Now let's all play nice.
Before moving on to the full season review, below are links to the (spoiler-filled) reviews of all 13 episodes of Marvel's The Defenders.
The Defenders, Episode 1: The H Word - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 2: Mean Right Hook - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 3: Worst Behaviour - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 4: Royal Dragon - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 5: Take Shelter - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 6: Ashes, Ashes - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 7: Fish in the Jailhouse - COMPLETED
The Defenders, Episode 8: The Defenders - COMPLETED
Note: This is a generally spoiler-free review of the entire first season of Marvel’s The Defenders, intended to be safe for those who have not yet begun or finished all 13 episodes of the season.
The individual episode reviews above contain spoilers and more detailed discussion of specific events from the show.
After two years, five seasons, and 65 episodes, we reach The Defenders, the culmination of Netflix’s Marvel shows. But instead of a joyous coming together heroes to face an unprecedented threat – like in The Avengers – the season feels uneven, hastily-planned, and ultimately like a missed opportunity.
There’s no denying, however, that there are some fun and exciting moments scattered across the show’s eight episodes. When they’re finally united on screen, the cast have great chemistry, with various interesting dynamics existing within the team. But ultimately they’re saddled with a badly-paced story and an ill-defined, confused and confusing antagonist in the form of The Hand.
Since the very beginning these characters have been pitched as Marvel’s street-level heroes – protecting their neighbourhoods from murderers and rapists, drug dealers and paedophiles – but here they end up pitted against a threat that is as fantastical as anything we’ve yet encountered in the MCU.
I’m not saying these Netflix shows can’t embrace the supernatural – The Purple Man in Jessica Jones is a great example of how the fantastical can be executed with realism and become even more effective – but not enough is done here to ground The Hand or their intentions. They never feel like a genuinely destructive or malignant force within New York.
This certainly isn’t aided by The Hand’s almost complete lack of personality. Sigourney Weavers ends up delivering a bland, anonymous villain in Alexandra. She suffers in isolation but especially when compared to the antagonists these heroes have already come up against – the brilliantly calculating yet rage-fuelled Kingpin or the manipulative and demented Purple Man. Even Luke Cage’s Cottonmouth, with his ties to Harlem, was a much more compelling villain.
The show remains unnecessarily coy about Alexandra’s identity for far too long. Similarly, the intentions of The Hand remain unclear until the very end. Initially, they seem intent of the arch-dismantling of New York, a project that has gestated over centuries. But in the end, the destruction of the city is the side-effect of a much more bizarre, mystical, and selfish plan.
Things improve slightly when The Fingers are introduced, giving this shady organisation more tangible avatars, and introducing conflict within the organisation, but this also soon forgotten about as the show marches towards its conclusion.
The vagueness of The Hand’s intentions definitely isn’t helped by the shows approach to action, either. So much of it feels without a sense of place or purpose. We see our heroes fight interchangeable ninjas, time and time again, without a civilian perspective on the danger they represent for the city. Nothing comes close to that moment in Daredevil season one when he rescues a terrified young boy from human traffickers; instead, most of the action in The Defenders revolves around trouncing faceless ninjas in warehouses or empty restaurants or steriles offices far from the streets of Hell’s Kitchen or Harlem. As a result, it’s not surprising that the show feels disconnected from the street corners these heroes are supposedly trying to protect.
It’s all the more frustrating because there’s good stuff to be found. The reintroduction of Elektra is well-done, with Elodie Yung providing the most credible and emotionally-rich villain for The Defenders to face – her obvious connection to Matthew makes her far more compelling than Alexandra, but she also seeds disharmony within the fledgling team as the other Defenders question Murdock’s judgement. But ultimately not enough is made of this dynamic and Elektra gets overwhelmed by The Hand’s more eccentric machinations.
The chemistry between our heroes is excellent. It’s undeniably fun finally seeing them together, and the show is definitely at its best when they’re interacting, getting to know each other, questioning one another’s agendas and stance on being a hero, and of course, fighting alongside each other. But we get too little of each of those. Danny and Luke work particularly well together. (I hope instead of new seasons of Luke Cage and Iron Fist we just get Heroes for Hire.) Jessica, likewise, brilliantly undercuts the characters around her, especially Daredevil who stands out from the rest due to his secret identity. When it all pulls together, it’s really great. Arguably the highpoint of the season is when they’re all trapped in a Chinese restaurant and forced into getting to know each other.
Less effectively incorporated are the supporting characters. Foggy makes the odd logical appearance here and there, but as for the rest – well, they’re pretty much rounded-up and dumped in Harlem’s police department, when they spend the majority of the show, occasionally having an unnecessary scene together. It just feels forced.
For a show that was always on the cards The Defenders feels hastily-thrown together. I’m all for patient storytelling and devoting time to character development – like I said, my favourite scenes in this episode was when they stuck in the Royal Dragon for virtually the whole episode – but looking back it now and it doesn’t feel like those individuals shows did enough to lay the ground for this crossover. Luke is plucked from jail within a couple of minutes of the first episode, totally devaluing the ending of his own show. They’re wrenched together and forced into becoming a team with a strain that’s never perceptible in the MCU’s movies.
The Verdict
The first season of The Defenders has its moments of excitement and fun, but these largely stem from simply seeing these characters come together and interact. It has little to do with the plot that unites them. Although Elektra adds bite, The Hand is a weirdly abstract enemy even with Sigourney Weaver’s Alexandra serving as its leader. They feel remote in a way Kingpin or The Purple Man never did, and their evil plan to destroy New York quickly unravels into something much more bizarre and unsatisfying.
When The Defenders finally make their last stand to protect New York their plan, which is actually Coleen’s, it involves blowing up a part of the city, not saving it. I can’t help but feel that through the desire to deliver a bigger spectacle Marvel’s street-level heroes have strayed a little too far from home.
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