Minor spoilers for "Hawkeye" and "Spider Man: No Way Home" ahead.
The latest MCU series, "Daredevil," has popped up on Netflix, probably because this series is much more violent and adult than the projects that have premiered on Disney+. This is clearly an experiment for Marvel, as the show has none of the big budget resources of the other MCU shows, and even uses different branding and logos. Created by Drew Goddard, it takes a much more gritty, grounded approach to a superhero property, built around the character of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), the blind lawyer who was introduced in "Spider Man: No Way Home."
Murdock, who was blinded as a child and gained superpowers, is devoted to making a difference in crime-riddled Hell's Kitchen. By day, he and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), are do-gooder lawyers trying to keep their tiny practice afloat, with the help of new Girl Friday receptionist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). By night, Matt is a masked vigilante, just starting out, who uses his super hearing and fighting skills to stop local gangsters and other criminals. Crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), originally a Spider-man villain, and recently seen in "Hawkeye," is being set up as the main villain. The "Daredevil" version is much more brutal, but also a more well-rounded character with many shades of gray. The two episodes he's appeared in so far show him romancing a lovely woman named Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer). Matt is also helped out by a nurse named Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who fishes him out of a dumpster in the second episode, and patches him up regularly.
Everything about "Daredevil" feels much more grown-up than any of the other MCU projects so far, because it exists in a much grimmer universe where everything seems to be stacked against the good guys. I like how it's so stripped down, feeling very much like a typical network crime procedural rather than a superhero show in a more heightened reality. There are no fancy costumes, few special effects, and even the showy fight scenes are impressive for their realism rather than any fancy choreography. This version of Matt Murdock doesn't have super strength and gets beat up a lot. Initially, I was worried about the higher episode count - this is a thirteen episode season - but "Daredevil" is making good use of its length, setting up its characters and multiple interesting subplots. This isn't a show where there's any assumption that you already know the characters, and it's good to just spend time with Foggy and Karen, who are revealed to be real people instead of just comic relief. The usual MCU habit of dropping references and easter eggs everywhere has been mercifully curbed.
"Daredevil" highlights how formulaic the MCU has gotten, and it makes me wonder what some of its other recent entries would have looked like if various creators had let themselves take their own concepts more seriously. Would "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" have been better with a higher episode count, fewer guest stars, and fewer ridiculous action scenes? Would I have liked "Loki" more if it had cut down the amount of snarky quips and crazy characters, and just committed to being a character study of a morally complicated villain? Clearly the "Daredevil" approach wouldn't work for every corner of the MCU, but it's almost shocking how well developed characters like Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk are, after relatively little screen time, compared to someone like Doctor Strange, who doesn't even seem to have completed his initial origin story arc yet.
If you remember the 2003 "Daredevil" movie with Ben Affleck, the show is so different as to be almost unrecognizable. Instead, Goddard and company are clearly drawing more from the Frank Miller "Daredevil" comics and various recent "Batman" adaptations showing Bruce Wayne in the early days, before the Rogues' Gallery and the wonderful toys. The impulse to go back to basics has yielded great results here, and I hope we'll see it reflected in more Marvel media to come.
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