The Defenders-only Discussion Post!

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The Defenders Prompt Post

Talk about the Defenders! Speculate, discuss, squee and debate. There's a thread for each episode so you can discuss what you've watched so far without being spoiled for future episodes - click on top level view to see only the first comment in each thread and stay spoiler-free.

Anon commenting is not mandatory for this post. Playing nice is always mandatory.

Comments

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I don't mind that he was in the series, I just mind that his role and involvement (and death) wasn't written better.

Stick is brilliantly played, but even the best actor can make sitting around look meaningful only for so long. Especially when the character is an age-old warrior supposedly dead-set on fighting and defeating his equally age-old enemy, and when the fight is whirling all around him, all he does is watch some kids do his job for him.

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I know what you mean and I'd have loved to see him go out in glorious battle, but idk if i'm saying this right but the series was really pushing a lot of themes in variations, like family and sacrifice and love. Stick had the chance to kill Elektra in that scene, he holds the blade to her neck and freezes, and that's what killed him: love. That's a crappy way to put it but lol that's the theme. And it's the same thing that 'kills' Matt later. In DD s1 I hated Stick so much and I'm still angry about so many of his actions, but the idea that for the majority of his life he was this terrible human being who only cared about war and spent a long time killing (sounds like a beta vers of Frank Castle), it's oddly comforting and painful that he finally figured out what it's like to have family. It's like he finally understood what it is to have kids and love them and want them to survive and succeed. He came to care about Matt and Elektra more than he did his damn war, and his death is so frustrating to me, but it's meaningful too.

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

Stick wasn't a particularly likable person in s.1, but that's when he was written the best.

Season one: Stick comes to Matt's orphanage, trains him, gets attached to him, and abandons him after a simple gesture. Refusing to take Matt as a soldier may or may not be an act of protection. Then he comes back, ropes Matt in into his fight, introduces the concept of a Black Sky, spills a bit of bullshit about himself and the Chaste (he claims that he was the child that started it, and also that no one knows how old the Chaste is), kills a child, fights with Matt and leaves that bracelet behind when he walks out.

It's not perfectly consistent, but almost. It works.


Season two: Stick adopts and trains the young Black Sky in some place full of Chaste members. Kinda strange considering everything he said about Black Sky in s.1, and that he killed one without remorse. Also stupid to take her to a Chaste place, and kinda strange considering he never did that with Matt. Why the change? Then he gives her up for adoption, abandoning her just like Matt. Okay. Then he comes back and gets her to spy on Matt and rope him back in. Strange, but okay. Then a few more years pass, and he sends her to Matt one more time. He saves her life, then tries to kill her, then gives a fierce talk about how dangerous and not-human she is (which he knew all along, particularly when she was dying and he was saving her life like days before), then goes to fight the Hand, then buries Elektra and walks out of the cementary, the end.

Okay, so consistency is shot to hell now. You don't train a kid that you know is inhumanly dangerous *and will have to die by your hand one day*. You don't give them to normal people afterwards. You don't save a life of someone you're planning to kill. You don't come back as you please after abandoning someone. You don't leave your students only to come back and manipulate them into working for you. I can buy this as a sort of emergency tactic once, but this is, what, four times? Seriously, does the Chaste not have any actual soldiers Stick can use? Where *is* the Chaste, actually?


The Defenders: Apparently Stick walked out Matt's life, which seems kinda strange after all the effort he put into pulling him back into his orbit, and with Black Sky and the Hand both in New York, no less. We get one more dramatic reunion. Then Stick... talks a lot, and sits a lot. He *doesn't* kill Elektra, which considering that he was willing to when she had still been herself, and he kept talking about how she isn't anymore, is kinda strange. Then he falls onto his back, and there's a lot of tense staring for a while, and then he dies.

So nothing much happens, nothing much is done by Stick, nothing much is the reason why he dies, and nothing much is explained about how all of the Chaste is suddenly dead, conveniently except for Stick (for a while, at least).

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

LOL wow I have a whole different interpretation of his appearance in Defenders? Mostly I'm glad to get closure on his appearance in DD s2 because if we'd never seen him again after that I'd have been so angry. :)

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

No, of course he had to appear again. I mean, first of all, he was still pretty much there when s.2 ended. He has no reason to disappear, and every reason to stay.

In regards to Matt, he won: Matt cut all the ties with his friends, just like Stick wanted. And the Hand is still around, waiting to make their next move. Elektra is dead, but Stick would have to be very naive to think that will stick (heh), with everything he knows about both Black Sky/Elektra and the Hand.

Stick still has a war to fight in New york. He also still has one kid to protect (or whatever else it is he does with Matt). Considering he just lost the other one, simply leaving Matt on his own seems kinda strange.

And, like I said: he worked so hard to pull Matt back in, repeatedly over the years, and now that he finally has him right where he wants him, hes just going to walk out? Yeah, I don't think so.

What's your interpretation?

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but we don't know exactly what happened between DDs2 and Defenders, but we do know how Defenders starts. And if Matt stopped being DD, resumed his friendships with Karen and Foggy, all things Stick absolutely didn't want for Matt, he'd essentially lost him. Again. Why wouldn't he leave Matt again? He has no reason to stay, and no reason to return until Matt gets dragged into the Hand mess again.

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

True. But first of all, it's just not good writing to force a character out and have him come back for the third time in three seasons - so that's on the writers.

Secondly, even if Matt decided to ditch the whole vigilante thing and live out his life as a regular lawyer, Stick *knows* that he will be dragged back. He knows that the Hand is still around, and he knows that they will try to resurrect Elektra, and he knows that Matt won't be able to refuse to help when there's a clear threat to "his city".

The logical thing for Stick to do it stay around, make sure that Matt *knows* he's around, not let himself be driven away from Matt's "normal life", and needle him to go back to fighting.

Why wouldn't he leave Matt again? Because it's bad writing, and the grand battle with the Hand is nigh.

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

See, and I think Stick staying with Matt just to needle him into doing whatever Stick wants is OOC, not to mention a total waste of time on Stick's part. It's never happened before, I would have called bs if the series started like that. It was obvious Stick was busy with other things since the Chaste were wiped out and Stick was captured anyway. The old man had a life apart from Matt, and he does call the Chaste his family, too. Once they're killed by Elektra, Stick returns to the city for Matt, which I found very believable. But, hey, we obvs see things differently.

Re: Bad writing in the Defenders

[(Anonymous)]

We obviously do. I never read the comics, and I'm not interested in this or any movie or TV show following any "source material" beside actual historical facts.

From what I understand, Karen is a completely different and much more interesting character in the show than the comics. Comic-Father Lantom doesn't exist, and comic-Matt doesn't concern himself with religion all that much. I get to exchange the confession scenes for the scenes where Daredevil chasing a guy named Leap-Frog or Stiltman. While I'm sure that reading comics is fun, I wouldn't watch that show.

So I'm not at all concerned about having Stick be true to whatever his character did in the comics. As far as I'm concerned, this is a stand-alone ork, and any and all characters and plot lines are subjected to creative writing. All I'm asking is for that writing to MAKE SENSE.

Stick's been trying to train/needle/manipulate Matt into doing what he wants pretty much exclusively in the show. Aside from his scenes with kid-Elektra, he's never really established as doing anything else. (And from that point of view, he actually DOESN'T have a life beside Matt. He should, but to the audience, he just doesn't. Maybe to a comic book reader.) And if you care about what someone does with their life so much, you don't randomly come and go every few months. That's just not how human behavior works.