Daredevil season three is a thrilling return to form

WELL, thank god for that.

The Hand and all the weird, boring mysticism it brought to the Netflix superhero series Daredevil is gone, not even rating a whispered mention. Which means Daredevil can go back to doing what it does best — an exciting and gritty action crime series that just happens to feature a masked vigilante with preternatural senses.

The Marvel-Netflix series returns for its third season this week with 13 new episodes but, more importantly, it’s a return to form for a show whose second season, especially the back half, fell off as its story became engrossed with mystical ninjas and Elektra.

It’s a much needed course correction and one that brings back the juice that made it work so well in the first place — a battle between Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) for the soul of New York City.

Because we all know that for some heroes, they’re at the best when they have a formidable nemesis to fight, and Fisk is the yang to Matt’s yin — the two them entwined as a balance of light and dark, but neither are pure.

It’s even gone back to the well in the costume department with Matt donning the black threads from his debut and eschewing the fancier horned garb.

So now you know what you’re doing this weekend.

The story picks where crossover miniseries The Defenders left off — Matt presumed dead by his friends and the city. He’s hiding out, recuperating, in the basement of the church he lived at as a child, after his father’s death.

He’s a broken man, questioning his purpose and seeking redemption, deliberately cut off from Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy (Elden Henson), his support network. He says it’s to protect them but you know it’s because he thinks he’s not worthy of them. He’s also pretty physically banged up — being buried under a collapsing skyscraper will do that to you.

That’s a pretty volatile set of circumstances for someone who’s prone to pushing their dark side, despite a solid moral compass.

So when Wilson Fisk is released from prison, ostensibly under house arrest in a gorgeous penthouse in order to aid the FBI, Matt is a little miffed. Maybe more than a little miffed.

As Fisk, D’Onofrio is commanding, his presence felt in every frame, often even when he’s not there. It’s not just the physicality, the puffed out chest and his towering hulk, or his chilling confidence.

It’s that Fisk represents an effective oppositional force — someone whose background is not that different from Matt himself, someone who does have some humanity but chooses to ignore it most of the time.

It’s that duality, the pull between good and evil, of how close Matt skirts to Fisk, that fuels Daredevil’s story.

MORE: Daredevil star Charlie Cox chats about what to expect in season three

There’s also the introduction of an iconic Daredevil villain, Bullseye, this season and those action sequences are great fun to watch — his perfect aim no matter what the weapon, it’s like a Rube Goldberg machine but in an action sequence.

There’s a whole episode dedicated to Bullseye’s backstory but you don’t quite get the full picture — not yet — only six of the 13 episodes were provided by Netflix for review.

And there’s a phenomenal 10-minute one-take fight sequence in episode four that eclipses the three-minute hallway scene in season one and the five-minute stairwell scene in season two.

Season three, under new showrunner Erik Oleson, is a back-to-basics approach and it’s one that’ll thrills fans who fell in love with the rough-and-tumble, grounded spirit of the first season, the one that kicked off the Marvel-Netflix universe with such promise.

After three and a half years and 11 seasons (including this one), that universe is starting to sag, especially after a few dud entries. With the cancellation of Iron Fist last weekend and now this much improved season of Daredevil, maybe the spark is finally back.

Daredevil season three drops on Netflix tonight at 6pm AEDT.

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