TV Show of the Week: Marvel's – The Defenders

The Defenders see Matt Murdock as Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Danny Rand as Iron Fist (Finn Jones) team up to defeat the evil organisation, The Hand, led by Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver) as one of the five fingers. We also see a few supporting characters return, including Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung). And of course, Claire Temple, the person who’s jumped between each of the individual series and now has developed relationship with Luke Cage, a paring that does work.

Each of the four series on their own have very different tones. Daredevil’s dark and full of violence and gore, Jessica Jones’ psychological, Luke Cage’s is mysterious with patches of tenseness interwoven throughout, and Iron Fist’s tone is light-hearted compared to the previous three. Each show is completely different than the other, and bringing these together would have to be done right first time. Marvel does have experience with this matter, when they brought all the Avengers together after having their own film. On Netflix, however, they were able to explore and experiment so much more, so it was entering into new territory even though we know they know what they’re doing.

You absolutely have to watch the four previous series to understand what’s going on and know who each character’s personality wise. The first episode explores just that. The series only consisted of 8 episodes rather than 13, and there was some criticism regarding such because of course we wanted more, and we wondered if it was possible to do a big collaboration series in a much smaller arc than before. They’ve pulled it off brilliantly. The four series with 13 episodes was perfect to establish each character, so they don’t have to do that in The Defenders. They aren’t treating us as ignorant, they are jumping right into the action, but only after introducing each character and bringing them all together.

A massively powerful secret organisation known as The Hand, with five fingers scattered throughout the world, each with incredibly influence and resources at their disposal whenever they want, tearing that apart in only 8 episodes may sound rushed, but actually, if they were to spread the story over 13 episodes, there would undoubtedly be a few episodes acting as pure filler. There was plenty of action, plenty of necessary expositional scenes and each character was explored and developed at a steady pace. Jessica Jones’ personality stood out the most, not as an odd one out, but because she was staying true to how she was as a character in her own series – want no part of anything other than to crack her case. Her development over the course of the series had to have been the most, but was done well.

Alexandra, the head of The Hand. She wasn’t a traditional villain, just someone determined to get what they want, and the thing they want happens to be the wrong thing. She was portrayed brilliantly by Sigourney Weaver. She captured the character’s power and leadership brilliantly, without missing a single beat.

I do, however, have one criticism. I was glad that Electra came back as teased at the end of Daredevil series 2, but her story arc was unfortunately predictable. As soon as she was resurrected, I had an inkling that she would turn against The Hand. I wasn’t expecting her to still be a foe to Daredevil and the others. I was hoping The Defenders would take down Alexandra, not Electra, as that is essentially what the show is all about. The last episode sees The Hand being defeated once and for all, and The Defenders moving forward. Now that we know who they are, and that they’ve developed as a team, over the next few series of each individual character, it would be nice to see the others make cameo appearances now and again. It would seem odd that they would team up and never see each other again until the next series of Defenders. In other words, the Netflix series are following the same formula as the films, which I have nothing against, because the content is original and unrelentingly entertaining.

In conclusion, The Defenders is a highly exciting 8 hours that would easily suck you in until you’ve finished the last episode, something that did happen to me, and it was totally worth it.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)