By KYLIE POWERS
Staff Writer
Last Saturday, at New York Comic Con, Marvel released the trailer for the popular and acclaimed superhero Netflix series, “Daredevil,” as it will be getting a second season.
Fans and critics alike have been praising the show since its release in the US and on Netflix this past April. The show is based on the Stan Lee-created comic of the same name, which follows Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, who fights crime as the vigilante hero Daredevil at night.
Season 1 of the show has received spectacular reviews, considering “Daredevil” isn’t the most well-known Marvel hero compared the likes of Captain America or the Hulk. The show currently has a 98 percent certified fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96 percent audience score on the same site for the first season.
As for the current Youtube-avaliable trailer released two days ago, it shows clips of the last season with a few winks to the Marvel fans as to what’s to come in season two.
Charlie Cox will reprise his role as Matt Murdock, along with returning cast members Elden Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, and Rosario Dawson. As the trailer hints to Woll’s character Karen holding a photo of the Punisher logo in alarm, comic book fans were probably elated. It’s confirmed Jon Bernthal will be playing The Punisher, another famous Marvel anti-hero and vigilante who became popular in the comics, in the next season.
Also included in the trailer is a hint of Eletktra, played by Elodie Yung, a female assassin and sometimes-love interest to Murdock. A quick shot of her is seen as she ties on a red bandana in the trailer.
According to screenrant.com, Marvel is already in production for Season 2 with ABC studios and the show will stream on Netflix in 2016. Show runners and creative writers Doug Petrie (one of the writers of “American Horror Story”) and Marco Ramirez (former writer on the “Sons of Anarchy” staff) are also returning.
I would like to say I’m a committed Marvel fan, but I am strictly saying only the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), as until recently I never had the opportunity to begin reading any comics. The past few years, having a big budget action film to look forward to like “The Avengers” or “Guardians of the Galaxy” every few months has been a real treat as a film enthusiast. Marvel’s “Daredevil” continues this excellence in storytelling and in execution on the small screen, but not for the same reasons other Marvel products work on the big screen.
Coming across the show this past June after hearing the buzz about it, I have been Netflixing the show on and off all summer and had just finished the finale of season one a few days before I saw the trailer of season two.
However, this excellent show wouldn’t fade from my mind even if I hadn’t seen any clips of it in months. There are so many unique, well-produced aspects of this show that differentiates it from its MCU family members or even the likes of other superhero shows right now like “Gotham,” “The Flash,” or “Arrow.”
First, “Daredevil” is known for its creative, well-choreographed, and ingeniously-shot action sequences, as Matt Murdock backflips and throws punches against sometimes a dozen henchmen and crooks.
The show particularly gained fame from a scene from episode two where our hero fights off an entire hallway of assailants while the camera remains in one shot, never cutting the footage. As part of the action genre, where jump cuts and shaky cam complaints have been present recently, this has been cited of one of the best-shot action scenes in years.
The action is incredible, but also hyper-realistic and not pretty. Matt Murdock has no supersuit or healing abilities, so when he gets cut up in a fight, the camera lingers on every bloody stitched-up scar the next morning. Not to be crude, but I will never forget: I knew this show was something intensely different after a scene in which main villain Wilson Fisk (played chillingly throughout the series by Vincent D’Onofrio) busts a man’s head open with his car door.
It made my friend who I was watching it with at the time and I do a double take and wince as I hid my eyes on the couch. It’s a risk on Marvel’s part, I believe, because you won’t see something like that in a more PG or PG-13-oriented Captain America movie. I don’t endorse random violence in any media for the sake of shock value.
But this kind of gruesomeness makes sense, not only considering on Netflix you can get away with showing this, as opposed to a primetime show, but also considering how they set up Hell’s Kitchen in the series and the context of the plot and characters. The writing makes up for the occasional gore, as Fisk’s speech relating to the Good Samaritan parable and its context of the finale is one of my favorite scenes.
Speaking of characters, of course, you can’t have a villain as controlling and sinister as someone who does something like that without the likable hero and his friends. The cast has amazing chemistry and the characters feel real and not always likable in their decisions, but they are relatable.
The chemistry between Matt and his friends/co-workers Foggy and Karen is interesting to watch, as they all crack one liners but still have moments to let the serious repercussions of the plot affect them. Thanks to the snappy writing, there’s time between the mob talk and the bloody mano y mano battles to have unforgettable, sometimes tongue in cheek dialogue pieces.
One of my favorites? The character Claire notes, upon meeting the masked Daredevil for one of the first few times that he can take “an unbelievable amount of punishment without one damn complaint.” Murdock, seen in the first episode in confession with a priest, quips, “That last part’s just Catholicism.”
This well-made show stands out as a tiny, dark, yet well-thought-out island in a sea of Marvel sequels and big budget endeavors. What makes me, as a fan, most excited to see in Season 2 is the fact that they are incorporating the consequences of the last two to three episodes, and Murdock isn’t just fighting the Kingpin or something similar to him again.
Hopefully, if my assumptions of the trailer are correct, that idea of the characters’ owning up to prior actions is best exemplified in how part of the season two trailer opens. Matt, talking to the same priest, asks him why he still feels guilty for being a vigilante. The priest replies guilt can be a cause to action, for work is not yet finished. Sure enough, the fans of Marvel and “Daredevil” are more than glad the Devil of Hell’s kitchen is not yet finished either.
