Hello and welcome to my review of Season 1 of The Defenders, the newest Netflix show from Marvel. The first section will be spoiler free and then I’ll get into spoilers at the end.
Overall, the show is very good and I think anyone who liked the previous shows will like this, but if you didn’t, The Defenders won’t do much to convert you, as it is mainly intended for fans of the earlier Marvel shows on Netflix.
I’m not sure how many people this even applies to, but if you were wondering if The Defenders would still be enjoyable if you haven’t seen everything else, I’d say you can, but it’s much more rewarding the more you’ve seen. Having watched Daredevil is especially important as the plotlines and supporting characters from that show played a key part. I think as long as you’ve seen at least 2 or 3 of the shows you can figure out the rest.
The Defenders generally assumes you’ve seen the other shows, and doesn’t stop to go into in-depth explanations of their powers and backstories. There are a few lines of dialogue that reference past events and they do a pretty decent job of not making them feel like obvious exposition.
To me, not trying to re-explain who all of the Defenders’ are is surely to the series’ benefit, as there really isn’t much time to get bogged down in recapping the other shows.
I really liked Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, but I was a little nervous for The Defenders after the abysmal Iron Fist. However, The Defenders turned out very solid, and I’d give it an 8 out of 10. Despite some significant flaws, it succeeds at what it’s trying to be. At this point, Marvel Netflix fans pretty much know what they are getting and The Defenders doesn’t have any major surprises in store. It’s mostly what you would expect going in. But it’s still the culmination of some of the best comic book shows ever made and there are enough awesome moments to make the show worth watching.
My biggest concern was the Iron Fist character, and he is the weakest link of the main 4 and still comes off as cheesy at times, but he has clearly improved from his own show. Perhaps it’s partly that he works better in small doses, as opposed to being the main character.
The show starts out with a somewhat of a slow build, with not that much action in the first two episodes. I didn’t have a problem with it and there’s plenty of action later, but just keep that in mind going in.
The Defenders is only 8 episodes long, compared to the 13 episodes that Daredevil and the others got per season. This lets the plot along at a quick pace and there really isn’t any noticeable filler.
Everyone felt true to the way they had previously been portrayed and I didn’t notice any glaring out of character moments. It’s really fun seeing people from different shows interact with each other, which I’ll get more into in the spoiler section.
The cast is very good with the main exception being Finn Jones as Danny Rand as I alluded to earlier. Sigourney Weaver is great as always in her role as the villain Alexandra Reid, but the character itself didn’t really work for me that much, and we never get to see her do anything to establish herself as a great villain. It’s hard to explain fully without spoilers, so I’ll get into that later. From what I understand, Reid is not from the comics, which seems like an odd choice to do for the first season of the team up of all Marvel’s Netflix shows, given the ridiculous amount of villains Marvel has its disposal.
The fight choreography is basically on the same level as Daredevil and a huge step up from Iron Fist. A few moments are a bit awkward as Luke Cage and Jessica Jones have a much different fighting style compared the more martial arts focused characters, and they can be less visually interesting because of this.
The cinematography is fine with a few somewhat long takes here and there, but nothing mind-blowing. It doesn’t look too far off from Marvel’s other Netflix efforts.
The dialogue is okay, with some moments that were too on the nose, although nothing blatantly awful, but also good lines sprinkled in here and there.
The music is also about average, as it rarely stands out one way or another.
That’s the end of the spoiler free section so stop listening here if you want to avoid spoilers.
I really liked how there was a slow build to the Defenders actually teaming up. None of them meet up in the first episode and don’t really see them action much, but we still get fun interactions like Foggy talking to Luke Cage. Then in Episode 2, things slowly start to come together with Iron Fist and Luke Cage meeting for the first time and having a neat fight scene. Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones meet at the end of the episode, with Jones also having an interesting scene with Misty Knight. When they finally come together for a well-made action scene at the climax of Episode 3, it feels earned.
They did an excellent job of incorporating all the supporting cast from the various shows, with key characters from all of them showing up, like Elektra and Stick from Daredevil Madame Gao and Colleen Wing from Iron Fist, Claire Temple, and even Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth.. The only big one I personally was missing was The Punisher. He would have probably felt out of place though, I just really liked him in Daredevil Season 2.
One substantial complaint I had was with the character of Alexandra Reid. They got a fantastic actress like Sigourney Weaver and build her up a lot, but she never really does much before getting unceremoniously stabbed by Elektra in Episode 6. Then Elektra and Madame Gao basically become the main villains. Elektra is great as always, but Gao just isn’t that compelling. I wasn’t too crazy about the reuse of The Hand in general and I think they need to move on to new storylines.
The finale was satisfying, but with few moments that stood out as exceptional. One thing I really liked was when Misty Knight gets her arm chopped off and then Colleen Wing decapitates the guy. I was aware that having only one real arm was part of her character in the comics, but I wasn’t thinking about it at that moment so I still found it surprising when it happened.
And then there’s a definite hint towards her getting her bionic arm, so that was cool to see as well.
They try to play it off as is Matt Murdock is dead for a little bit, but I just heard they will be filming season 3 of Daredevil this October, not that I really thought they were going to kill him off anyways.
That it’s for my review of The Defenders Season 1, thanks for reading,
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