Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
There’s no denying the pure, undiluted thrill that comes along with a superhero team-up. It’s the same mixture of awe and bliss that bubbles up from the place it did when you were young, and your parents shelled out the extra money to buy the action-figure two-pack that comes with Thor and, egads, The Hulk, too. It’s cheap, but it’s the solution that turned Joss Whedon’s 2012 Avengers from a middle-of-the-road, gag-happy action film into something undeniably special, the reason that, four years later, the only part of Captain America: Civil War that didn’t feel like a slog was when our heroes gathered in one airport runway to kick each other’s asses. Which is why it’s such a…let’s say “bold” decision for Marvel and Netflix—hot off the kung-fu kick to the crotch that was Iron Fist—to start off their eight-episode Defenders arc by keeping our four vigilantes as separated as humanly possible. Not only that, but most of them are actively dissociating themselves from their super-powered alter-egos. “Don’t say the H word,” Jessica Jones begs Trish Walker. “Hero is your word, not mine” Luke Cage tells a disenfranchised young Harlemite.
What we’re left with is something more like a game of catch-up than an actual episode, a 50-minute-long “previously on” segment that is, I suppose, necessary, if not exactly thrilling. It works best in the segments following Luke Cage, because they at least still feel something like a comic book show. Both out on bail and fresh out of jail, Luke immediately returns to Harlem to find he’s become more folk legend than man, and that “someone”—to build intrigue, this episode is jam-packed with unclear pronouns—is using the neighborhood’s youth to do late-night dirty work that “pays well, ends badly.” Which is, like, the exact opposite way to describe any and all of Luke Cage’s sex scenes.
Meanwhile, Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) has transitioned to spin-kicking dudes in the face on the streets to doing so metaphorically in the courtroom. He’s taking pro bono work, locking down a $11 million settlement against a shady construction business using subpar materials. “No one can give you your life back, Aaron. You gotta take it back,” he tells a young man injured because of the company’s carelessness, advice Matt is struggling not to act on himself. The lawyer work is nice, the $11 million settlement is nicer, and even Karen Page seems shakily onboard with reuniting. But man, Matt Murdock just loves dressing up like the devil and elbowing muggers in the throat, and New York’s ever-present sirens are ringing in his supersensitive ears, calling him home.
Funny enough, it’s the plotlines of Jessica Jones and Danny Rand—two characters destined to just passive-aggressively dislike each other—that seem most likely to jumpstart the actual narrative thrust of The Defenders. Danny has been hunting The Hand since the events of Iron Fist, and because an insane pirate murdered her off of Game of Thrones, Colleen Wing is free to follow. Their opening clash with Elektra—resurrected, after all— underneath the streets of Cambodia make two things clear. 1) Director S.J. Clarkson and stunt coordinator Matt Mullins seem to have “fixed” the largest problem with Iron Fist‘s fight scenes; namely, that because Danny is not yet wearing a mask these scenes needed to largely feature Finn Jones, and Finn Jones throws punches like he is ten feet underwater. I say “fixed” because here, at least, the solution is to stage fights in locales as dark and blurry as possible. 2) War—at least according to an unnamed murder victim—is coming to New York City.
Jessica Jones—star of the subjectively but actually objectively best Netflix Marvel series—is still as whisky-soaked and miserable as ever, hitting even lower rock bottoms in the wake of Kilgrave. Rest assured, Krysten Ritter is still the best in the game at showing the slightest bit of humanity from underneath a bedrock of ambivalence and then immediately hating herself for it. And though there’s nothing to go on besides a modified voice over the phone and a mysterious apartment filled with explosives, the case of missing man John Raymond seems set to bring these four characters together.
But for now, they are apart, and what is admirable is how this show makes our time with each of them feel uniquely like that hero’s solo series. Jessica Jones still has the grit and grime of a New York neo-noir. Luke Cage is reintroduced to the sound of Mos Def’s “Sunshine” and still manages to pack the unique flavor of Harlem into every beat. The way the camera follows Matt Murdock’s courtroom victory echoes both of Daredevil’s one-shot hallway fight scenes. The dialogue between Danny and Colleen is still admirably terrible, despite not even being written by Scott Buck.
And if you didn’t notice those quirks, the colors make it clear; Matt is always surrounded by red, Jessica drowning in lavender, Luke walking through yellow, and Danny dreaming in green. I’d even say it gets to be overkill—how many yellow hallways are there in Harlem?—if it wasn’t for the intriguing introduction of Sigourney Weaver’s Alexandra.
Like much of what’s happening so far in The Defenders, we know next to nothing about Alexandra; only that she is dying, in league with Madame Gao, utilizing a raised-from-the-dead Elektra, and certainly has something to do with the earthquake that hits Manhattan at the end of the episode. But unlike each of our heros, Alexandra is introduced in the most sterile of whiteness, the absolute absence of color. Whatever her endgame, this alone hints that when Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist finally come together, they won’t make each other stronger so much as cancel each other out.
Vinnie Mancuso writes about TV for a living, somehow, for Decider, The A.V. Club, Collider, and the Observer. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.
