Waiting to begin.
Warning: The following review contains minor spoilers for the episode.
When it was announced that Marvel was to bring its street-level heroes to Netflix, the endgame was clear: The Defenders, an Avengers-like culmination that would unite its four heroes to face an even greater threat. Sadly, the first episode of this crossover miniseries fails deliver on that promise. What we get served instead is a slow-paced and stodgy overture that has to spend far too long putting its pieces into position.
I’m not adverse to a slow build or having these characters come together in an organic way, but I can’t help be feel The Defenders – despite always being a part of the plan – wasn’t helped by the arcs of the individual shows. Showrunner Marco Ramirez and his writers are placed in the unenviable position where they have to undercut some of those shows simply to put characters back into play. For instance – spoiler warning – the end of Luke Cage sees its protagonist sent back to prison. It was a fairly-dramatic end-of-season cliffhanger for Harlem’s Hero. But obviously this show needs Luke to be back in New York, and so Foggy is lazily dispatched to get him out of prison in less than 2 minutes and 3 seconds. (Yes, I timed it.) It just retroactively dulls that ending, robbing it of its impact. It just feels like there was a lack of planning and coordination.
This is apparent elsewhere. The episode’s opening prologue sees Iron Fist and Coleen Wing hunting down The Hand in SE Asia only for Danny to learn – much to his surprise – that the real threat is back in New York – the very place where he spent most of his own series battling The Hand. Once again, Rand is portrayed as feckless, rather than immortal, Iron Fist. So while Luke is fast-tracked back to Manhattan, Danny spends most of the episode looking pensive on a private jet.
It’s not all clumsy. The show more elegantly builds on where we left Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Matt Murdock has hung up his horns and is struggling to be no more than a public defendant. Meanwhile, Jessica is drinking more possibly due to her experiences with The Purple Man, or possibly just to quickly establish that she likes to drink. I think that’s the other main problem with this opening episode. There’s clearly been some attempt to reintroduce all of these characters, just in case you’ve seen never watched the previous shows. The only problem there is if you have watched every episode, like myself, these characters almost slip into caricature.
The first time we meet Jessica she’s waking up hungover in a bar; the second time we see Jessica, she’s drinking a coffee with whiskey in it. OK, I get it; she likes to drink. It’s probably useful if you’ve never seen an episode of Jessica Jones, but if you’ve already spent close to 13 hours with this character, it feels laboured and unnecessary. Similarly heavy-handed is the treatment of Luke Cage. Whenever he appears on screen, he’s accompanied by hip-hop or RnB. OK, I get it: he’s the Hero of Harlem. Again, it just feels a bit clunky and lazy. I don’t want to be reintroduced to characters I’ve spent so much time with. I want the show to play with and reward the familiarity I have with these characters – something the Marvel movies do incredibly well.
Stylistically, each character’s scenes possesses a signature colour – Luke’s scenes are highlighted in a golden yellow, whereas Jessica’s are cold and blue. It’s stylish and creates continuity with their respective shows, but it also adds to the overall sense of disjointedness that’s prevalent in the episode.
The Verdict
The Defenders should feel liberated by the groundwork laid down by each of its lead-in shows, but instead – at least in its curtain-raiser – is at pain to repeat so much, and in doing so wastes much of its own time. It’s certainly not helped by characters being left in tricky situations by their respective shows. This feels much more like a necessary prologue than the joyful opener of a team-up series. By the end of the episode, The Hand has become a more potent threat, creating an earthquake-like incident in New York, and all of heroes are in placed into a closer orbit, but one episode in and I definitely feel as if I’m still waiting for The Defenders to begin.
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