Matt Murdock navigates the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil season 2, but is there light at the end of the tunnel?
When the first season of Daredevil premiered on Netflix, it was something of a revelation. Dark, quirky, and violent, season 1 challenged viewers to look beyond the livid colors of Marvel’s top-tier heroes and consider the gritty lives lived in the shadow of giants.
To follow up this act (and coexist with the brilliant first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones), Daredevil season 2 has chosen to narrow its scope even further. The story plays strictly within its own confines. Though brief, tantalizing references are made to Jessica Jones and her friends, the new season remains indelibly Daredevil — dark corners, bloody sidewalks, and all.
The dark adventures of Daredevil season 2 offer precious few opportunities to laugh, or even to appreciate Nelson & Murdock’s plucky exploits. A fundamental sense of fracture runs through the episodes; friendships are frayed and secrets, like that of Matt’s identity, rest uneasily. Foggy struggles to reconcile his responsibilities to his friend Matt, and the vigilante Daredevil, while Karen works alone to wring her own justice from an unyielding city.
Fracture is also a physical truth of the season. The first season of Daredevil was noted for its displays of physical violence, but it takes less than one episode for decapitating-car-doors to seem like a quaint accident. The gore of season 2 is lurid, extreme, and creative. The camera lingers lovingly on broken bodies, exploring torsos, heads, and limbs like the details of a Gothic painting. It is not subtle, but then again, it’s not supposed to be.
Meanwhile, Matt Murdock himself is torn between shades of right and wrong (and red). Copycat vigilantes have sprung up throughout Hell’s Kitchen, leaving the police force chasing both criminals and would-be heroes. The arrival of the terrifyingly effective Punisher acts like a quick-freeze over warm feelings for Daredevil, and as the body count rises to plague-like proportions, Matt is forced to question what it really means to protect his city.
The Punisher himself proves to be an intense point of fracture for Matt, though interestingly one very close to harmony. Jon Bernthal is stupendous as Frank Castle, a seemingly simple man whose many layers are composed of terrible scars.
Living and taking lives without regret or hesitation, Castle is free (horribly free) where Matt is bound to responsibility. Matt’s one enduring conviction is the hope that bad people can change; Castle’s is that they cannot. The relationship between the two men is intriguingly balanced; even in their opposition, Daredevil and The Punisher are unexpectedly complementary.
The other major new player in Daredevil season 2 is deliberately much less complimentary. Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung) pounces back into Matt’s life like an extremely sexual cobra. (Don’t think too hard about that simile.) She lies and promises in the same breath, strokes Matt’s ego and threatens his autonomy with the same gesture.
Like The Punisher, Elektra is a powerful force in the season, though her hold on Matt’s attention doesn’t play as effectively in the present as it does in the past. Yung is strongest in flashbacks that chronicle Elektra’s first relationship with young Murdock, a dark swirl of opulence that illuminates the pair’s similarities, and radical differences. In the real-time of Daredevil season 2, it’s frankly a little puzzling to see Matt drawn once again into Elektra’s sphere of influence.
Despite this, there is an elegance to Elektra that, while uncomplicated, offers some of the contrast provided by Fisk in season 1. And that’s an important thing — for as much as broken pieces are a major theme of Daredevil season 2, Matt’s story doesn’t conflict with itself very much. A city and a man at war remain at war; doorways to Heaven open into the same room that the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen just tried to leave.
Still, it’s all decently effective. The episodes of Daredevil season 2 hook into each other maddeningly well, and there is something compelling in following Matt down his dark path of twisted logic. Taking the good with the bad, this new season is a potent installation in Marvel’s timeline with Netflix. Digging deeper into the dirt of Hell’s Kitchen may not be pleasant; but it’s certainly fascinating.
Daredevil season 2 hits Netflix on Friday, March 18.
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