Last week, Twitter and the #SaveDaredevil hashtag had a glorious celebration when it was confirmed straight from the mouth of Kevin Feige that Charlie Cox will return as Daredevil in future MCU media.
For those unfamiliar with the saga surrounding the Netflix Daredevil series, here’s a quick rundown. Cox was the star of the show that started streaming on Netflix in the Fall of 2015. It was received extremely well by critics and fans alike with a 92% critic score and 88% viewer score on RottenTomatoes. The show ran for three seasons and then was canceled in the lead-up to the launch of Disney+.
In that time it gained a cult following which eventually started the #SaveDaredevil hashtag as a campaign to revive the canceled series. Although the group considers this recent announcement a big win, their ultimate goal is to get the ear of Kevin Feige and have Marvel Studios revive the original program with the same cast. And if you’ve ever seen Daredevil, then you likely already understand why these fans want more.
The last year has been a bit of a renaissance for the MCU with their TV programs carrying the load while their films have been suffering major delays thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the high quality of the series that Marvel Studios put out this past year like Loki and Wandavision, the Netflix adaptation of Daredevil still gives them all a run for their money.
Although the show doesn’t fit into the mold of the family-friendly content of Disney+, all three seasons still have a home on Netflix. The less restrictive standards on this streaming service allow for much more graphic combat scenes which help give the fights a much more realistic feeling compared to most other Marvel shows and movies.
Daredevil is also a massive breath of fresh air for MCU fans who are used to the typical two and half hour movie that wraps up with a massive CGI laser show. The intense hand-to-hand combat in this show always keeps your attention and looks absolutely stunning.
The rest of the Netflix Marvel shows featuring The Defenders heroes also have a large amount of gritty and dark stories that are well-acted with great fight scenes. They still don’t compare to Daredevil because each one of these heroes has a power that gives them superhuman strength to overpower most enemies. It makes the majority of their fights foregone conclusions. Daredevil, on the other hand, has only his finely tuned hearing and mastery of martial arts. Put simply, he’s still very much a human.
The finest example of this is the memorable hallway fight scene where Daredevil enters a building filled with a bunch of bad dudes while he’s searching for a kidnapped boy. The scene is a single shot following Daredevil down this hallway as he pops in and out of doors, throwing bad guys into walls and at one point even knocking a guy out by tossing a microwave at him.
While this scene helps to build up Daredevil as a badass hero, it also manages to show that he’s still just a human. He’s completely gassed by the end of the scene and he even ends up collapsing from exhaustion. But like a true hero, he still manages to land the final knockout blow on the last goon before falling to the ground.
This program also succeeds because of its juxtaposition of the great acting of Murdock’s day-to-day as a lawyer with his friend Foggy Nelson and the visceral fight scenes. The lead, Charlie Cox brings the two separate sides of the protagonist, Matt Murdock and Daredevil, to life in a way that makes him believable as an upstanding citizen and as a skilled martial artist.
The first episode led into the opening credits sequence by showing Murdock at confession asking a priest for forgiveness for what he was about to do. Then it cuts to him as Daredevil, relentlessly pummeling a group of sex traffickers, disarming a man with a gun multiple times, and snapping another one of the guy’s legs.
It is a wonderful opening scene to instantly build up Murdock as a hero who knows that his methods are morally gray at best while showing off his impressive fighting acumen.
And the acting performances only get better from there with Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll playing the roles of Murdock’s friends Foggy Nelson and Karen Page. But one of the most interesting characters is the main villain, Kingpin/Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).
In a very basic sense, Kingpin and Daredevil both want to see Hell’s Kitchen become a better place for everyone living there. Yet, they have very different ways of going about it. This makes for a much more interesting dynamic than the typical good guy vs bad guy story that’s so prevalent in superhero media. Kingpin wants to level Hell’s Kitchen and completely rebuild it whereas Daredevil just wants to clean up the streets.
There has also been some speculation about D’Onofrio coming back as Kingpin in Hawkeye. However, that’s purely conjecture based on the fact that the mysterious big villain of the show has a hand that looks like it could belong to the criminal mastermind. If anything, it’s an obvious sign that fans are clamoring for the return of the Daredevil characters since they are so incredibly memorable and interesting.
Only a couple of the MCU TV programs from this year are neck-and-neck with Daredevil in terms of overall quality. The solid cast, fantastic fight scenes, and intriguing characters still give it the edge over most if not all other MCU shows.
With the return of Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Hulu playing host to Marvel Studio’s more mature content, Daredevil season four seems closer than it ever has before. Even if the show never makes a return, it will absolutely go down as one of the best Marvel TV series if not just one of the best superhero series of all time.
