And so we reach the finale of Daredevil season 3 and the series as a whole after it was cancelled weeks after the premier. Overall, this is a great way for the show to go out and a fitting end to this chapter of the character’s run.
1. Finale
Well, here we are, the finale of Daredevil season 3 and by extension the series as a whole (at least on Netflix.) The reaction was, understandably, mad-sad, but overall I was not. There seemed to be this assumption that Netflix wouldn’t ever cancel shows at the start, which was never the case. If you want to see what happens to shows and networks that don’t cancel successful series see Showtime. One of the things that makes a great TV show is that it ends and ends well. “A New Napkin” is one of the best overall episodes in the series run, capping the most consistent season of the series. It worked as both a season and series finale really well. Considering where Luke Cage and Iron Fist were left holding the bag, the former after a strong season that showed Cheo Hodari Coker had worked out the kinks, the latter (allegedly) fixing its Danny Rand is a boring bland man problem by demystifying him and giving it to the far more interesting Colleen Wing. Both of our Heroes for Hire ended on the promise of better more consistent adventures and more importantly had not fully turned the corner as characters. TV is like comics, once the lead fully grows and completes their arc that story is over. Matt had completed his arc, realizing the need to be both Matt Murdock and Dardevil with a better work life balance. It was the characters arc of the season and series as a whole, Erik Oleson and the writers room, series directors, DOP Christopher LaVasseur finished that arc out beautifully. If this wasn’t a finale, it was the end of a chapter or creative teams run on the book and it was time to do something different. With the overall optimistic tone it seemed like things would be transitioning from Bendis & Maleev era to Mark Waid.
One of the things that made this episode act so well as a finale was the structure. If you glanced down at the duration bar after the Daredevil-Fisk-Dex fight, you would see there was still fifteenish minutes left. Those fifteen minutes were a nice epilogue to the series and let viewers see that things really were going to be all right. Father Lantom received a beautiful funeral and oration by Matt*. Matt looks to his Mother, the sarcastic nun Sister Maggie, as his new spiritual advisor (which is what I would’ve liked to see most in a theoretical next season.) Foggy looks for a new napkin and proposes “Nelson, Murdock & Paige.”
Yes we got a tease of a more proper Bullseye, completing a trio of motif extreme eye close ups from the episode. The threat of Bullseye dose not have me interested in the slightest. He was a fundamentally stunted character that made for a good foil for Matt, but overall didn’t have the presence to make him feel like a great villain. At the sametime he was positioned as a supporting antagonist so he wasn’t going to get the same treatment as Fisk.
*It was proof of how quickly this show moved. This season all happened in a 3-4 week time, that condensed timeline is a very comics way of storytelling.
2. What is easy and what is right
Throughout the season Matt has vacillated between killing Fisk and trying to do things the less illegal (but still utterly illegal) way of trying to entrap and send him to jail. Karen’s comment about killing Fisk in self-defense and Foggy’s response was a pretty great articulation of this dynamic through humor. As an arc it is not that different from the characters arc in the underrated Mark Steven Johnson film. “Napkin” dose a good job of taking that personal arc and exploding it out further into the series cast, specifically Detective Mahoney and his idea of a salutary ambivalence in protecting Fisk. Foggy goes to Mahoney with a warning that someone will try and kill Fisk tonight, Mahoney is pretty OK with that idea.
Continued belowMahoney’s ambivalence becomes the high point of Daredevil’s effect on his community, he has gotten the police – a good detective specifically – to stop caring and trying to hold the high moral standards one should hope for out of those we consent to police us. He gives into the dark side as described by Gerry Conway, in hoping and through negligent action assisting a murder take place. It’s the same despair Matt has been working through the entire season, seeing it in Mahoney was a nice final punch to bring it all home and add further tension when fists do begin to fly.
Mahoney’s feelings help build things to Matt’s final choice, the decision to do what is easy (just killing Fisk) and what is right, for his soul and vague sense of law, by imprisoning him. So in gasping, exasperated, displays of male melodrama Charlie Cox screams “you don’t get to destroy who I am” as Fisk assumes the crossed position wishing for that final blow and one last corruption. Matt makes the right choice, so Mahoney gets to make the right choice and arrest Wilson Fisk.
3. Triple Threat Matches
Triple threat match, or three way dance, is a hard match type to work. While there can be spots of rock–paper–scissors action, inevitably someone has to be thrown to the outside and wait it out until their next spot. As far as three way fights on film, one of the best has to be the triple sword fight between Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, Commader Norrington, from Dead Man’s Chest. The choreography follows the same basic in and out conceit but with their goal of obtaining the key made it so no one was really resting. The Daredevil-Fisk-Dex fight finds a similar energy as everyone both gets their spots in – Fisk finally using his strength to throw people around was nice – as means of stopping someone else from getting a killing blow off.
The choreography told the story of Matt’s internal conflict as he tries to kill Fisk, he keeps saving Vanessa. Eventually Dex is overpowered and paralyzed by Fisk, letting those two duke it out again. It was far less acrobatic than their showdown in a Hell’s Kitchen alleyway, as they just trade blows with one another. Until finally Vanessa has enough and brings them both to their senses, ironically not too dissimilar from what Keira Knightley did in Chest.
The season was building towards this fight, and unlike the odd staging(season 1) or lack of emotional buyin(season 2) pulled it off.
4. They Literally Fridged Julie
So I hated that they killed Julie, but also saw it as this expression of ultimate power by Fisk as the Kingpin (the king doesn’t need to act he gets others to do it.) But man they literally fridged Julie. Both in a strictly literal sense, she was put in a freezer for some reason with a bunch of other bodies, and in a literal reading of the Women’s in Refrigerator Trope. Holy wow! And than to end the scene on the just overdone screaming of Dex just ugh his character is so thin. Overall I think Wilson Bethel gave a good performance, and screamed as best he could, with the material he was given. Yet nothing about that character was gripping or tragic, he had a cool powerset and made for some solid fight scenes and that was it. The show was clearly trying to both mirror Dex decent into madness with Matt – something the show also audibly disregarded – and make him into a tragic figure through the manipulation of Wilson Fisk but it just never worked out.
5. Tom King is Everywhere
As Fisk gets dressed for his wedding, he stares at himself in the mirror and only sees the blood soaked little boy who murdered his father. Fisk is a monster and a true villain. And yet, through Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance and the writing, I really do buy the idea that this character truly loves Vanessa. Not in the way he “loves” art, but actual emotional commitment. Due to Ayelet Zurer’s character being a guest spot her character is treated more as a reverent than flesh and blood, but when mixed with her performance in season one you get the same feeling for her. She likes him, not his stuff or criminal empire. That conflict between actual love and his narcissistic idea of it, spurns a surprising amount of self-reflection in the character as he wonders if he really dose love her. It gets him to recognize how emotionally and mentally unhealthy he is.
In response to these doubts, Vanessa states that everyone is broken it’s just about finding the person where your broken pieces fit together. This scenes is pretty much what Tom King was working through with BatxCat as they planned their nuptials, “That to me is what true love is. It’s showing who you truly are to someone. It’s letting someone know deep down who you are and that’s horribly frightening and it scares Batman as much as anything ever has. They’re two broken people, and because they’re broken, they have the edges that fit together.”
Just a surprising parallel I found in watching this. Both instances of that argument also are fundamentally rooted in favoring the male side of the equation instead of looking at both people both as individuals and whole. Which seems kinda messed up.
