If you’d already seen Batman Begins and the first season of Arrow, the first season of Netflix’s Daredevil probably seemed awfully familiar. That’s not to say it ripped off Batman Begins, an Arrow speciality. It’s more that the origin story of a dark and brooding vigilante is well-covered cinematic territory at this point. As such, it was easy to write off Daredevil as being the type of thing you’d already seen before.
Then you got a glimpse of that amazing hallway fight scene. You met Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, and couldn’t figure it out if his weird, hushed speech pattern made him all the more fascinating or oddly distracting. You marveled that the freedom a Netflix series allowed them to devote an entire episode to Matt Murdock licking his wounds and recovering from an epic beatdown. You realized that even thinking of comparing Daredevil to Arrow did it a disservice, and remembered that dark and brooding vigilante stories can still fascinate if they’re well-told with some new wrinkles, ie., the extreme violence, Matt’s Catholic guilt.
Is it totally obvious that when I said “you” in the above paragraph I was really referring to myself, describing my on experience with the first season? If that wasn’t obvious before, it probably should be now since I just pointed it out.
Similarly, there is an element of this new trailer for season 2 which seems, again, like familiar territory. It’s all about the rise of The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) in Hell’s Kitchen, and how he represents the line Daredevil is unwilling to cross. The vigilante giving rise to more violent, less principled imitators recalls Batman’s first scene in The Dark Knight or the on-going Huntress arc on Arrow, providing a check on the hero’s moral code. It feels like material which has been touched upon before, but never like this.
That, of course, is only part of the new season since in addition to The Punisher we’ll get Elektra (Elodie Yung). We’ll get a trailer all about her later this month. For now, enjoy this Punisher-specific trailer:
The second season of Daredevil drops on Netflix on March 18th.
Source: Collider
