The Defenders S01E08 Review: To Defend

The Defenders, Season 1, Episode 8: The Defenders

So, the Defenders finally come to a close, and I must say... it's uneven as all hell. It's nowhere as great as the best Netflix Marvel shows -- Daredevil's first season and Jessica Jones, and nowhere as the solid-if-not-novel Luke Cage. It's certainly better than the flop that was Iron Fist (and even made Danny Rand into a likable character while still keeping true to what his show established of him) so that puts it around the quality of Daredevil's second season. Uneven, has a lot of plot twists done for plot twist's sake, but there are so much great action scenes being thrown around, so much great moments and acting that you forgive the weaker parts of the show.

The actual episode mostly runs on action scenes in this final episode after a brief mission statement where Luke makes note that they will not kill unless necessary, and only bad guys at that. Matt does a mushy bit of "I'm glad I met all of you" which earns a gigantic eye-roll from Jessica... and the rest of the episode is just beat-em-up. There's honestly not much to say about it without breaking down every single fight scene, other than I find it pretty damn badass. There's just so many times you can do the whole "huge pan-around montage of all the Defenders fighting mooks", although Gao, Murakami and Elektra being thrown into the mix gives us a fair amount of sweet 'elites' for our heroes to toss around. I did find the sequence that starts without any actual background ambience and just hip hop in the background to be a bit jarring -- like, I know it's something associated with Luke Cage, but still.

The huge emotional components of the finale are the battle between Daredevil and Elektra, as Matt tries his hardest to get Elektra back into the light -- and it becomes increasingly clear that the new Elektra is revelling in being a villain. Meanwhile, on top, Colleen has to face her demons by distracting Bakuto and giving Claire time to arm the bomb, leading to a definitive and climactic battle between student and master. Misty shows up to save Colleen at one point, and gets her hand sliced off -- but Colleen beheads Bakuto, putting down the third and final member of the Five Fingers that are definitely killed. Colleen's character arc that ran across the Defenders has been a side-plot that I didn't quite realize I enjoyed very much, and she's basically taken up Stick's place as the unofficial fifth Defender, just one that fights in a different location than the other four. Now she just needs a cool codename.

Of course, during the course of the battle, during the absolutely tense elevator sequence, Danny and Luke manage to toss Murakami down the deep hole while Jessica holds up the lift with nothing but sheer strength (Bad. Ass.). We see Murakami impaled on a pile of metal, bleeding, as Madame Gao approaches and tells him that they've lost and this is the end... yet we never see Gao and Murakami actually die, and they are in a cave with the dragon bones that are apparently the source of the mysterious death-defying "substance", so it's honestly more surprising if Gao and Murakami were actually killed off. They did have to escape a building being dropped on them, but this is Marvel comics. Characters have survived more insane deaths. (Besides, Madame Gao walked off a point-blank iron fist punch after a brief moment of laying on the groud)

Daredevil, whispers to Iron Fist to "protect my city" as he stays behind to slow down Elektra, and finally embrace death together. Elektra's writing is a little too messy for my liking, with her apparently doing all this just so that she could either cheat death, or to die together with the man she loves. It's messy, but at least messy is a wod you could use to describe what Elektra's feeling at this point, and the final shot they share as they get ready for death in each other's arms is a neat conclusion to this chapter of their story. 

And while I never bought that they would kill off Daredevil, it was a pretty neat eulogy and closure to the Defenders. We see Matt, wounded, being nursed to health by some mysterious people at the end of the episode, whereas the final 15 minutes prior to it is a neat way of closing up outstanding plot points. Foggy is in severe mourning (his voice breaking as Luke asks him how he's dealing with Matt's death is amazingly acted) and not inconsiderable guilt considering he gave Matt the suit in the precinct, but he and Hogarth managed to pull some strings to make sure that all the police nonsense ends up being handwaved aside. We get Danny in a modernized version of his classic Iron Fist costume looming over New York City, embracing his new role as the replacement to Daredevil now that his fight against the Hand is done, Misty is recovering from losing an arm (no small part thanks to Danny owning the best hospital in New York), we get Luke and Jessica sharing a drink and noting that they really should take care of each other (even if Luke isn't willing to move forward considering he's still with Claire) before they end up like Matt, we get Luke and Claire settling in, we get Jessica and Malcolm finally re-opening Alias Investigations. It does get somewhat negated by the fact that Matt's actually still alive, but it does portray the gigantic loss that the Marvel universe is feeling now that Daredevil's thought to be dead. 

Speaking of dead, let's talk about Iron Fist a bit, a character who I've always felt to be problematic. It's never been actor Finn Jones's fault in my opinion, but the general writing in Iron Fist overall and the insistence on portraying Danny as naive, a bit of an asshole and consistently whining and moping. Here, Iron Fist drops off the latter two qualities after the first few episodes. He's still naive, still a bit of dumb brick despite his noble intentions, but he doesn't mope and whine as much as before, and certainly doesn't do any of that entitled bullshit. Luke got through to him after all, and while Danny is still my least favourite Defender, he's certainly been vastly improved from "character I wished never get another episode" to "least favourite Defender". Which is neat. 

It's a well-done conclusion, and while Defenders has been a very uneven ride, it's still very much entertaining and I walked out of it smiling at all the fun superheroism and snarkiness thrown around here and there.