So Today I Watched… The Defenders (Season 1) // Marvel Studios...

So Today I Watched… The Defenders (Season 1) // Marvel Studios & Netflix (2017)

The idea of The Defenders was released to the world by Marvel comics in 1971. The premise was very simple: take an unlikely team up of superheroes and make them work in impossible situations. The first line-up was a very unlikely pairing: Dr. Strange, Namor The Submariner and The Hulk. Over the years, the group had a rotating line-up from 1972 and on, with Dr. Strange and the Hulk being usually constant members along with a number of other mainstays such as Valkyrie, Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, Beast, the Son of Satan and Luke Cage. The pattern here being that the team was not composed of the powerhouses the Avengers usually had. The concept evolved over time to gather more or less urban heroes in the lineup.

If the way Marvel studios builds their continuity is familiar to you, what they have done with this series will be familiar for you.  After beginning in 2015 with their offerings on solo acts for Daredevil and Jessica Jones, following in 2016 with a second season of Daredevil and the first season of  Luke Cage, we are now closing in 2017 with a first lukewarm season of Iron Fist and the final team up of all these characters in The Defenders.  It’s been hyped up for a long time and everything you have seen in those past offerings has been building up to this. Does it deliver? Read on true believer…

As the story begins we find all our heroes dealing with the aftermaths or fallouts of their actions of their own shows: Jessica Jones is drinking herself to death barely getting any PI jobs, Iron Fist is traveling the world looking for the Hand, Luke Cage is getting out of the joint and Matt Murdock is working pro-bono cases to help people in need, each of them minding their own business until an earthquake hits Hell’s Kitchen in New York and they all seem to be affected by it in one way or another. A woman has lost her husband and comes to Jessica asking for help, which she refuses to give until a phone call tells her to not take the job (which of course she takes as dare for actually taking the bloody job she just refused to do in the first place). Luke arrives to Harlem and wants to keep helping the community in any way he can, so he gets back in touch with detective Misty Knight and she points him towards some mysterious disappearances of local kids doing odd jobs. Danny Rand is sent back to the city by a lead pointing to the Hand being active in New York City and Matt is refusing to bear the Daredevil mantle again after Elektra’s death.

Unlikely circumstances and the return of familiar faces for all the heroes gather them together to deal with a menace that it’s way over their heads, but since no one else knows what they have figured out about this menace so far, and passing this on to big-time super heroes or police forces will only make matters worse, they take it up to themselves to deal with the Hand. For the first time we get to know the five fingers composing the leadership of the Hand organization and we get the full scope of what they plan to do and their motivations.

You may be expecting a lot out of this team up and while I believe we have been served in the entertainment department, I feel we could have done with a better plot or something deeper for this gathering of characters. I mean, after the flawless job done by Marvel and Netflix with Daredevil, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones I was rooting really hard for this series, but after watching the 8 episodes in one sitting I feel the effort a bit flat and just enough to justify all of these guys teaming up. The stakes are supposed to be big, but you don’t really feel it at all. We don’t even get something that sticks with us as defining for this series like the powerful character development of Jessica Jones, the soundtrack of Luke Cage or the fighting choreographies of Daredevil. All in all The Defenders feels just fine, maybe average at best, not great like it was supposed to.

Maybe I was expecting too much out of it.

Posted in: Reviews & Appreciation