Marvel's Daredevil (Netflix)

[Silver Nemesis]

In a since deleted Tweet, Netflix Thailand appear to have leaked the release date as October 19th, which is one week after the review embargo ends (October 12th).

So that's a little over five weeks from now.

[Silver Nemesis]

[thecolorsblend]

It's getting a little absurd. If October 19th is the day, they now have less than a month to promote it.

I guess it doesn't matter though. Daredevil seems to be the most popular Netflixverse show so maybe the hype builds itself now.

[Silver Nemesis]

October 19th confirmed!

And here's the new teaser.

Gothic visuals...

...white suit Kingpin...

...coming out four weeks tomorrow!

[thecolorsblend]

Four weeks and a day.

It's about freaking time. The tone of that teaser could be hinting at Murdock embracing a darker side this season. And considering what he's been through "lately" (eg, the last four years, including two years of waiting), it's understandable that he'd be in a bad mood. But then, Defenders suggested that we'd be in a for a quasi-Born Again storyline. So hmm.

This could go either way.

[Silver Nemesis]

Born Again would appear to be the main comic influence, as Charlie Cox confirms in this clip.

There are rumours that season 3 will also incorporate elements of Guardian Devil and The Murdock Papers. The Guardian Devil influence is effectively confirmed in the following image released by Entertainment Weekly.

Either that or they're paying homage to the opening scene of the 2003 film.

Showrunner Erik Oleson has spoken to EW about the new season:

"Matt starts the season broken physically, broken emotionally, and broken spiritually. He's angry at God, he's angry at the fact that he had risked his life to do God's work, and he's questioning whether or not he was a fool.

Matt goes to pretty much the darkest place you can. When he realizes that he's incapable of being Daredevil, he would rather just end it than go forward in his life without abilities. He's decided to set aside his Matt Murdock persona and just be the Devil, to isolate the lighter part of himself."

Here's a new image depicting the reunion of Matt and Foggy.

Oleson commented on this relationship in the EW interview:

"Foggy has been trying to move on from Matt's memory, or at least move on with his life. If you thought one of your close friends was dead and he decided not to tell you he survived, you would probably have some issues with that."

The article also includes the following descriptions of three new characters.

Sister Maggie: "a tough, Hell's Kitchen-born-and-bred nun."

FBI Agent Ray: "carries the heart of the season."

Wilson Bethel's character: "a psychologically tortured FBI sharpshooter [who] could teeter towards good or towards evil, depending on who is manipulating or inspiring him."

I wonder who that last character might be...

Oleson made the following remarks concerning Fisk:

"Fisk has gotten smarter, more calculated, and more manipulative. I very much wanted to tell a story that's relevant to the world around us. I looked at the show as a way to examine how tyrants manipulate in order to push their own agenda and cause fear and distrust."

He also addressed the difficulties in picking up where The Defenders left off:

"I came in with a pitch that took pieces of some of my favorite comic book runs, that told a larger story, and I was expecting to get more pushback, but Marvel was incredibly excited about the storyline. They let me tell the story I wanted to tell.... I wasn't sure, given the events of Defenders, how much freedom I would have, and I ended up getting complete freedom."

Jeph Loeb pitched in with the following:

"Our first problem in front of us was that Matt Murdock was dead, so how are we going to fix that in a way that didn't feel like it's been done before? So when we first sat down with Erik, we had a fairly good idea as to what we wanted to tackle in terms of story, and then Erik had a great deal of freedom with where he was going to take that story.... [Season 3] goes very much back to the world of the crime story. This will be a very memorable season."

You can read the full EW article here: https://ew.com/tv/2018/09/21/daredevil-season-3-photos-showrunner-interview/

Meanwhile JoBlo.com editor-in-chief Paul Shirey has shared his thoughts on the first six episodes.

Four weeks today!

[thecolorsblend]

There are rumours that season 3 will also incorporate elements of Guardian Devil and The Murdock Papers. The Guardian Devil influence is effectively confirmed in the following image released by Entertainment Weekly.

And...

Wilson Bethel's character: "a psychologically tortured FBI sharpshooter [who] could teeter towards good or towards evil, depending on who is manipulating or inspiring him."

I wonder who that last character might be...

And...

Matt goes to pretty much the darkest place you can. When he realizes that he's incapable of being Daredevil, he would rather just end it than go forward in his life without abilities. He's decided to set aside his Matt Murdock persona and just be the Devil, to isolate the lighter part of himself."

These factors go a long way toward supporting your theory about Karen Page's fate at the hands of Bullseye.

And from a narrative standpoint, if Karen kicks the bucket before the end of episode 6, I could see why the reviewers who have seen those episodes are chomping at the bit to get more of the story. That development would go a long way toward pushing Murdock toward the darkness that the crew seem to want for the character this season.

It's enough to make me wonder what the better approach to the story might be. The death of Karen Page as Murdock's girlfriend is a certain type of gut-punch. But the death of Karen Page as Murdock's unrequited whatever is a different type of tragedy, if only because he'd spend the rest of his days (or at least a very long time) wondering what might have been.

So in a certain sense, there's arguably more drama for Netflix Matt to lose Karen than there was for comic book Matt. Because comic book Matt and comic book Karen had experienced their share of ups and downs. But in the main, they had a good run together while Netflix Matt and Netflix Karen have been more uneven and overall less intimate with each other. Losing Karen under these Netflix circumstances could be an even more shattering loss for Matt precisely because he will never experience the good times that comic book Matt and comic book Karen got to share and he knows it.

This could be an interesting development.

Fisk's role in all this is open to speculation. Since it looks like he'll be more Kingpin-esque this season, it's fair to suggest that he could be using Bullseye as a hit man to take out Daredevil. That much seems kind of obvious. But what I like about how it sounds like the issue will be handled in the show is Kingpin seducing Bullseye into embracing the darkness.

Fisk in the comics taints everything he touches. Netflix Fisk has a fairly positive vision for the city and uses horrible means to make it into reality. The idea of him abandoning even the superficial trappings of benevolent goals in favor of slowly poisoning someone and making that person his personal weapon is a powerful development for Fisk.

It also gives Matt an objective. A strange push-and-pull for Bullseye's soul carried by Murdock and Fisk is the stuff good drama is made of. And if Bullseye ultimately chooses the good this season (for the short term at least) (which could happen because Netflix) then Matt's arc could revolve around him questioning his own prospects for redemption.

Because if Bullseye can find his way back to the light, what does that suggest for Murdock?

Then again, I could be reading entirely too much into all this.

Either way, season 03 can't get here fast enough!

[The Laughing Fish]

I'm going to be cautious and not to get too overhyped for Season 3, because I haven't been too impressed with three out of the four Netflix Marvel shows last year. I thought the debut season of Luke Cage had a strong first half but then it quickly fell apart as soon as they killed off Copperhead and Diamondback wasn't anywhere near as good as the villain. Iron Fist was mediocre, and honestly, Defenders was a huge disappointment. The criticisms I had with DD Season 2 over its treatment of the Hand and Elektra only intensified in the crossover, and I wasn't too impressed with Murdock's apparent death in the end either. In my opinion, the Punisher show was the only show that stood out last year. I thought 2017 just wasn't a good year for Marvel, whether it's MCU or Netflix.

But while I've gotten tired of the MCU now, I haven't given up on Netflix yet. I've been catching up on the second season of Jessica Jones and I'm really enjoying it so far, and I still plan to watch the second seasons of both LC and IF, and of course, DD Season 3. I'm curious to see how it will deal with Matt's return and how it deals with Fisk suspicion of his alter ego as Daredevil, as he did in the second season. Fingers crossed.

[Silver Nemesis]

Here's another new pic.

Fisk's role in all this is open to speculation. Since it looks like he'll be more Kingpin-esque this season, it's fair to suggest that he could be using Bullseye as a hit man to take out Daredevil. That much seems kind of obvious. But what I like about how it sounds like the issue will be handled in the show is Kingpin seducing Bullseye into embracing the darkness.

It also gives Matt an objective. A strange push-and-pull for Bullseye's soul carried by Murdock and Fisk is the stuff good drama is made of. And if Bullseye ultimately chooses the good this season (for the short term at least) (which could happen because Netflix) then Matt's arc could revolve around him questioning his own prospects for redemption.

Because if Bullseye can find his way back to the light, what does that suggest for Murdock?

This aspect of the new season is particularly intriguing. Bullseye is not a complicated character in the comics and his origin story remains largely unconfirmed. There are conflicting reports that he killed his father, briefly played in the Major League and was once a Vietnam vet, mercenary or NSA agent, but there's never been a definitive concrete account of this sequence of events. The upside of this is that it gives the show's writers considerable leeway in how they depict his origins. An FBI sharpshooter would be consistent with the comics that have portrayed him as a government-trained killer gone rogue.

The "depending on who is manipulating or inspiring him" quote opens up some interesting possibilities. Did Daredevil inspire him? Does his obsession with Daredevil begin as admiration but then warp into something darker? Will he try to fill in for the absent Daredevil, similar to how Danny Rand did during Ed Brubaker's run? If Fisk is indeed responsible for manipulating him, then how does he go about doing this, and why? I think there are going to be some surprising twists here, even for us comic fans. As long as Bullseye ends up becoming the same coldblooded killer we all know and hate, then I'm happy for the writers to flesh out his origins and psychological profile a bit.

Fisk in the comics taints everything he touches. Netflix Fisk has a fairly positive vision for the city and uses horrible means to make it into reality. The idea of him abandoning even the superficial trappings of benevolent goals in favor of slowly poisoning someone and making that person his personal weapon is a powerful development for Fisk.

Right. Fisk was holding back in season 1 because of his self-deluding sense of moral righteousness. Now that he's come to accept himself as the villain of the story – "the ill intent" – he'll no longer be fettered by a misguided sense of heroism. He can now be as ruthless as he likes. I think he's also going to be more physically threatening this time around. In season 2 we saw him casually bench pressing 500 lbs in the prison gym. Charlie Cox has stated that Matt became stronger and better at fighting after battling the Hand, and I'm expecting Fisk's physical prowess to have also improved since their last encounter.

Either way, season 03 can't get here fast enough!

The first full trailer should be arriving very soon, but before it does I'd like to highlight one of the more interesting aspects of the season 3 marketing campaign. Over the past few months, the official Daredevil Twitter account has been posting cryptic hints about the new season in the form of Biblical references. I'll list them below along with the relevant Biblical passages.

"He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them."

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

learn to do good: seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plea for the widow.

He uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light.

But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.

but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

"See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.

The Book of Job is an appropriate point of reference for Born Again, as it deals with a good man whose faith is destroyed by suffering. But Job, like Murdock, ultimately has his faith restored and rewarded when he eventually learns to endure his suffering with grace. Although Born Again is an incredibly dark story, it's by no means nihilistic. Quite the opposite in fact. It has an uplifting ending where Matt, despite going through hell and losing his job, his money and his home, still manages to be happy. I hope the TV show gets this aspect of the story right. But it will obviously be harder to do that if Bullseye kills Karen, or if Fisk exposes Matt's secret identity and has him sent to jail.

Moving away from the TV show, writer Charles Soule is about to conclude his run on the Daredevil comics. I've enjoyed Soule's run immensely, but all good things must come to an end. Including, it would seem, Matt Murdock's life.

[Silver Nemesis]

A new teaser has been released.

Kingpin's white suit is too perfect for words. It's ripped straight out of the comics.

This show's willingness to embrace comic book iconography is one of the many reasons it stands head and shoulders above the rest of Marvel's Netflix content. I hope we'll get to see red suit Daredevil fight white suit Kingpin at some point; if not in this season, then in the next one.

Marvel have also released a new synopsis for season 3:

Missing for months, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) reemerges a broken man, putting into question his future as both vigilante Daredevil and lawyer Matthew Murdock. But when his archenemy Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) is released from prison, Matt must choose between hiding from the world or embracing his destiny as a hero.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the Biblical reference accompanying this new teaser is Daniel 9:5.

we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from thy commandments and ordinances;