Netflix’s newest original series, “Daredevil” debuted April 10, with all 13 episodes of the Marvel Comic adaptation’s first season available on the streaming service. Ed Carroll will review each episode here on Monkeys Fighting Robots without fear and let you know if the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe meets the lofty standards of its predecessors. There are more Daredevil review links at the bottom of the post.
A lot of episode 11, “The Path of the Righteous,” was more about moving the pieces into place for episode 13, which is the season finale. Karen faced the fallout both from Foggy and Matt’s fight, and then later from visiting Wilson Fisk’s mother.
As for some of those moving pieces, Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) returned after a few episodes of being away (or only mentioned). Murdock clearly had the body armor on his mind before Claire came back to stitch him up, but I do think she factored into his decision to search out Fisk’s special armor.
Murdock searched for the armor, which had him once again cross paths with the trafficker from the first episode, Turk (Rob Morgan). Turk gave up the name of the guy who does his body armor — Melvin Potter (Matt Gerald), better known in Marvel Comics as Gladiator (you can see parts of the Gladiator suit in Melvin’s shop). In the comics, Potter was first an enemy of Daredevil but later became an ally, and Netflix’s Daredevil (wisely) speeds up that process. I wonder if we’ll see the iconic red Daredevil suit in the next episode or the season finale, but this is a pretty solid way to get Murdock into that red suit without it seeming ridiculous. This series has also emphasised this notion that Murdock “has the devil inside him,” so setting up his suit as the simple does make sense.
We got a lot of Toby Leoanard Moore’s fun Wesley character, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear we’ll get much more of him (other than flashbacks) in the future, and that left me a little bummed out. I had particularly enjoyed his friendship with Fisk, which was arguably Fisk’s only friendship before he met Vanessa. Of course it made sense for Karen to shoot him, rather than let him get any sort of advantage on her, but it was a little shocking to see her shoot him so many times (also, I know she’s scared, but wouldn’t you at least try to look at the phone number calling Wesley?). This is the second major blow to Fisk, even though he doesn’t know Wesley is dead yet. Vanessa is still alive, but just barely, and I hope she survives. It’s going to be fun watching Vincent D’Orofrino’s Fisk extract his revenge for two very personal losses, but I’ll miss what the Wesley character brought to the table. Also, for the episode to end with just the ringing was perfect.
I was honestly annoyed that Matt and Foggy’s personal feud continued throughout this episode, particularly to the way both of them would respond to Karen. Also, Foggy is apparently sleeping with his awful ex, Marci (Amy Rutberg), because hey, let’s make bad decisions all across the place! Hopefully Karen’s scolding of Foggy at Josie’s put some sense into him. As for Matt, he sought out the body armor as a means to protect himself for others, particularly Claire. I think both of them are being stubborn, and they need to just hug it out or something, but that would likely make for terrible television.
Despite the fairly big developments near the end of this episode, most of “The Path of the Righteous” was getting characters where they need to be for the finale, both physically and mentally. It’s really nice to see a show that can still be riveting, even in its quieter moment. Two episodes to go, and all I know at this point is that two episodes aren’t going to be enough. Hopefully this gets picked up for another season.
Watching Daredevil on Netflix, too? Leave a comment and let us know what you think and feel free to tweet Ed -@EdTheRevelator
You can find his review of episode one here.
Click here for his review of episode two.
Read his thoughts on the jaw-dropping episode three here.
Ed’s review of the fourth episode is here.
Click here for Ed’s review of the explosive fifth episode.
Episode six was dripping with suspense, Ed’s review is here.
A familiar face from the comics debuted in episode seven, read Ed’s thoughts here.
Ed’s thoughts on episode eight are right here.
Ed thought episode nine was another standout, his thoughts are here.
Ed leaned how to turn on subtitles just in time for his review of episode 10 here.
