Daredevil Season 2 - Spoilers ahead!

[Mr Mystery]

It begins!

Anyone else bingeing it today, I SALUTE YOU!

[Mr Mystery]

About half way through the second episode, and so far it's just as brutal as the first season, and has cracked straight on with the plot.

[Mr Mystery]

Episode 3 now.

Good action set pieces, and plenty of development for the characters. Very good use of the expanded run time compared to a movie option, which is critical for Frank Castle.

[Mr Mystery]

First proper spoiler. Ready?

You know the corridor fight from Season 1?

Yeah. They topped it.

[Mr Mystery]

Nearly at the half way point, and it's consistently brill!

[Brakkart]

Just finished episode 3 here. They got Punisher right!! So happy he's every bit as brutal as he should be. Whole cartel hung on meathooks in a warehouse and left to die... awesome.

[Mr Mystery]

I no longer know which episode I'm on.

Could be 9, 10, or 11!

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Well, thats my weekend sorted then...

[Mr Mystery]

Now on Episode 12. So far, they've managed to weave quite a few story threads!

[Mr Mystery]

Mythos cranked up, Punisher and Elektra getting so much screen time each it probably counts as a mini-series.

Wunnerful stuff!

[Brakkart]

Binge watch completed and that's 3 for 3 on Marvel's Netflix seasons thus far, roll on Luke Cage, season 2 of Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, The Defenders and now really hoping for a Punisher series too. Really enjoyed watching that.

[eldargal]

Five episodes in, pretty good so far. Just met Elektra so yay. I like her. Angsty McManpain is ok.

[Mr Mystery]

How did people find Elektra?

I'm not terribly familiar with her character, so I've no idea if the role was anything like fans were hoping for.

Punisher I really enjoyed, and I think they handled his backstory really well, leaving it out until we've just sort of accepted he's a psychopath, then showing more of the motivation.

And Wilson Fisk.........every bit as superb as the first season. Definitely my favourite character.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Love it so far, and I really want to send the Punisher to parliament, I think that will solve everything.

Great series, onto ep5 next - can't wait for Elektra...

[eldargal]

Only got to watch another episode or two last night, its still very good but I have to say its starting to lose its edge. Matt is annoying as **** this season, last time he was kind of sympathetic and you understood why he was doing what he did but he is starting to seem like kind of an arsehole. Also kind of annoying the only other woman in authority we've seen in the show is your typical grasping, ambitious but incompetent female district attorney (whom I can almost guarantee will be dead before the end of the season). Angsty McManpain is ok, hope we get to see a bit more of his motivation behind losing his family. elektra is awesome, and if the show follows the comics I know how her intro arc will end but that's fine so long as they follow what happens after too. Her own show would be nice, its already a 3-1 female ratio with he Netflix shows getting Elektra and Punisher would at least make it 4-2 instead of 4-1. It would also be nice to have some female characters actually interact with one another, and I don't mean Karen ordering drinks from Josie.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Loving Elektra so far but only on ep5 - Reminds me of Mine Fujiko a bit which is always a good thing in my book.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Great series, only one criticism really but that will spoil it for others. Season 3 please.

I hope for an Elektra spinoff, she was awesome. I didn't like Punisher to begin with, but I liked how we got to know him over the series.

[Kirsten]

Elektra was a total waste of time, the arc did nothing, went nowhere. boring, and wasted half the series. Punisher was far more interesting, they should have stuck with that instead of having two totally unconnected story lines running in parallel. Series One Fisk stole the show, amazing story and acting, overshadowed Daredevil himself. Series Two the Punisher overshadows him. I am starting to feel bad for him :p

[YorkNecromancer]

Finished season 2.

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Pros:

Punisher handled very well - Bernthal's performance is magnificent.
Contrast in Daredevil/Punisher combat styles as method of characterisation likewise excellently handled.
Fisk's episodes were superb; all the prison scenes were superb.
You could drop Murdock, have Karen Page and Foggy Nelson take over as protagonists and the series would be just as good.
Any time Punisher had a fight scene.
Punisher and Daredevil on a rooftop talking ethics.
The whole courtroom drama.
Young girl playing Elektra in flashback scenes was amazing. Only time I cared even slightly about the character.



Cons:

Elodie Yung cannot act.
Elektra is a boring character - comes off as a poor woman's Talia Al Ghul.
Not sure if The Hand is lazily racist 'yellow peril' archetype or not, but tending to think yes. Certainly they're boring as f**k.
The Hand's goals are so vague as to be infuriating. I ended the series with exactly as much idea about what they wanted/believed as I did going in. Their pursuit of Elektra was completely confusing. Did they want her because of powers, or because of hereditary leadership, or wh - actually, f**k it. I couldn't give a s**t why they did anything. Their plotline was confused, tedious, and derailed the whole season for me. Compare the nonsense of the Hand to the superlative build-up of Fisk in season 1, and there's no contest. Literally every moment the Hand were on screen I was bored. Including the fight scenes, which meant nothing, because I had no idea why they were happening, so they had no stakes.
Stick's constant harping on about a coming war. After the five thousandth time, I just wanted him to say between who and why. Once or twice, it's spooky and cryptic, but they just overused it, and without knowing the stakes, like the ninja fights, it just became tedious.
Claire Temple disappearing halfway through the season never to return.
No logical build up, foreshadowing or use of Chekov's Guns to the reveal of who was behind Punisher's family dying, turning what could have been an amazingly intense betrayal into an a**-pull.
After the glorious Fisk and terrifying Kilgrave, Nobu was a joke. He was precisely as interesting as "Thor 2"'s Malekith, which is to say, not at all. Malekith is the yardstick by which all lame villains should be measured, and Nobu is easily as boring. I really, really hope he stays dead.
Elodie Yung cannot act.
Elodie Yung and Charlie Cox have zero chemistry.
Murdock's arrogance is never once addressed. There are plenty of references to him being up on a cross, but his core harmartia - his almost solipsistic conviction that everything bad that happens is due to his actions, that disgustingly conceited, hubristic arrogance... No-one ever calls him on it. They call him on his martyr complex, and his jerkery, but never his world-shattering arrogance. And as a result, that flaw is never overcome, meaning that by the end of the season, Murdock just comes off like a jerkface.
Elektra's going to come back from the dead. No permadeath = no further stakes in any story, ever. You can't resurrect your characters if you want death to be more than a slap on the wrist. Granted, this is a poisonous habit inherited from the comics, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable. It was bad enough when they brought Coulson back; if they keep doing this, keep turning death into a minor inconvenience rather than the absolute cessation it is, well: where's the drama anymore? The road you go down is one where Emma Frost is talking to Cyclops, saying 'Really Scott, these re-runs of your grief must be getting tiresome by now', and when death is a joke, why bother with the stories?



Overall:
I wanted to like season 2, but mostly I was bored off my a**. The first few episodes were great - exactly as good as season 1 - but after Elektra showed up, all that went out the window in a mist of cod-philosophy, fights that meant precisely nothing and bad, confused storytelling.
If this had been the first season, I don't think I'd bother with the next. However, season 1 and 'Jessica Jones' lead me to believe that the problem is simply the Hand. Their arc was just The Worst. Hopefully, we won't have to put up with too much of them in future, and if we do, hopefully Fisk will have returned to make things significantly more interesting.

[eldargal]

I agree with a lot of what you said, but I thought Elodie Yung was excellent and had great chemistry with Murdock. The trouble was the plot was completely nonsensical, it feels like they imported Elektra's backstory from the comics, made it revolve even more around Murdock, and hoped for the best and it didn't work. Nobu sucked. Stick needs to die ASAP, he was irritating in season one he's grating as hell in season two.

The thing about Elektra is as I said they basically just regurgitated Elektra's origin in the comics, without taking into account the different context. So her dying and coming back is what happens in the comics, but its kind of silly on tv.
And Murdock was a real **** this season I was quite disappointed.

Punisher was well acted I'll give him that but I still don't find Angsty McManpain very interesting.

[YorkNecromancer]

I would agree his angst was tedious. I think that's a change from the comics they've made to make the character more 'sympathetic'. Punisher never feels the slightest manpain in Garth Ennis' seminal run on the character at all. The whole fridging of his family is discussed at length, and the conclusion Ennis' comics draws is that, ultimately, Frank Castle just likes being at war. All his family's death does is provide him with the excuse he needs for a war that can never end, because the moral absolutism he follows demands that he ultimately be 'heroic', so he can stay in denial about the fact that he's a complete monster. Which he is.

Basically, to me, the appeal of the Punisher is that when he's done right, he's the Jason Voorhees of the Marvel universe. He's just this atrocity in human form who shows up, murders everything, and has to be managed by heroes who can't quite cope with him, mistaking his moral code for humanity. If the story is about his manpain, they're kind of doing him wrong, because all he is is a really competent murderer, who does not stop ever, and cannot be reasoned with because he's completely insane, and absolutely certain of his convictions. Not to mention, he's not empowered like anyone else in the Marvel universe; his powers are relentlessness and good planning. He's not faster or stronger or tougher than anyone else; he's a tactician and a strategist, and because he's in a state of constant warfare, he's really, really good at both. Given that his goals are so small and simple (kill bad guys efficiently), he's incredibly hard to act against, because he doesn't have grand, overly complex schemes. The key to defeating him, is catching him unprepared, which is something that should be very difficult to do indeed, because he's so crazy paranoid. He's essentially a more honest Batman; a Batman without the privilege of phenomenal wealth, where it is finally acknowledged that, yes, being Batman is really, really immoral. Maybe a satisfying power fantasy, but ultimately, wrong. And antivillain, not an antihero.

As for Elodie Yung, I found her intensely grating. Everything about her left me screaming for the moment when she'd be off screen. Elektra's never been a character I've been terribly interested in; she seemed too close in conception to those wretched 'Lady Death'-style 90's bad girl cheesecake heroines to me, and unlike Punisher, she was never really rescued from that nineties antihero bulls**t. I was hoping the series would turn me around but the only time her arc interested me was when they had the younger actress playing her. I don't know who the young lady was, but in five minutes she did more emoting than Yung managed in five hours.

Maybe season 3 will turn things around, but at this stage, I never want to see anything Elektra-related again. Especially with the resurrection bulls**t.

And Nobu sucked harder than anything I have ever seen in the MCU. Just a horrible, boring character: the X-Pac of the MCU.

[Kirsten]

Nobu and The Hand were just utterly bizarre. One minute they are desperate for Elektra to join them, the next they are happily attacking her. Given that they are one of those cults that happily die for the cause, attacking her when she changes her mind seems silly. why not just let her go, or try and restrain her? the build up sucked, and when it came it was just 'you must lead us' and then 'no? oh ok, back to killing each other'. Stick was the same, he keeps bringing up the war and refusing to answer any questions, but really it is just a long running battle between him and the hand. there isn't really anything special about it, and they just fight each other in the background of everyday life with seemingly very little stakes for anybody. would it matter at all if Daredevil didn't help? hard to imagine so.

[YorkNecromancer]

The Hand's entire motivation can be summarised as 'give Daredevil and Elektra people to fight'. They literally do NOTHING ELSE but this, all through season 2. There's no story arc there; just Daredevil and Elektra finding a bunch of random crap and having to fight random ninjas with nothing at stake and no consequences.

The Hand arc is f**king crap from start to finish.

[Kirsten]

it does seem to be a war so secret even Stick and the Hand hardly know it is going on, or why. I suspect that is why he never answers anybody. Also, do you think the Hand refer to their missions as Hand Jobs?

[Kaptain Badrukk]

it does seem to be a war so secret even Stick and the Hand hardly know it is going on, or why. I suspect that is why he never answers anybody. Also, do you think the Hand refer to their missions as Hand Jobs?

That's freakin' awesome!

Castle as much as admits that he was a monster, and love (or the closest equivalent he could feel) for his family was all that was holdibg him back. With them gone he's free to be what he is, rather than his angst over their deaths driving him. At least that's how I read his dialogue. Still, I've got a couple of episodes to go.

[Kirsten]

hehe, thanks