The Defenders was a breath of fresh air for me. I'd actually started to lose faith in the Netflix shows after Iron Fist soured my opinion to the extent that I couldn't bring myself to rewatch Jessica Jones, which I've wanted to do for a while now. Having watched Daredevil season 1 three times now, I've felt like I've neglected the Marvel/Netflix series that I'd actually enjoyed the most. But Defenders was exactly what I needed, a fun little romp through an adventure that brings these large characters together;
And the result is refreshingly greater than the sum of its parts.
Crossovers are always kind of a fickle thing. They can sometimes end up as pandering fanservice or worse, a mismanagement of several pieces of intellectual property. And because of the rather special circumstances that occur to make a crossover event possible, it's usually very short lived.
Defenders, however, is none of these things; It has a compelling narrative with tastefully handled interactions between characters who all have decent amounts of screen time while being only as long as it needs to be, if perhaps maybe even dragging on a bit too long near the end.
I have my gripes, but they're my favourite kind of gripes, little ones. I think I do want to get those out of the way so that I can sing my praises for what I think is actually one of the best shows you can watch on Netflix to date, so without further delay, let me get on with it, and of course, spoilers ahead.
The ending kind of sucked. Not the last episode, the last thirty minutes or so of it. Elektra's motivations don't make a whole lot of sense to me. She's framed as having now rediscovered her affection for Matt, and even murders Alexandra upon being ordered to kill the Daredevil, whom Alexandra can't even bother to learn the name of. It's an endearing moment, and one that really put me on the side of Elektra; she'd overcome her instinct to blindly obey and did something that was... Well, as heroic as Elektra can manage.
But then she proceeds to kind of beat the snot out of Matt but also kind loving him, and proclaiming how she's doing it all for the sake of fucking with Matt. I was under the impression that her motivation was to now procure the dragon remains in order to craft an elixir that would enable her and Matt to live forever. Which is selfish, but in a human kind of way. It just doesn't sit right, and the ending looks like a lot of outtakes splattered together in order to Frankenstein an ending.
Everyone also starts hailing Matt as heroic, when his actions, in the end, were clearly misguided. Matt still thinks he can save Elektra from herself. Matt didn't sacrifice himself for the city; he died trying to save the love of his life, and in the end, probably endangered his team.
Also a neater explanation of how this man survived having a 30 story building dropped on him would be nice. The final shot is of Matt in a church presumably some ways off, but he still technically died in New York. It makes very little sense that he wouldn't end up in a hospital close to the accident. I suppose it's setting up an arch in Daredevil season 3, and that's rumoured to be the acclaimed Born Again story, but I felt even my forgiving suspension of disbelief stretch to its limits.
I hope you like hearing about Kunlun. Because you won't stop hearing about it, and it highlights just how B-grade Iron Fist's mythology is. I don't know if it's the delivery of this word specifically, but it just ends up not sounding right to me. I get that the Kunlun mountains are a real place, but it just doesn't sound like it. It sounds like a fake place with a fake name that I came up with when I wrote bad fanfiction as a twelve-year-old. Maybe that's on me but I cannot be the only one who thinks this.
Finally, god damn, Colleen Wing is sidelined wayyy too often. Everything about Colleen is so well-rounded, from her motivations to her actions, she's human and her jealousy over Danny finding a team to work with is for me a moment to pure for this world. Why the fuck is she not getting top billing? Danny doesn't do any of the notable detective work, Colleen does. Danny doesn't come up with any of the best ideas, Colleen does. Danny can't even motivate himself to stop being such a goddamn downer all the time, Colleen does. She even gets the idea to use the bombs to collapse the building into the tunnel beneath it. Colleen's agency was genuinely refreshing. She's got as much right to be a Defender as everyone else on the team, if not more so. If a blind dude in a bright red costume can be a Defender, a trained swordswoman can too. Colleen Wing is to The Defenders what Stephanie Brown is to the Robins. Part of the club in every sense of the word, always left out of the conversation when we're giving credit.
With all that out of the way, let me gush.
Charlie Cox can make standing still and dramatically flexing his knuckles into a genuinely emotionally impactful scene. I could practically feel Matt's struggle with his inner rage as my own. Matt gets a couple of really hard-hitting emotional beats, and when he talks to the boy he did pro bono work for, explaining life with a disability and where the real strength in overcoming it lies was a heavy scene. Charlie Cox manages to steal the show in all his scenes, and the stunt work during Daredevil's fight scenes are always phenomenal.
Krysten Ritter does Jessica Jones phenomenally. Her cynicism somehow endears her more to me, and you can genuinely see the issues of someone struggling with their identity, not wanting to be a hero, but also being entirely directionless. But my favourite scene was actually watching Jess do her actual job; Being a private investigator. There's an interesting juxtaposition between how each hero does the busy work, the tedious part of the job. Daredevil and Luke usually use fear and intimidation to interrogate, but Matt does sometimes lawyer up to get the job done. But Jess doing the mundane investigation work was just an interesting sight to see. Because Jess is good at her job, make no mistake, but there's just something funny about seeing someone who could punch a man so hard he sees the curvature of the earth digging through public records for information. My favourite part is when Jess shows just how good she is at her job and how freaking insightful she can be, in her own crude way, when she gets Matt to relate to the daughter of the dead architect. I wasn't actually expecting Charlie and Krysten to get as much screen time together as they did, but the two of them knocked it out the park.
Luke Cage gets by far the best introductory scene. "I believe these belong to you" and "And you let them?" are the two best-delivered lines in the whole show, fyt me IRL. Mike somehow has chemistry with whoever he shares a scene with, but his best moments are with Krysten and Finn. Cage and Danny have some bro moments that I just couldn't help but grin wide at. It was endearing and I warmed up to Iron Fist a lot more, and I think that's the biggest strength of the show.
And Danny, Danny, Danny... It took me a while. I eventually warmed up to him. I admit, when Jess punched him the fuck out, I smiled a wide smile. Watching Luke smack Danny around a bit was also just... Deserved. But in the end, I concede; Danny isn't all that bad after all. Danny is the kid of the group, and he's at his best as kind of a lovable goofball. Which is a lot like how he is on the Ultimate Spiderman cartoon, as weird a comparison as that is. Luke humouring Danny's stories about punching out the heart of a dragon was an entirely endearing moment. Yes, Iron Fist is still the weakest character out of all the Defenders, still getting outshined by Colleen. But it was endearing. And Colleen and Danny have some moments of genuine chemistry on screen.
Also a quick shout out to Madame Gao's force powers, where were you hiding them, why were they so cool, how come you been holding out on us fam?
Overall, The Defenders really was just.. Fun.
I had fun watching it. I had fun seeing my favourites all interact. This was worth the wait and while eight episodes seem short, it's a bingeable, watchable, fun little adventure and besides an ending that goes on a little too long, Defenders... Was good. Defenders was good.
It's worth your time. It's only eight episodes long. Give it a watch. Have some fun.
If nothing else, you get to see a lot of people punch Finn Jones right in his overly depressive face.
