Daredevil - Season 3 (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Creator: Drew Goddard
	Actors: Charlie Cox (Stardust), Vincent D'Onofrio (Men in Black), Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: March 2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: Matt Murdock (Cox), back from the dead, struggles in finding his place in the world, and decides to radically change who he is in order to protect his friends and defeat a returning old foe.
Review: I loved the first season of this show, less so the second because of a slower pace and in spite of some excellent new characters like Elektra. Note that this third season takes place after the events of The Defender, a cross-over show highly recommenced for its Avengers spirit. This season feels like it learned from some maybe negative feedback on the second, because it looks much more like the first in its story (Fisk is back) and pace (more fist fights), while keeping the characteristics that made the show a success: the friendship with Foggy and Karen (now in peril), the troubled Matt and his relationship with God (one of the best thing in this season), the all-powerful Fisk (D'Onofrio, still as masterful). For example the best episode in the season is without a doubt S3E4 Blindsided, and it is so partly because it borrows heavily from S1E2 Cut Man and its awesome corridor fight a-la-Old Boy. I watched that episode twice!  The manipulative Fisk is at the center of the story, and something new in this season is how he corrupts not only businesses, but now the law, i.e. the FBI that is supposed to guard him. The best addition to this season is the character of Dex, which from the moment he appears in S3E2 Please I knew was going to be a highlight of this season and he is, to the point that I could say this season belongs to him. Fans of the comics will have recognized him immediately but it took me until the post-credit scene of the last episode S3E13 A New Napkin (and a quick Googling) to recognize him as (spoiler, highlight to read) Bullseye, a character in fact also present in the infamous 2003 Daredevil movie with Ben Affleck. So in this season I loved to follow what Matt and Dex go through separately, and it was very nice to see Fisk again. Foggy evolves also, but I found Karen's arc to be a bit annoying as she was constantly a victim ; this is bearable for only so many episodes. Finally the biggest but maybe only reproach I can make to this season is that it looks cheap. I praised the well-choreographed long-shot fistfights in S3E4 Blindsided, but in all objectivity they could have been done much better, maybe with more time or more takes, something the series was probably not able to afford. Beyond the action, the story also feels cheap sometimes, especially the conclusion in S3E13 A New Napkin: in that episode the 3-way fight is an excellent original idea, but how Daredevil wins doesn't feel very satisfying. It is sad that the season 4 of the show has been cancelled by Netflix while it was fully written and ready to go. There is still a slim hope that it could be continued by another network, or as some rumors dream that some of its characters move up to the big screen MCU...
Rating: 6 /10