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Daredevil

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay

TV Series Review

The big city can be a dark place. Crime hides in shadows, blood pools in dim corners. Black-hearted thugs stalk the streets, snuffing out whatever light and life they find.

Matt Murdock sees through this darkness as well as anyone, but it holds little fear for him even as he hears the fatal footfalls and smells the stench of evil deeds. He’s blind. He’s been so since he was 9. And when night falls across the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, Matt pulls on a cowl and dives into the darkness.

Finding Light in Darkness

Marvel’s Daredevil is a strange superhero. He has no real superpowers to speak of and, unlike Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, doesn’t have the cash to buy them. The thing that enables him is the very thing most people would call a disability.

“I’d give anything to see the sky one more time,” he admits. But in losing his eyesight, Murdock’s other senses grew far more acute: He’s eerily adept at deciphering sound as it bounces off a concrete wall or feeling the vibrations in the asphalt. His reflexes are lightning quick, and he has wicked anticipatory skills.

Daredevil shares little DNA with the colorful big-screen Marvel romps we’ve grown accustomed to over the last several years. While movies based on Marvel’s many Avengers have been violent, the mayhem is rarely accompanied by unseemly levels of gore. Heroes and villains alike are Technicolored wonders, cracking wise when they’re not bouncing off buildings. Those movies are made to be fun—adrenaline-charged popcorn munchers.

Not so Daredevil. Even as a character, Daredevil shares little in common with sincere Thor or do-gooder Captain America. This daytime lawyer, nighttime vigilante is a brooder—a blind Batman without even as much empathy as the Dark Knight displays.

Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight recalled for Rolling Stone a moment in a 1982 issue of the Daredevil comic when the hero tangles with a notorious bad’ un named Bullseye—dangling the villain by the hand far above the city. “And then he decides to let him go,” DeKnight said. “Daredevil drops him to his death—or what he thinks is his death—because he doesn’t ever want this guy to kill again. … When we started working on our show, that scene from the comics kept coming up. We all thought, this is a hero who is one bad day away from permanently crossing a line.”

Finding Darkness in Light

Daredevil’s personal darkness comes out in the very first episode, as he sits in a confessional and tells the priest about how his father, a boxer, would sometimes “let the devil out” on his opponents—the same devil that Matt knows he has inside him. “I’m not seeking penance for what I’ve done, father,” he says. “I’m asking forgiveness … for what I’m about to do.”

The show’s spiritual underpinnings have only grown with time. The conflicted vigilante is more conflicted than ever in Season Three, questioning the faith he felt redeemed his dark deeds. Daredevil is more devil than ever, at least for a time. But the show suggests that perhaps there’s some light in there yet—that Daredevil’s God lingers still.

But if Daredevil is a light in the darkness of Hell’s Kitchen, he’s a dim light in a dark, dark space. It’s reflected in the show itself—all deep shadows illuminated only by furtively flashing signs and flickering streetlights. It’s never quite dark enough to hide the copious amounts of blood that are shed. People kill and die on a regular basis—not as they would in a PG-13 Marvel romp, but as on any number of other TV-MA-rated cable dramas. Language is an issue as well, with the s-word usually serving as the interjection of choice.

Consequences, though, are on display here in a way they’re not in those Marvel movies. And as mentioned above, Daredevil seems determined to deal with some pretty interesting spiritual elements.

Interesting doesn’t always equate to spiritually or morally beneficial, of course. And artistically satisfying doesn’t mean a marvelous walk in the park.

Episode Reviews

Oct. 19, 2018: “Resurrection”

After events of Netflix’s The Defenders series, Daredevil has gone missing, and most of his friends presume him dead. Instead, the building that fell on him almost literally flushes him out of its system, and Matt Murdock finds himself under the care of the nuns who raised him as a blind orphan boy. But even though his body is healing, Matt’s abilities are taking longer to regenerate—and his faith is in dire straits, too.

Matt compares himself to the biblical character Job: “I gave my sweat and blood and skin without complaint because I, too, believed that I was God’s soldier,” he says. “Well, not anymore. I am what I do in the dark now. I bleed only for myself.”

Sister Maggie, Matt’s no-nonsense caretaker, pushes back against Matt’s rejection of his faith: “You may hate God right now, but the feeling is not mutual,” she tells him. The two continue to joust theologically throughout the episode. “Thank you for your charmingly simplistic view of God and the world,” Matt tells her. “I’ve been a nun for 30 years,” she retorts. “I know self-pity when I hear it.” Finally, after offering Matt her own necklace with a cross on it several times only to be rejected, she hangs it around his neck anyway. “Did your head spin around?” she asks. “Then wear it for me.”

Maggie gives him a “hot toddy” alcoholic drink, and Matt suggests she’s had some liquor, too. She gives him pills, and Matt quips that “pills and liquor” are “modern medicine at its finest.” (“If you want modern medicine, doors are straight ahead,” Maggie says.) Other people pour drinks in flashback.

We see Matt shirtless. In flashback, he kisses someone. We also see him fight—first with a boxer in a supervised bout (which leaves Matt bleeding on the ground), then with a couple of thugs who eventually beat the tar out of the recovering superhero and nearly kill him. Matt struggles with the aftereffects of some terrible injuries throughout most of the episode, and at one juncture he spits out what appears to be coagulated blood.

Spiritual references abound, from conversations to references to communion to the church’s décor (including angelic statues and stained glass windows of saints). Matt hears an Islamic call to prayer: Father Lantom, his regular priest, says neighborhood Muslims are using his church as a meeting place while their mosque has its pipes repaired.

Characters say the s-word at least seven times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “p-ss” and “p—y” (the last in reference to Job). God’s name is misused once.

Daredevil: Mar. 18, 2016 “Bang”

Wilson Fisk, the Big Bad of Season 1, is gone now, but the vacuum he left behind has drawn in all manner of criminals looking to make a buck: bikers, gangsters, even the Mexican drug cartels are hoping to move in. But all are running scared from a strange new character in town—a man with as much killing power as a military brigade.

That man guns down more than a dozen Irish thugs in a vicious shootout, coating surfaces in blood and bodies. The camera peers through a bloody, gory bullet hole, and we see that one of the victim’s hands has been blown off. When Daredevil catches up with the evildoer, the two have a frenetic fight (Daredevil spitting blood on the ground) before the guy shoots Daredevil in the head. “Bang,” he says, as Murdock tumbles off a building.

Someone shoots a cop. Bad guys are beaten up very, very badly. A weapons dealer has a car trunk slammed on his hand. Grotesque and sometimes sliced open corpses (and also one guy who’s still alive) hang from hooks.

Murdock and his friends drink beer at a bar. They, and others, say the s-word about 15 times, along with “h—,” “a–,” “p—,” “d–n” and various crude references to body parts. God’s name is twice linked to “d–n,” and Jesus’ name is abused once.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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