I claimed that Alice Eve as Typhoid Mary in Iron Fist Season 2 could possibly match up to Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin/Wilson Fisk in Daredevil. Who wants to come smack some sense into me?
Daredevil Season 3 brings Matt Murdock back from the deathly grips of the Midland Circle building we left him under at the end of The Defenders. He returns a broken man no longer certain of his purpose in Hell’s Kitchen. But when Wilson Fisk brokers a deal with the FBI to get him out of prison, Matt completely throws away his identity to fully embrace the Devil of Hell’s kitchen in order to find a way to put Fisk down once and for all.
When you look at all the seasons of Daredevil, you can’t help but wonder where all the amazing talent, writing, and directing goes for the other Marvel/Netflix series (sans Punisher). Each season is progressively better, darker, more gripping, and generates some of the best performances to come out of Netflix to date. Everything about Season 3 takes what we loved about the previous two and brings it to its full potential.
The action has never been better. At first it was a hallway. Then it was a staircase. Now it’s a whole damn 11-minute straight action sequence without a cut in a prison that will take your entire soul out of your body so you could watch yourself stare into the oblivion of chaos that doesn’t ever seem like it will end until it actually does and you return to your body and realized you haven’t breathed the entire time you were watching this amazing tracking shot that went as long as this sentence. All the action takes deep consideration of the little details. Such as the fact that Matt and his dad are boxers, so when he is too tired to keep up with the endless fighting, he starts throwing sluggish haymakers. Or how they make a comic book panel come to life to give fans a realistic Daredevil vs. Bullseye fight, complete with pencils and scissors and staplers being used as lethal projectiles. This mixture of grit and fantasy is blended to perfection without making a farce of its source material.
The choices the individual directors make create attention-grabbing new ways to present comic-book conventions. From an art house feature to a dramatic thriller, the often-lackluster mid-season expositions are presented in refreshing new ways which connect the audience to old and new characters. Characters whose performances are the icing to a magnificent cake. Wilson Bethel makes creepy look empathetic as Ben "Dex" Poindexter a.k.a. Bullseye, showing a range previously unthought of since his Heart of Dixie days. Jay Ali is tragic and heartbreaking as FBI Agent Ray Nadeem. Deborah Ann Woll has matured Karen Page into as menacing and ruthless a protagonist as you can get, and Elden Henson is her perfect counterpart as the forever-optimistic Foggy Nelson. Yet, Season 3 is defined by the Fisk-Murdoch dynamic. Charlie Cox’s performance is a gut punch to the stomach. His eyes alone convey the ire Matt has held within for three seasons. But no one holds a candle to the tour de force that is Vincent D’Onofrio. He embodies the intimidation and intelligence that is Wilson Fisk. His calm rage plays on the screen like a quiet storm that is ready to erupt at any moment, and then does to blood curling effect. D’Onofrio should already have an Emmy nomination for this role, and he proves again that he will deserve one this upcoming awards season.
Daredevil Season 3 is a dark, pulse-pounding comic book lover’s dream. The mixture of groundedness and superhero standard is married effortlessly to give the audience one of the best shows on all of television right now, streaming or otherwise. Driven by amazing performances and artful direction, Season 3 is the reason Marvel will not be going anywhere as a studio anytime soon. I am giving Season 3 of Daredevil 9/10 Blue Raja fork throws from Mystery Men (I swear Bullseye gave me Hank Azaria vibes a couple of times).