Originally published April 12, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
James Garcia on one major lesson the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can learn from the new Daredevil series…
Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Marvel and Netflix’s Daredevil. So, if you haven’t yet had the chance to binge-watch the show over the weekend, do that before reading on, or continue at your own risk!
Marvel took a surprisingly and refreshingly dark turn in their first Netflix endeavor, Daredevil, which premiered this weekend. The series is just one of five shows coming to the streaming service that will explore the “street level” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the others being AKA Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and a team-up miniseries dubbed The Defenders. From the opening moments of the pilot episode to the final act of the season finale, one major difference between Daredevil and the rest of the MCU began to stick out: Marvel is now taking itself seriously, and the stories they’re telling are better for it.
I don’t say the word “serious” just in terms of tone and color palette. Marvel has long been regarded as the more “fun” of the superhero franchises, and while their films have dealt with some dark subject matter in the past, they’ve all come equipped with a shiny gloss to them and a sense of danger that’s highly superficial. More importantly, the way death has been depicted in the films is flawed because, well, it simply doesn’t mean anything.
Much like death in the comic books, death in the MCU means absolutely nothing, as evidenced by the fact that many films feature a character who dies and then quickly comes back to life. Loki “died” in Thor only to come back in The Avengers, Agent Coulson then died in that film only to get resurrected to star in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Bucky Barnes fell to his death in Captain America: The First Avenger only to pop up again as The Winter Soldier in the sequel (which also featured the faked death of Nick Fury), Pepper Potts bit the dust for a whole ten seconds in Iron Man 3, Loki “died” again in Thor: The Dark World, and Groot sacrificed himself in Guardians of the Galaxy only to (thankfully) come back as a dancing sapling a few minutes later.
Why this happens isn’t important. The fact of the matter is, this game of boy crying wolf will only shock audiences for so long, and is already losing its luster. Daredevil solves this problem by killing a lot of people, and making sure they stay dead.
By giving death meaning, Daredevil immediately raises the stakes and makes the danger our characters are in very, very real. When Karen Page is kidnapped by Wesley, we honestly wonder if he’ll kill her. And, more importantly, when Matt Murdock takes a hell of a beating while on the prowl, we feel the severity of his wounds and know for a fact that he could actually die from them.
It’s not just villains and side characters that kick the bucket, either. Ben Urich, who’s long been a monumentally important Marvel character to Daredevil and several other heroes, is brutally strangled by Wilson Fisk in the penultimate episode of the season. He was someone we were led to believe was safe from such a fate, simply because of our preconceived notions of his destiny in this burgeoning story.
When Urich dies, he stays that way, and because of this his death comes with real emotional weight and major repercussions for our characters.
Hopefully, this phenomenon won’t solely happen on Marvel’s television front. Joss Whedon has long teased that someone would die in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but few have actually believed that such a death, if it were to happen, would even stick. And despite rumors that Thor will die in Thor: Ragnarok or Steve Rogers in Captain America: Civil War, the fact that they’re needed (and contractually obligated) for Infinity War makes their demise more of a formality than a reality.
Death is an important part of storytelling, especially when the stakes are as high as they are in superhero projects. Hopefully Marvel can take what they’ve done in Daredevil and apply it to the films, because as fun as their films are, they need to be worth our emotional investment as well.
James Garcia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pnc360pUDRI&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
