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There’s a lesson taught in K’un Lun, according to Danny Rand, that says “there’s a lesson in tragedy, and even while experiencing pain there is an opportunity to grow and find clarity.”
Now, I am assuredly not from K’un-Lun. The only thing New Jersey has in common with the mystical city of the Iron Fist is that nobody but the worst people ever try and find it, and if you dig long enough in the dirt you’re definitely going to find some sort of skeleton. But there is certainly something to that lesson, especially applied to The Defenders‘ ending, appropriately titled “The Defenders.” Because there is tragedy—death, lost limbs, and the like—but I’d argue that by the end every single character finds themselves in a, if not better place, but a more interesting one than where they started.
But first…the tragedy.
I really want to stress that watching people with superpowers taking on a room full of cult-ninjas inside an underground cavern is a Very Cool Thing. It is genuinely thrilling to watch, and if it were up to me that exact scenario would happen at least once in every TV series ever made, as well as most reality dating shows and singing competitions. But the entire foray into Midland Financial Circle was robbed of any emotional impact by some truly shoddy writing from Marco Ramirez and Lauren Schmidt, mingled with inconsistent characterization that not only didn’t track with the previous seven episodes, but occasionally flip-flopped several times over the course of a single sparring session.
But hey, at least they got their spinning Avengers shot.
Correct me if I miss a step, but I believe Elektra’s thought process begins with the intention to kill Matt Murdock and all three of his friends. But then she doesn’t want to kill Matt Murdock because fighting him is fun. But then she actually wants him by her side (“Where you belong,” she says) which is a goal she could achieve by leaving instead of fighting, but does not. But then she wants them to die (“Together,” she says, “something I’ve wanted since I first laid eyes on you”) despite the fact that the entire, singularly-focused motivation of Elektra or Black Sky or whoever the heck up to this point has been to prolong her life using the goo inside some dragon fossils.
By the time Elektra says, “I’m sorry, Matthew, for all the pain I’ve caused along the way,” it feels like a line airlifted from a completely different show and plopped down into this script.
Meanwhile—behind Matt and Elektra’s violent heart-to-heart—the elevator car that Jessica dropped moments earlier never arrives at the bottom of the hole.
Normally, I’d chalk things like the miraculously evaporating elevator up to nitpicking, but if you are able to nitpick enough berries you end up with a big, fucked up bushel of problems. Misty Knight pumps three shots into Bakuto‘s chest and it does nothing, for reasons apparently lost to time and space. Back at the police station, Karen and Trish are casually meandering through the building moments after three wanted superhumans punched a hole through the wall. Meanwhile, midway down the elevator shaft, Luke says he has a plan, “but you’re not gonna’ like it.”
That plan, as it turns out, is for Jessica to stall for a hot second so Luke and Matt can crab-walk their way around the back of the cave. It’s maddening. It’s like someone wrote “but you’re not gonna’ like it” into a script, but wasn’t able to think of a complex enough plan before deadline.
By the time Midland Circle Financial finally comes down—crushing Matt, Elektra, and the Hand’s hopes for immortality in the process—it does so not with the roar of steel and concrete, but an epic sigh of relief; just a hole filled with plot inconsistencies and weak character work, buried forever, never to be spoken of again.
But, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Henry “Pop” Hunter: “Forward, always.” A great deal of The Defenders‘ best, most effective moments come during its last fifteen minutes, in the aftermath of the explosion. It’s not often Marvel lets you watch its heroes immediately deal with destruction. No, the Avengers eating schwarma next to what has to be an ungodly amount of corpses does not count, but Karen and Foggy watching an empty doorway, realization creeping onto Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson’s faces, certainly does.
More than anything, the conclusion of this first season takes a clue from K’un Lun; I won’t go as far as to call this show a “tragedy,” but it certainly looks to be taking opportunities to grow into something special in the future. Just going off the comic book canon alone, we can basically guarantee that Misty Knight’s missing arm will be replaced with a bionic one, Luke and Jessica’s heartfelt shot of whiskey and promise of coffee to come will lead to a romantic rekindling, and the nunnery Matt Murdock— not actually dead, of course, come on—wakes up in is run by none other than Maggie Murdock, his long-lost mother.
But in a twist more shocking than anything The Hand did over eight damn episodes, the character who glows brightest by season’s end is Danny Rand. Iron Fist made it pretty clear that above all things, Danny Rand is a doofus who is terrible at doing the things he is supposed to be good at doing. But it’s easy to forget that his overall ineffectiveness got an entire city and everyone he has ever loved slaughtered. Before Daredevil “dies” in The Defenders—before he sacrificed himself for his home in ways Danny has never even thought of—he whispered into Danny’s ear, “protect my city.” The last we see of Danny, he’s perched above Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil-like, outfitted in the signature green-and-yellow of an Iron Fist willing to do a lot more than call himself a weapon every ten seconds.
Turns out, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world Danny Rand has a reason to exist.
RELATED: The Defenders Ending Explained
Vinnie Mancuso writes about TV for a living, somehow, for Decider, The A.V. Club, Collider, and the Observer. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.
