Episode Title: The H word
Originally Aired: August 18th 2017
While they have yet to unite the first episode of Marvel and Netflix’s The Defenders is upon us. The 8-episode arc with feature the four heroes, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist as they come together to stop Madame Goa, here mysterious leader and the rest of The Hand.
Color is very important to this series, at least in the way it is filmed and they have been telling us this since the beginning, look at this promotional material from Entertainment Weekly.
The color scheme doesn’t end there, it is prevalent in the opening credits of the show and continues during each segment that features one of our heroes. Red for Charlie Cox’s Daredevil because of his anger and his desire to punish wrong doers. Blue for Kristin Ritter’s Jessica Jones because of her cold approach to the world. Yellow for Mike Colter’s Luke Cage for his warmth and desire to help people. Green is given to Finn Jones’ Iron Fist but I am not entirely sure why to be honest other than his costume in the comics is green. I am curious to see what happens to the colors when they finally become a team. I have the theory that once they first meat and fight to establish dominance in the group that the color saturation will change based on who wants to be in charge or who the focus is at that time. It would seem natural for Iron Fist or Daredevil to be the focus because of their history with The Hand and specifically with Elektra. It doesn’t end with colors because each character has there own score that was similar to their own series. Luke and Danny are both into Hip Hop so their music will be the easiest to blend, the other two will take some work.
The episode should have been titled, the F word, where the F stands for forward because that is what this episode is about. Outside of the opening action sequence that takes place in rain soaked catacombs between Danny and Elektra the show is about movie the characters forward into to position so they can respond to the plan that is being put in motion by Sigourney Weaver’s character. I think they already made one misstep in the writing of this show by saying that it will be dangerous to speed up the evil plan. It plats the seed that there is no way The Defenders will be able to lose because The Hand jumped the gun, he should have followed it up with a line about it being just as effective to move now compared to three months from now. Madame Goa tries to save the moment by saying it will be load, if they rush the plan but that lacked sufficient impact to make me think that the threat level would be the same.
It was great to see all of the characters back in action. Danny gets the fight, Matt gets to argue a case at trial, Luke gets out of jail, and gets the girl, Jessica gets a new case. I am most excited to see Jessica back because her series was my favorite of the four. Her apartment is still trashed and she has yet to take on a new case until now, so it is hard to tell home much time has passed. It feels like it has just been a week or so since her encounter with Kilgrave, but the time line for Luke Cage seemed much longer than that and I am pretty sure those events took place after the Jessica Jones series. I could be wrong, Marvel has been known to tinker with the time lines before. I don’t know how long it will take to for the group or if we will for pairs before all four come together but I am excited to find out, and it’s time to move on to episode 2. Leave a comment or find me on twitter @JVL007 if you want to discuss the show.
Channel: Superhero 