Ever since my first review of Daredevil in April 2015, I have waited to write this sentence: The Defenders is the series we didn’t know we needed, but are glad we got.
Over the last two years, the Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist series have been guiding us to series we get to enjoy now – and enjoy it we do. We watch as the individual characters we’ve been following for the last two years morph into a group that works. Just like any other group dynamic, there is the one character who just barely fits. In the Defenders, it is Danny Rand, Iron Fist, who just seems out of place because he is the seeker and the sought (watch the series and you’ll know what I mean). Nevertheless, by the time the series ends, you find yourself grudgingly accepting Rand as part of the group, but knowing deep down inside, the group could get along very well without him.
Sigourney Weaver excels at being the “big bad” of the series. She makes everyone better the same way Vincent D’Onofrio made Daredevil great in his portrayal of Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) and that is part of the problem. The pace of the show slows down considerably when she’s not on screen. But the Defenders is really made real for us by the cross-over of all of the characters from the four individual series. It makes the world these characters live in small and real and we benefit from that.
The Defenders is well worth binge watching, if for no other reason than the great interaction between Jessica Jones ( Krysten Ritter) and literally everybody else. While Weaver is the villain the series needed, Jessica Jones is the hero that binds the group together. She makes it work.
The Defenders are not the superfriends, but they are united in their purpose and it makes for good television.
The Defenders starring Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter, Charlie Cox, Finn Jones and Sigourney Weaver is on Netflix.
