daredevilkink | The Defenders-only Discussion Post!

A friend pointed out that Matt offered to help Frank kill the Blacksmith in s2, and Frank shoved Matt off the boat to keep him from doing it. Frank took the choice away from Matt but he also saved Matt from himself. He at least saved Matt's soul and he definitely saved his life later, too.

In the Defenders, Luke, Jessica, and Danny allow Matt to make a terrible but heartfelt decision to stay and try to talk Elektra around (who makes sure Matt can't leave her), nobody intervenes, and Matt dies.

Meanwhile, Matt's best friends, Karen and Foggy, are trying to get Matt to leave DD in the dust but Matt's miserable and guilty and lying about everything.

Y'all, the merciless serial killer, Frank Castle, has done more for Matt Murdock/DD than the heroic Defenders, the other serial killer Elektra, and Karen and Foggy all combined? That's an oversimplification but I can't stop thinking about this. Matt and Frank aren't even friends! Did the show do this on purpose? Matt made his choice to talk to Elektra, but now I'm really confused about whether Matt should be allowed any agency as DD, can he be trusted to keep himself alive when he's out there alone, does dying change him on some level so he's more careful now, or does he need a keeper? I hate to think of Matt being controlled by anyone, but looking back at s2, he really did benefit from having Frank around. I'm really curious what Frank will say about Matt being dead, though. If he'll care at all.

"Matt offered to help Frank kill the Blacksmith in s2"

That's true but Matt didnt want to do it in the first place, he said he was gonna do it Frank's way just to help the guy feel good but also his "im jot killing anynone" policy ended the day the hand "killed" Elektra. He went after Nobu and went for the kill. In the Defenders he doesnt even hesitate when it coems to killing the people still inside the building (tho they are all bad guys) Unlike Luke who was the only one not on board with the plan.

I think Matt has changed. He understands that if killing if what it takes to end soemting terrible after trying and trying the right way. He will do it. He is not Frank but Matt went already there...

"Meanwhile, Matt's best friends, Karen and Foggy, are trying to get Matt to leave DD in the dust but Matt's miserable and guilty and lying about everything. "

It's wrong, what Karen and Foggy are doing it's wrong but as we got from the show it was Matt who told them he was gonna stop being DD after the whole Hand mess and the three of them knew that was a lie, they just decided to go with it. Matt felt guilty, Karen wanted the "old" Matt back and Foggy wanted his friend as he has said many times. The three of them are toxic to each other but they still feel the need to be together. That's why i feel that DD is the most interesting Marvel Netflix show when it comes to friendship. We don't have the supportive friends we have in the rest of the shows. Everyone here needs to realize of their own mistakes and accept what is hapenning and i hope we get to that soon...

"In the Defenders, Luke, Jessica, and Danny allow Matt to make a terrible but heartfelt decision to stay and try to talk Elektra around (who makes sure Matt can't leave her), nobody intervenes, and Matt dies. "

I have to say this cause this is what i felt after i saw the show. As good as Matt and Jessica interactions were, as good as Matt's interactions with all the defenders team were. They didnt care if he lived or not. Luke said it. He felt bad for Matt and those who he left behind but he was glad it was him and not Jessica... and That's a a very appropiate reaction cause they only knew Matt for two days. They took his advice and are working for the city to be a better place but they didnt really understand him. Jessica might have but i doubt it...

I really hate the wait for DDS3 cause i need to know what is going to happen with our main three and what are the consequences of Matt ebing gone...

Did Matt kill people in the building, tho? Do you mean actual real people or Hand, because Matt was okay with killing the Hand in s2 when he went after Nobu, but I think Stick convinced him about Nobu not really being a person anymore when he talked about Nobu having lived for several lifetimes. Matt kicks Nobo off that ledge and he sees him lying down there, dead, and Nobu comes right back to life. Matt knows he can't kill these people. That's why he tells Danny you can't stop these people, even with whatever your fist does. When he offers to help to blow up the building, the only people left in there are the Hand, he makes sure of it. I don't think it was clear at all but Matt killing a normal person isn't the same as killing the Hand. That's the way it is in the comics, too. Matt/DD 'kills' the Hand constantly because they're not really 'alive'.

Holy crap, you're so right about Matt, Karen, and Foggy being toxic for each other. I agree with you, it's why I love DD too because these are not basic cookie-cutter relationships. All of these characters have some serious issues, and they love each other but they're terrible for each other too. Like reading the original post here is about Frank doing a lot for Matt, and it's true. They hurt each other and rescue each other but there's legit respect and understanding there, and some of those things don't show up in Matt's other relationships in the same way. Everyone is so complicated and twisted, messed up, like the relationship with Stick and Matt and Elektra. GOD. It's amazing tho, I love it.

There was nobody left in the building, Matt stated this explicitly.

In the latest issue of the DD comic it's stated clearly by Matt, probably to coincide with the netflix verse, that killing the Hand doesn't count as killing people. It's not killing because they're not alive. Resurrected Hand don't fall under his No Kill rule.

I really would like to know how this fits into his Christian belief of Jesus, tho? And not just him but Frank, too, since Frank has a history of being Catholic 'once'.

Are you asking whether Matt's belief in Jesus as a resurrected being shouldn't cause him to have more respect for other resurrected beings? Or are you asking whether evidence of mundane methods of bringing people back from the dead shouldn't cause him to question his belief in Jesus as a resurrected being?

I have long and potentially irrelevant thoughts on the first question but on the second I think practising Christians are just pretty patient about the answer being "because God". I actually take Frank's line to mean he doesn't believe, though. I assume we're meant to infer it as an understandable reaction to everything he's been through, and in that case he wouldn't believe in/care about the Resurrection anyway.

"I have to say this cause this is what i felt after i saw the show. As good as Matt and Jessica interactions were, as good as Matt's interactions with all the defenders team were. They didnt care if he lived or not. Luke said it. He felt bad for Matt and those who he left behind but he was glad it was him and not Jessica... and That's a a very appropiate reaction cause they only knew Matt for two days. They took his advice and are working for the city to be a better place but they didnt really understand him. Jessica might have but i doubt it..."

Honestly yeah, Jessica could've knocked Matt out and then she and Luke could've carried him up to the surface.

Well as a Fratt shipper this is the kind of shit that makes me squee out loud, but I do have to say that I think this gets at something very important: neither the Defenders nor Foggy&Karen quite understand Matt's actual philosophy around vigilantism. During the long rooftop chain scene, Frank and Matt both articulated their positions in vigilantism and killing (respectively, you can't take the chance that people will change because when they don't more people will get hurt vs you can't condemn and kill people because that means you kill people who have changed/will change for the better).

Frank got how Catholic Matt is, how he bizarrely enough believes in hope and optimism, and also how Matt does enjoy violence ("that's just one of the perks?") but it's not like it's his primary motivator, you know? And Matt got to the core of Frank too, how he does genuinely believe that he's doing good and that violence/death is the only answer, and how he is motivated by his grief but he is still actively choosing to kill people in the absence of anything else, and how he views himself as a real force for good instead of a schoolyard bully.

I don't think, canonically, we've gotten a scene between either the Defenders or Foggy&Karen with Matt where they seriously sat down and talked and listened to each other. Nelson v Murdock was all hurt feelings and horrible insecurities and feeling like you don't know your best friend vs all your worst abandonment issues coming true, and the Defenders just don't have that emotional intimacy yet.

And Frank sort of has a gift for understanding Matt, and canonically Matt has this gift for seeing the good still in Frank. It's one of the reasons why I ship them so hard, and I love that the MCU did this.

A lot of really interesting points here about Matt's philosophy. You're right, it's unique and I don't think Foggy, Karen, or any of the Defenders are equipped to understand it without a serious long chat. In the context of Catholicism I think it's interesting to consider that it wouldn't just be a generalised faith in the human spirit or Jesus' redemption - Matt would believe in literal miracles. You can't give up hope when God could intervene at any moment. If you put his decision to keep trying to reason with Elektra and even his peace with the possibility of death in that framework, he's just not necessarily motivated by practicality and I'm not sure I see what the Defenders could have done about it. Luke could have tried to sit on him but I don't know how well that would have gone. I kind of love that Matt has more in common with the antiheroes wrt his moments of borderline zealotry.

Exactly! And I think that it's actually easier for Frank and him to have that conversation than Foggy and Matt for the simplest reason that Frank has no prior relationship or expectations of him. They don't already have feelings and assumptions about each other that would interfere in it, and Matt literally can't squirm his way out of the conversation. At the end of the day, Matt and Frank are both very literal and serious about their philosophies, and neither of them is stoppable except by their own deaths.

I think that Matt's Catholicism also gives him an intense, devout sense of his own martyrdom being beautiful and him being doomed to it no matter what he does, as well as a sense that he's willing to dive headfirst into suffering because it is almost a form of love for him--to do so much, to take on what must be done.

Wow yeah, now you say it I think that's true. He has a ton of investment in that idea of pain and suffering being functional. And maybe all this mortification of the flesh isn't just for the soul of Hell's Kitchen. He knows being Daredevil is a sin even if he thinks it's a necessary one, so maybe he thinks his suffering helps balances things out.

Which is another way that he and Foggy/Karen would be talking past each other, because he hears Foggy when Foggy says he doesn't want Matt to get hurt, but to Matt getting hurt is just a necessary part of the process.

(Admittedly I love the pretty tragedy of Matt/Elektra and now the idea that Matt basically "died" for Elektra's sins is giving me way too many feelings.)

Complete religious tangent but I am now picturing Matt deathfic in which the Catholics of Hell's Kitchen basically decide that Matt's service to the community and whatever type of heroic, martyred death make him worthy to be beatified/canonised and Church officials try to ignore their Violent Vigilante for Sainthood campaign in the hopes that it will just go away and the Defenders/Foggy/Karen are not trying to be insensitive? But they are really weirded out by all the pilgrims turning up on their doorsteps, and Jessica really does not want to hear any more babbling about how Matt appeared to someone in a dream or whatever.

Made all the more awkward when Matt later turns up alive, of course.

That would be awesome! And his resurrection would seem to be a miracle, too, of course, especially if Matt had no idea how he lived.

And part of the thing is that I definitely see Foggy having a lot of difficulty interpreting things through Matt's lens. He would see it as self-hatred and even punishing himself, and to a degree it is that, but Matt's whole thing is to do the sinful thing as a way of preventing other sins. He wants to help people, not just by saving them, but by preventing them from having to become him. (Another way he and Frank are similar.) He knows it's sinful and wrong, and that's why he probably confesses to it, but he must do it for the sake of everyone else, even if that means Purgatory after his death and his injuries and his fallings-out.

I think this aspect can be seen in the whole human traffickers episode--he almost dies, is horribly injured, is weak and targeted by hitmen, has to torture a guy on a rooftop and almost kill him, and he goes back and visibly forces himself to keep getting back into the fight, all to save the kid and carry him to safety. That's his whole Daredevilling. Does he clearly enjoy torturing the dude and beat up the other dudes? Yes. But he also does it for a fundamentally good reason, and with awareness of who is and what he's doing.

Yes! I find that episode so uncomfortable to watch but (and these two things are probably related) it is great for underscoring Matt as a man With a Mission. And yes, it is mostly very purposeful. The early scenes with Father Lantom do a great job with the undercurrents of the idea that Matt is aware that this choice will probably or even definitely keep him out of heaven. He completely acknowledges that, then does it anyway, because it needs doing.

So he loves Foggy and Karen, but honestly, if the thought of rejecting God (which is basically what committing a sin on purpose is and why Father Lantom is like wtf, strange dude, you can't confess *in advance*) and being eternally punished for it isn't enough to scare him straight, the sad and disappointed voices of his friends aren't likely to make a dent.

And the other problem is that, I think, a lot of Foggy and Karen's reasons why Matt shouldn't do it are fundamentally things Matt doesn't care about. Foggy's like "but I don't want you getting hurt/ I want us to be normal/ I want you to be happy" and Matt doesn't think he *can* not be hurt and not-normal and unhappy, and Karen has even more arguments in that vein but all of which rely on this idea that, like, there's a Matt Murdock without the violence and rage who maybe if he really did stop wearing the Daredevil suit and would go to therapy (or date Karen/Foggy lol) and lived a 'normal' life would finally be unlocked. But that's not true, it's like Daredevil is a mask that Matt puts on, it's fundamentally a way for him to show a part of who he truly *is* that isn't nice or comfortable but is very, very true to life. He isn't addicted to violence so much as incapable of balancing the different people that he is, and they cannot accept that maybe he *can't* be normal and he *can't* go back to pretending to just be like any other guy.

Oh yeah, very true, this conversation goes nowhere until Foggy and Karen admit that they are pushing for the return of a guy who doesn't exist. Though in what I guess is their defense, Matt has only just reached the point where he is willing to tell them that.

Yeah, none of them have actually communicated very well with this. Though I cheered when Matt responded to Karen's inane "you're almost back to your life" with "this is my life", which sort of encapsulates why she frustrates me. She barely knows this guy, met one facet of him and declared it to be the 'real' him all the while finding Daredevil hot and then denouncing him after Daredevil saved her life, which is honestly just so irritating. Pick a side, Karen!

I think that Matt's Catholicism also gives him an intense, devout sense of his own martyrdom being beautiful and him being doomed to it no matter what he does, as well as a sense that he's willing to dive headfirst into suffering because it is almost a form of love for him--to do so much, to take on what must be done.

As a lapsed Catholic, this thought speaks to me on such profound levels. It makes so much sense wrt Matt's philosophies and faith. It's also something that's been baked into him, though. Or something that he grabbed onto in the orphanage? Because he's not particularly Catholic as a child. But as a child, when he still had his sight, he was already a tiny hero and maybe the Catholicism gave him a better reason for it, or grounded him or something. There's a lot of suffering-for-others in the bible and with Matt, landmark moments in his life reflect the same. It's like every time he does something good, something bad happens. He saves a life, he loses his sight. He keeps his father on his feet during that last fight, to paraphrase Frank Castle, he loses his father. He finally learns to control his senses, Stick leaves him. It's like there's some sort of equivalent exchange pattern set up, like suffering is expected and inescapable. Maybe you're right that he sees death as fate, and he's accepted martyrdom as the best, most beautiful outcome he'll pay for doing what needs to be done.

Slight segue, there's another comment here about some of the themes in Defenders being (found) family, love and sacrifice. How Stick had a chance to kill Elektra and he freezes because in spite of thinking she's a monster, he still loves her. And Elektra kills him. Love is what gets Stick killed. The same thing 'kills' Matt later. DD and Defenders have managed to take such beautiful themes like love and sacrifice and family and twist them into very complicated, unexpected knots that don't work in conventional ways. Frank and Matt? Idek what to call them but yeah, they feel necessary to each other. Karen and Foggy? Besties? Worsties? Idk. Are the Defenders friends? Teammates? Workmates? Idk! Honestly it's the most amazing and annoying thing that idk how to label these relationships lol. But I do love, like someone else said here, that Matt probably has a better understanding--and is better understood, by the anti-heroes than anyone else on these shows.

DA
"Matt probably has a better understanding--and is better understood, by the anti-heroes than anyone else on these shows."

This si so true and i think it's for the same reason he is so confortable with Elektra. They don't know about Matt the lawyer, the Matt that has to put on a different mask everyday of his life, and this is the Matt that Foggy and Karen knows but which one is the real Matthew Murdock. The answers is easy.. it's both but Matt doesnt know how to balance that. Charlie Cox said in a recent even that Matt Murdock is the fake persona but Daredevil wants to be like Matt Murdock and Matt Murdock wants to be like Daredevil so how do we balance that, that's the point that they haven't shown yet and i think we are gonna get there in s3.

I think it's a nagging belief that's only gotten stronger the longer Matt's life has gone on. And as you said, his life can be seen often as a 'one-offs'--he meets Foggy but has to lie to him, he loves Elektra but when he affirms that he won't kill someone he loses her, he gets to become Daredevil but that almost makes him lose Foggy (and later it sort of does completely), Elektra comes back but that wrecks his life, etc, etc. He feels, I think, like he is meant to suffer and end up dying for the good of everyone else, and so he heads towards that goal full-heartedly.

This is also why I think he's not good at doing what Foggy asks of him, or requests of him--he knows one day he'll die, and he doesn't see why delaying it would help. He knows he's doomed, so he doesn't think he's going to have a long happy life, and so it's difficult to impossible for him to try to be more careful in the present-day. He also knows damn well that Foggy doesn't see Daredevilling as a 'part' of Matt so much as something Matt 'does', which is why he feels rejected and abandoned by Foggy's attitude in S2 and in the Defenders until Foggy gives him the suit--because that moment, to me, says 'I know you, you're going to be out there, that's who you are and I'll help you be who you are', and Matt's shocked by it and so happy with it.

Agreed, I love the twistiness and even when they aggravate him and us, I think Matt needs all these contrasts around him. One of the thematic questions DDS2 and The Defenders wants us to think about is, are we completely sure Matt himself isn't one of the antiheroes? Is he effectively straddling that line, or does he just think he is? The whole team has personal flaws, of course, but Matt is the only one strangling a member of the Hand until he passes out. Which is a moment I love for the horrified looks on the rest of the team's faces and Danny's, uh, is he dead? Yes, Matt has been set off by the reappearance of Elektra, but that's also just kind of the way he does things. (Something that's underscored every time he tries to fight one of the team, lol Matt.) But then we get Stick executing people with his sword and disappearing the parts to remind us that, well, okay, Matt could be much worse.

Like Frank says - you're one bad day away from being me. But this is one of the reasons labels and questions of Who Was Right become so difficult around Matt - everything is relative, and that's kind of the point.

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