I hate to say this, but most action-adventure TV series just aren’t that good. They tend to concentrate on the action first and the characters second, and to be honest these days I find most action scenes pretty boring. They’re so highly choreographed to be almost like a dance, everything’s so controlled it’s too ridged to be realistic.
And that’s where I thought the Netflix TV series Daredevil was headed. I figured that it would devolve into a traditional action show after a couple of seasons where there are lots of punches and not a lot of real character development, mostly because where else is there to go with a character like Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox) after 20+ hours of story? Which is the time when most similar shows start repeating themselves, treading over story ground they already went over before since they can’t find anywhere else to go.
Yet somehow the latest third season of Daredevil was the best yet, and I think part of the reason for that was the writers of the show decided to push back the character of Daredevil a bit and bring forward the show’s strong supporting cast.
In any other similar show characters like Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) would simply exist to keep the main story moving along. In the third season of Daredevil they were very important and had entire episodes dedicated to them.
I think I learned more about Foggy and Karen in the third season of Daredevil than the two previous ones combined.
And let’s not forget about the bad-guys either.
This season marked the return of Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) as the main baddie with new character Benjamin ‘Dex’ Poindexter/Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). While we didn’t get a deep a dive into the character of Kingpin as everyone else this season, admittedly there was a lot of backstory for his character in the first, we did get a surprising amount of development for Bullseye.
In most shows a villain like Bullseye would show up now and then, cause chaos until he disappeared for a while before popping up again. Those characters exist simply to shake things up — they’re not developed, they’re devices to move the plot forward. Not on the third season of Daredevil where Bullseye was a fully fleshed character, with a backstory and even an episode of his own. He had so much backstory that he seemed less like a traditional villain and more of a tragic figure bent to Fisk’s will in doing bad.
Which was pretty cool. On the one hand Bullseye is murderer who’s trying to destroy Matt Murdock/Daredevil. On the other hand he’s mentally disturbed and is being turned by Fisk into this assassin.
The absolute worst part about the third season of Daredevil was that a few weeks ago Netflix announced they were cancelling it and that this third season would be Daredevil’s last outing on the service.
It’s hard to tell exactly what people are watching on the streamer since Netflix doesn’t release any numbers of who’s watching what, but Daredevil, which was one of the second wave of original programming for them, was from all appearances one of the “hits” for Netflix. Which made it all the more strange that they decided to cancel it?
Over the last few months other Netflix Marvel series like Iron Fist and Luke Cage were also cancelled, but the feeling with those were that they were axed because of low viewership. However with Daredevil that reason didn’t make sense since it’s a show people seem to be watching and enjoying while also giving it a lot of good word of mouth online.
So why was Daredevil canceled? I have one word for you, greed.
Decades ago before Marvel was in the business of making billion dollar movies and well before it was a Disney property, they licensed many of their characters from the X-Men to Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four to other companies who were interested in creating films of those superhero characters. At the time Marvel had no way of their own to make movies, and I’m assuming no desire either back then, so that were left to others. But in the 2000s as Marvel began producing movies they had to go to their superhero “B” list since all of their “A” characters had been licensed out already. Because Marvel did such a good job at their movies those “B” characters became “A” and it seems as if everyone was happy.
But over the last few years there were rumblings that Disney, now the owner of Marvel, was investing heavily in order to create their own streaming TV service which was recently announced as Disney+. This would be the one place for all sorts of Disney content, everything from Marvel to Star Wars, which they also own too. Disney would also be creating original content for their service which would be in direct competition to places like Netflix. The same Netflix who up until recently was running a total of four Marvel superhero TV shows.
I don’t think that Disney/Marvel wants the competition from its own characters on other streaming services and they also want to have the opportunity to have their own Daredevil, Iron Fist or Luke Cage shows in the future. That’s why Daredevil was cancelled on Netflix. Not because no one was watching the show, quite contrary. Because Marvel doesn’t want people watching their characters on other streamers people are watching that might affect the viability of their own service. So I would assume they made it so painful for Netflix to run another season of those shows they had no other choice but to cancel future seasons from the service.
Now Marvel and Disney have said that Daredevil will be coming back but that remains to be seen. Perhaps it will but certainly not by the end of 2019 since the Disney+ service isn’t slated to start running until the end of next year and they already have quite a few high profile Star Wars and Marvel series mapped out on the network in the near-term, none of which is Daredevil. And there’s even been reports that contractually Marvel can’t make a TV series based off of any of the ones that were on Netflix for at least two years after those shows were cancelled. Which if true that would mean they wouldn’t be able to return until late 2021 at the earliest.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Marvel does bring back Daredevil to the small or big screen at some point. He’s a great character who can work in on the small or big-screen, even if the early 2000s Daredevil movie was crud. But either way if Disney brings Daredevil back as some TV series or film it will be different than the Netflix version. It would be much easier for them to simply “reboot” the character from scratch than try and retcon the Netflix Daredevil mythos into the current Marvel mythos they now have running.
The loss of Daredevil hurts, but what’s going to absolutely smart is the loss of Punisher too, another Netflix series based off a Marvel character, which is surly coming after that show debuts sometime in 2019.
He’s one of my favorite characters and up until the Netflix version no one was quite able to crack him outside the comics — I know, I’ve seen all three of the Punisher movies. I think Netflix allowed Punisher to be Punisher, a man so affected by the loss of his family he’s gone on a suicidal run in order to bring down the criminal elements responsible for their murders.
The Netflix Punisher is messy and gory and violent, all things that are outside the Marvel brand that is a lot more cartoony and family friendly than the Netflix shows were, especially Punisher. If I can see the possibility of Daredevil on either the Disney+ streaming service or a movie, I can’t see the same for Punisher. He’s too murderous for family friendly Disney.
Then again maybe that’s how Punisher will be spared cancellation from Netflix? Perhaps Disney will realize that just because Netflix is running a series about a superhero they own it’s not too bad since they wouldn’t be able to do anything with the character themselves? That by keeping him on Netflix not only adds a few dollars to Disney’s bottom line, it also keeps the character in the public eye instead of rotting away unseen.
Ahh, who am I kidding? Expect both Punisher and Jessica Jones, another Netflix Marvel show, to be cancelled because of Disney’s greed a few weeks after their new seasons start only to disappear into the “Disney Vault” never to be seen again.
