Reviewing - The MCU: The Netflix Shows
These shows didn't work out - but for most of them, it was Disney+'s fault, not theirs.
The Best: Daredevil
The Worst: Iron Fist
Daredevil (****)
Daredevil kicked off the Netflix arm of the MCU with a decidedly dark bang. This isn’t the New York from 2012’s Avengers, where the sun is shining and Iron Man is bouncing his arc reactor blast off of Captain America’s shield to effortlessly take out some alien invaders. This is a trash-ridden, smelly New York City, where Matthew Murdock can barely muster the strength to get back on his feet in time to deal out another haphazard punch to a low-level thug. Daredevil is unquestionably my favourite from the Netflix MCU series, and a lot of that has to do with the content and subject matter.
With regards to the violence, there’s a lot of it. People are punched, kicked, stabbed, sliced, impaled, and occasionally have their heads repeatedly smashed in by car doors. One major point of difference between this show and its counterparts (Jessica Jones and Luke Cage) is the lack of sex scenes, which for me made this a much easier show to watch. This isn’t the place for me to fully explain my opinion on graphic content, but I’ll say I admired the way that this show chose not to take an overly sexual route in their storytelling.
Let’s talk about the seasons. Season 1 was a blast – what was so exciting about seeing Matt Murdock become the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was how he’s at so much more of a disadvantage than any other hero we’ve seen before in the MCU. By the time Season 1 was released, we’d never seen any hero in the MCU who had any trouble throwing punches. Think about Stark, Cap, Thor, Hulk, or the Guardians of the Galaxy. They never have to take a break in the middle of their epic climactic fights. Daredevil isn’t like that – he has ‘superpowers’ in the sense that his senses are all super-sensitive, but he doesn’t have super strength or even moderate strength. Physically, he’s just a man. But he’s still trying to take the world (or rather, Hell’s Kitchen) on his shoulders, and that’s really cool. Him aside, Vincent D’Onofrio does a stellar job as the villainous Kingpin. Every second he’s onscreen, you can feel the power emanating from him. He’s a force to be reckoned with.
I’ve heard that some people weren’t crazy about Season Two, which is a shame because I loved it. The introduction of the Punisher was great because of the fundamental ideological differences between him and Daredevil. There’s a short but magnificent debate between the two on a rooftop in one scene where they go back-and-forth on whose strategy is more effective at saving the city, and that’s exactly the kind of energy you want to see at this point in the story. Electra was an interesting addition as well. She was perfect for Daredevil in all the wrong ways. Both of these new characters infused the second season with uncertainty and a vibrant energy that I really enjoyed.
The third (and tragically final) season brought back the Kingpin in a big way. Daredevil is at his lowest, and Kingpin is on the verge of being more powerful than he’s ever been. Seeing these two characters determined to destroy the very idea of each other is really fun. Murdoch doesn’t just hate Fisk – he hates everything Fisk represents. The same goes for Fisk – to him, Murdoch represents everything that could stand between him and his ultimate goal, and Fisk can’t stand obstacles.
It’s such a shame that the imminent release of Disney+ meant that these shows would have to come to an end, but perhaps it’s better that Daredevil ends on a high note. Not all of the other Netflix MCU shows can say the same.
Luke Cage (***)
Out of the five shows of Netflix’s branch of the MCU, Luke Cage is my second favourite. He’s a guy trying to do the best he can to help Harlem, and the way Cage’s race plays into this series is both realistic and commentative on today’s society – there aren’t many other MCU works that hit a current political issue so fearlessly or as on the nose. The show is thought-provoking and surprisingly artsy. Every episode to my recollection included some sort of song that was performed at the Harlem's Paradise nightclub, which at first I didn’t much care for – but by the end I thought it was neat.
Luke is a character that you root for. He’s just trying to help the little people of the world, but the way things are, the ways he can do this are surprisingly limited. He’s also fun to watch. Seeing bad guys throw everything they have at him is always a blast. On the note of Luke being a “good guy”, I really liked the way the second season ended with Luke – to some extent – becoming the very thing he swore to destroy. It’s a shame that the show was cancelled at this pivotal moment. It would have been cool to see how Luke’s transformation played out.
The bad guys are (for the most part) exciting as well. Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes and his sister Mariah are thrilling. They’re manipulative, conniving, and dedicated. Best of all, they’re both incredibly level-headed...except for their moments where they fly off the handle into murderous rages. I really liked watching their stories play out.
My chief complaint with this show is their use of sex scenes. Firstly, the show’s most sexually explicit content can be found in the premiere episodes of both seasons – this indicates to me that the screenwriters are using sex not as a storytelling device, but as a simple lure to get people to keep watching. Secondly, the sexual relationship between Luke Cage and Misty Knight in Season 1 felt like a cheap means of adding drama. There was more than enough conflict and tension to go around already – adding in a layer of “He slept with her but no one knows but they know and now they have to work together” seemed a little boring. Sex in television for the sake of sex in television is something I really can’t get behind, but Luke Cage’s creators don’t seem to have the same issue. Violence obviously plays an important role in Cage’s story because he’s bullet-proof and he fights crime. But sex? That’s not what I’m here for – I’m here for you to tell me a good story.
Even so, I was sorry to see this show (and Daredevil) canned. As for the other Netflix MCU shows, I don’t think I can say the same thing.
Iron Fist (*)
This show stank. I watched every episode of both seasons, and this show stank all the way through. The one part that I liked was David Wenham (who played Faramir in Lord of the Rings). He was a really fun bad guy – and he’s got a great voice. There’s a ‘bad guy’ from Daredevil who shows up too, and she’s kind of neat. All the other characters are dry, uninteresting, and at times downright cartoonish. Nobody’s likeable. The only thing that kept me going was the promise that this guy was going to be in the Defenders…and he was the weakest part of Defenders too.
Skip this before it’s too late.
Jessica Jones (**1/2)
Kilgrave is the reason to watch this show. He’s a terrifying and coldhearted villain, and the scope of his power brings incredible tension to whatever scene he’s in. Seeing our characters try and get the edge on him was exhilarating. For me, it’s a shame that such a compelling character had to be in a show that I had such mixed feelings on.
The subject matter is painfully and obviously dark – decidedly darker than any of the above shows I mentioned. Drugs, alcoholism, casual sex, rape...they’re all here. While this may be content that some find engaging, I tend to have a hard time enjoying such stories because of how so many aspects of such stories really happen. When you paint an alcoholic as a hero, you do get marks for creating a flawed protagonist, but it’s hard for me to root for her because our ideas of ‘victory’ are not compatible. Jessica wants more than just defeating the villain. She wants to continue her everyday life – and her everyday life isn’t something I can get behind, unfortunately.
The second season wasn’t as good as Season One, although Jessica’s relationship with her mom was interesting and dramatic. I won’t be watching Season Three, mainly because I don’t find the show entertaining. It can be thought-provoking, but it doesn’t really build on the MCU in any meaningful way, and it’s not fun or inspiring. For me, that means it’s time to move on.
The Punisher (***)
When the Punisher entered the world of Daredevil, the graphic violence that ensued felt shocking and visceral. It cemented his role as a brutal, extreme antithesis to the character of Matt Murdock. When he stands on his own...there’s really no one to keep us grounded. As a result, things get real messy real fast.
For what it’s worth, Punisher gives you exactly what you’d expect. You get a brooding, bloodied and bruised hero with a low gravelly voice, spewing out profanities at a rate comparable to the bullets spewing out of his guns. He swings, he smashes, he splinters, he squishes, he shoots, he stabs, and then he does it all again. He kills anyone standing in his way with no exceptions. What keeps you cheering for such a maniac is the way he sticks to his guns – pun intended. He has rules, and he follows them. He’s not a hard man to figure out.
As an obvious fan of superhero movies, I’m used to violence on-screen – but what we get in The Punisher is something on an entirely different level. Most heroes punch to achieve a goal or to save someone’s life – or something like that. When the Punisher does something, it’s to inflict pain. Hurt is not an avenue to an ultimate goal...it IS the goal. And there’s something about that that makes it a bit harder to enjoy. The Season One finale in particular has a specific act of violence so horrific that it made me sick to my stomach – and I still wish I hadn’t seen it. The whole idea of “killing all the bad guys so they don’t cause any more harm” is a principle that I can get behind at least in terms of enjoying a story, but that’s not what The Punisher is about. He’s not “The Executioner”. He’s the Punisher. He takes it upon himself to distribute whatever form of judgement he sees fit – and that’s hard to swallow for me because his idea of appropriate judgement is incompatible with mine.
I stopped watching this part of the way through Season Two – mainly because I didn’t want to encounter another act of violence as horrific as the Season One finale had been. That said, I did enjoy parts of the show. Amy from Season Two added a fun and intriguing dynamic to the series, reminding me of Hugh Jackman’s Logan or Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us. As much as there are parts that I enjoyed, I don’t ever want to watch this again.
The Defenders (***1/2)
This was a lot of fun. When I watched this, I had only seen Daredevil and Iron Fist - Luke Cage and Jessica Jones were new to me. That said, I really liked them, and in retrospect, I liked Jessica most when she was in this miniseries. Here she got to be the snarky member of the team, belittling the others and providing a lot of comic relief. When she's on her own, her behaviour comes across as just childish - but within a team, she provides a helpful amount of sarcastic realism.
The way Danny Rand's and Matt Murdock's run-ins with "The Hand" really paid off for this series, as my previous knowledge of the enemy helped me understand the personal stakes for these two characters. The bad guys were a very fun but simple evil. They weren't terrifyingly menacing or simple to the point of goofiness. They were a nice healthy middle-ground, and it was a blast watching our heroes take on a squad of evil ninjas.
The heroes really meshed well together. One of the most refreshing parts was how Danny got picked on. All through his first season, he kept saying "I am the immortal Iron Fist, protector of Kun Lun, sworn enemy of The Hand" with a straight face and no one to say "Give it a rest". Now with the other Defenders, there was at least one comment along the lines of "Okay, we get it", which felt like it was coming straight from my own mouth.
On the whole, I don't remember much from this miniseries, but I remember thinking that it was so cool to see a street-level Avengers team taking on a street-level supervillain. It's a shame that this miniseries didn't get a second season.
I thought it would be appropriate to include this one-off webcomic that I released during "The Adventures of Luke and Carl". If you like this, here's where you can find more of the same.
This post was originally published on May 16th, 2019.