Daredevil’s Season 3 on Netflix has a lot to offer, despite some early warning signs suggesting it might be overly political. The overall plotline involves the return of Wilson Fisk (now openly known as the Kingpin), and Daredevil’s attempts to keep him from regaining control of the city’s criminal underworld. We have an excellent guest villain from Daredevil’s rogues’ gallery, and there are many well-done and subtle callbacks to that character’s earlier appearances in all formats. We get a bit more backstory for Karen Page, which is interesting but awkwardly inserted. We get some significant revelations for Matt Murdock himself.
I had been expecting to see one of the characters from Iron Fist Season 2 make a followup appearance here, as that character is also prominent in Daredevil’s rogues’ gallery, but that was not the case. I remain hopeful that the introduction of that character means she will appear in later seasons.
This is a classic Daredevil story, and the series remains the best of the Netflix Marvel licenses, precisely, I think, because they are human stories. Matt Murdock is a human being, an exceptional one to be sure, facing superhuman problems. He makes moral choices and then agonizes over whether he made the right ones. His friends want to help, and do, even when it puts them at risk. He needs their help, and the help of others, to succeed. There’s no superhuman trump card.
Unfortunately, there is a flaw in the ointment. The solution at the end of the season may not be a supernatural Deus Ex Machina, but it feels a bit like a human one, or perhaps half of one. Still, it’s thematically appropriate, so not awful.
We did also get a delightfully unexpected hint at the identify of another member of Daredevil’s classic rogues’ gallery, and that is not a bad tradeoff at all.
