Hand/Chaste have used in the past, something that Danny and Stick both have some form of immunity to that Luke has never encountered before, because you know something that’s powerful enough to floor Luke Cage has to be good stuff. And the speech Stick gave while he drugged Luke was fantastic as well, and one of the reasons I love(d) this character. They thought there was only two choices, but he’d come up with a third option. That third option: kill Danny before he can do whatever the Hand need him to do, thus preventing their plan. It makes perfect sense, and it’s something only Stick is cold enough to actually try to do. He’d have succeeded as well. Danny would have been cut in half or missing his head by the time that Matt burst through the door to stop him. Instead he was saved by Elektra, and the entire group was then decimated by her leaving Stick dead on the floor and all the others knocked out cold, and giving us such an epic ending to what was the “second act” of the series, setting up perfectly for the final act.
Gao’s Power?
Slight detour to mention something that’s definitely a talking point: how the hell awesome is Gao, and since when could she do that?!
In fact, what CAN she do? What IS her power? And has she been able to do that the whole time, since I’d hope that I’d have noticed before if the cunning old woman was able to knock down enemies, doors and perhaps even more with just an air-punch. Seeing her possess that level of power once again makes me wonder what Alexandra was capable of. We know Bakudo and Murakami are excellent fighters. We know that Sowande is a ruthless fighter as well, especially given that he went toe-to-toe with Luke Cage, which is something that even Iron Fist couldn’t do when they first encountered each other. But Gao just seemed like she’d come into her power by being cunning and smart, by using her brain instead of her ninja-brawn, but apparently not? Apparently she’s been hiding some major power in those old hands. Makes you wonder why she ever let Bakudo hold her prisoner in Iron Fist if she was capable of doing that though, doesn’t it? Couldn’t she have just smashed open the door and gotten out of there? Perhaps it’s more likely that she simply didn’t want to than she couldn’t, after all she was in a great place to manipulate Danny and Colleen. Still, seeing her with this level of power turned her from one of the fingers of the Hand and therefore threatening because of the evil influence she holds to a bad-ass in her own right.
Again, it’s a pity we never got to see what Alexandra was capable of. Was she a great warrior and we just never got to see that because Elektra took her by surprise? If so, how amazing would the fight between her and Murakami been if they unleashed on each other? Or was SHE the one who maintained her power by using her brains, and Gao instead got hers by her influence and the fact that she could knock anyone who seriously wanted to stand up to her across a few city blocks if she wanted to? It all leads into another Talking Point for the show, and that’s…
The Fight Scenes
Ok, I promise I’m almost done gushing over how much I enjoyed the show now, but before I do I need to talk about the fight scenes, and how they more than lived up to my expectations.
I said yesterday that one of the things I liked most about the solo series (especially Daredevil) was the fight scenes. I hoped that would continue into the team-up series, and more than that I hoped that we’d see some truly great scenes that upped the stakes on what we’d seen before. We did. We got that in spades. From the fight scene in the hallway that I spoke about yesterday to the fight scene in the restaurant from episode 5, all the way to the conclusion, there were some fantastic fight scenes with some truly amazing choreography and camerawork. What’s more I don’t remember any moment where I scoffed and thought “ugh, that’s obviously a stunt double”. There probably were some moments like that, if I’d looked closer, but from what I saw the editing and camera-work for the fights was superb. The close-up action we got during the warehouse fight scene with hero fighting hero was especially good, and all four of them played their respective parts in that. The restaurant scene was great as well, mostly for the separate stories it told. Matt breaking off and fighting with Elektra to get through to her while Stick urged the others “stay with me”, and Luke and Jessica teaming up and still getting thrown around, all made for great viewing. It made the Hand seem like legitimate threats against five top fighters/heroes (when you include Stick), which they needed given the fact that Danny and Matt have dealt with smaller groups on their own before.
It all built up to that final act where not only our heroes fought for the fate of New York but, upstairs, Misty, Colleen and Claire all got involved in a fight of their own as well. Each part of that story was compelling and really worked to tell the story. It wasn’t fighting for fighting’s sake, and the stakes felt genuine. That’s one of my favourite parts about it as well. There is too often this feeling in shows/movies like this where we get these amazing fights but we all know that in the end the hero is going to win and the bad guy is going to be vanquished, don’t we? It’s hard to get truly invested in the story then when we all know that the good guys will win at the end. This didn’t feel like that. Yes, there was still the same element that the bad guys would lose and the good guys would win, but the stakes still felt high and genuine. So, just one more thing I want to touch on before I get to the ending, and that’s…
The Supporting Cast
In a team-up like this it would have been so easy to get the main characters wrong, but they didn’t. It would have been even easier to dismiss the supporting characters from the solo series as irrelevant and not the things that people came to see, but if anything, they only added to it.
That’s one of the biggest strengths of the Defenders in my opinion. If you liked the solo series and you got to like the individual characters in each of their lives then Defenders highlighted that. Admittedly there were a few who were absent, for example some of Danny’s cast were “out of town on business” and thus not involved even as cameos, but that was fine. They weren’t needed and it was probably better without them. The important characters all got involved though, and we saw genuine development in each of them that only added to the overall feel of the show in making this feel like the .5 season that I spoke about earlier for each of the characters. There weren’t any that I felt got truly screwed over in terms of air-time either. Jessica’s supporting cast didn’t get the biggest scenes, but the scenes they did get felt important at least. It was Matt’s supporting cast who shone through the most here, and why wouldn’t they? They’re the ones we’ve spent the most time with and possibly the ones that we all like the most.
Misty’s story continued pretty amazingly from Luke Cage. Her involvement in his life after his release from prison and pushing him to do something about the situation in Harlem and be a hero in small ways was what ultimately motivated him to find Sowande and got him involved in the larger plot. Her involvement didn’t stop there though and she put her career on the line to help them all out after they were brought in after the discovery of the lot of them unconscious and Stick’s dead body and Sowande’s headless corpse. Not only that but she continued going above and beyond, even losing her arm to save Colleen and Claire in the final drama. That brought Misty and Colleen together at the end as well, only giving me even more hope for a Heroes for Hire series in the future, or a proper strong crossover at least between Iron Fist and Luke Cage. Colleen’s character development on the Iron Fist side was superb as well, with her still being more than just his sidekick, and her involvement in the Iron Fist solo series driving her to get involved even when the actual powered heroes told her to stay out of it. She was one of my favourite things about Iron Fist and her involvement in Defenders only helped make Defenders better for me. She’s actually the more likeable character out of her and Danny, and I hope that the future Iron Fist season highlights as much of her as the first one did.
As I said before, Jessica’s cast didn’t get as much airtime. Trish had some cool moments though, but is no closer to becoming Hellcat than she was in Jessica Jones season one. That’s probably good though, as it would have sucked to have that happen here and not in Jessica’s own series. Her involvement with Karen though, and her scenes with Jessica, made her appearance more than worthwhile, and the fact that she was silenced on the radio in quite the way she was a fantastic way of showing the power and influence that the Hand have throughout all businesses, not just as scary ninjas who fight people. It only makes me more certain that we haven’t seen the last of the Hand. But then there’s Daredevil’s supporting cast, the ever-likeable Karen and the fantastic Foggy, not only making stellar appearances throughout the show but the relationship between the three of them only got better as the series went on. It was the most developed in the show, and it helped make the show feel as much like a continuation of Daredevil as anything else. Karen and Matt and the feelings they have for each other were on full display, Foggy handing Matt that “change of clothes” and helping push him toward the ending was superb, and the end scene of them in the church almost had me welling up. I can’t wait to see more of them in the future, and we undoubtedly will because of…
That Ending!!
Yep, two exclamation points, because it deserves it.
So, I’ve talked about the final fight scene and how much I enjoyed it. I’ve talked about Misty losing her arm as her, Colleen and Claire tried to bring down the building while also fighting with Bakuto. What does need mentioning though is how incredible it was to see Colleen and two other “normal” people end up taking down one of the fingers of the Hand, and most importantly a major character in Colleen’s life. It wasn’t Danny who took him out, it was Colleen. It finished that chapter of her story in the best possible way, and it showed that these three women who the others tried to protect earlier in the season can do it themselves and are heroes in their own way, not with super powers but just by doing the right thing. Misty undoubtedly got herself in trouble, and likely will find herself without a job in the future now, but with Colleen in her hospital room at the end talking about Danny owning the hospital and the work they do there it makes me wonder where they’re going to go with that, and when we’ll next see Misty again. Will we see her in a future Luke Cage season, or will we get her in a future Iron Fist season? Either way it helps further the setup for team-ups between Luke and Danny, and potentially even a Heroes for Hire involving Danny, Luke, Colleen, Misty and Claire. I’d be up for that.
The biggest thing about the ending though, besides the (temporary) ending of the Hand, was the fight between Elektra and Matt, still fighting even as the cave began to collapse around them, with Matt telling the others to go and that “he’d be right behind them” but the moment he said that we all knew he wasn’t going to be. Matt was staying behind to get through to Elektra, to stop her and to ensure that if nothing else she stayed down there with the others, buried under the rumble, while saving his new friends. It was the ultimate heroic sacrifice, and man was it a great one! Watching it play out, the final words between him and Elektra as the cave collapsed around them, I genuinely thought that they’d gone ahead and killed off Daredevil. It was so good, so compelling, and I completely bought into it, especially as Foggy and Karen spoke at the church, with Foggy saying it had been days and Karen refusing to give up hope while lighting a candle in the church for her friend and lost love. It all tugged on the heart strings in the best possible way, and I loved every moment of it. More than that it also helped inspire the others, passing the mantle of “protector of New York” onto Danny now that Matt’s “gone” and giving him so much more reason to grow up, to stay where he is, and to stop thinking about K’un-Lun because he’s found his place as a hero in New York now that he’s fulfilled his purpose and ended the Hand. It also gives Jessica motivation as well, that the guy she helped drag into the whole thing ended up dying to help her as well. Her ending, with Malcolm doing up the office and Jessica closing the door and revealing the Alias Investigations sign, gave me goose bumps again. But then…
Oh man, the final scene with Matt laying on the bed was both a huge moment of relief in that he DIDN’T die down in that cave, but also the ULTIMATE tease for what happens next, because it asks SO MANY QUESTIONS all at once. How did he survive? How did he get to that place with the nuns? If he survived, did the others? Is Elektra still out there as well? And if so, is she still leading what’s left of The Hand? If Elektra AND Matt survived then what about Gao and Murakami? Did they survive too? And how much of the stuff did the Hand get out of there before the whole place collapsed? Alexandra, Sowande and Bakuto may be dead, but if Elektra and Matt survived then there’s every chance that Gao did too, and really of all of them SHE’S the one I most want to have lived as she’s the best bad-guy out of all the fingers of the Hand. An even bigger question though is DID Matt survive? What if he didn’t? What if the Hand used whatever they used on Elektra to bring both Matt AND Elektra back again? What if Elektra survived and she brought Matt back by herself? One thing is for damn sure, Daredevil season 3 cannot possibly come soon enough to give us the answers to these questions!
So, this was a long read, and well done if you got through it all. I hope you agree. I hope you want to talk about everything Defenders as well, and if you do then feel free to get at me on Facebook (facebook.com/ajebdon) or Twitter (@alexisebdon) because I’d love to discuss this show with anyone and everyone as we await the next instalments, and we also await THE PUNISHER! Seriously excited about that as well, but that’ll wait for another time.