Like season one, season two of “Marvel’s Daredevil” was released all at once on Netflix back in March, and ardent fans have no doubt scarfed down the available episodes.
I hope you liked them, because that’s the last you’re going to get for a while.
Here’s a tweet from an Entertainment Weekly senior editor:
Marvel/Netflix sked: Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders THEN 2nd and 3rd seasons of the other shows and Punisher.
— Natalie Abrams (@NatalieAbrams) July 27, 2016
To flesh out Abrams’ condensed tweet, Luke Cage premieres in 2016, Iron Fist and The Defenders will arrive in 2017, and then things open up for additional seasons of Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Marvel seems committed to a two show a year schedule, leaving little room for Daredevil‘s third season until 2018 at the earliest.
Of course that’s also not figuring in additional seasons of Luke Cage and Iron Fist, or even the debut of The Punisher. Marvel’s Netflix dance card is filling up quickly, making a third season of Daredevil increasingly difficult to slot, assuming they remain committed to releasing just two shows a year.
But one thing we know for sure, whenever “Daredevil” comes back, he’ll still be Catholic.
In early August, I sat down at a Marvel-sponsored press cocktail party with Doug Petrie, executive producer and showrunner of “Daredevil” and got to have a few of my questions answered about one of my favorite current shows — which is more Catholic than a lot of faith-based stuff out there (and way more engaging and entertaining, if you can take the violence, that is).
Petrie prefaced the conversation by saying that he was raised Catholic in New York but has now converted to Judaism. I don’t know the circumstances and wasn’t rude enough to ask, but he does come from a base of firsthand knowledge.
So did writer and artist Frank Miller, whose Irish-Catholic background figured into his graphic-novel version of Daredevil, who, by day, is New York lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). Blinded in a chemical spill as a child, Murdock uses his heightened other senses, especially his superhuman hearing, to fight crime in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen (or at least the version of it before it became gentrified and yuppified).
Said Petrie:
Frank Miller really brought the Catholic … not only the literal Catholic imagery and iconography, but also a kind of very specific, blue-collar, New York Catholic mindset. It’s a very specific thing; it’s got a very specific brutal humor; it’s got a very specific worldview. Redemption through blood is such a big part of it. So, yeah, Frank Miller really brought it up, and we’re following up on all of that. We love it.
We also discussed the fascinating extended conversation between Daredevil and merciless vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), a k a The Punisher, on a rooftop, in which they debated the morality of killing the bad guys (Punisher’s all for it; Daredevil contended that, while he’ll maim them, their death is up to God, and they may yet be redeemed).
Take a look:
Said Petrie:
We had to find a way to pace it out, because we thought of it as a one-act play. We knew the ending of that was a big fight scene.
And here’s that:
Said Petrie:
That was designed as a descent into Hell. It’s very specifically designed that way. That conversation needed to happen and Matt needs to be tested in that way. We talked a lot about classic New Testament imagery. Christ in the desert with Satan for forty days. Being tested … by … so we really thought of it as like an angel and a devil, or Christ and Satan. That kind of thing. These two icons, really talking ideals, and what was fun is that in early drafts they were talking back and forth. Charlie and Jon were wonderful actors.
That was their first interaction, the first time they were really going at it. They really went at it. Frank doesn’t want to have this conversation. We decided that Matt Murdock as that attorney, and being the one who’s chained up , he’s got nothing to do but to talk his way out of this.
He had to find a way to goad him into the conversation, and one of the very first things is he said, they recognize the church bells, and they go “Oh, it’s midnight mass, are you a Catholic, that sort of thing.
Actually, when the church bells ring in the distance, Daredevil asks, “What is that, midnight?” Castle replies, “St. Matthew’s.” “You a Catholic?” “Once.” “From New York?” “Once.” “You still go to Mass?” “Stop now, Red.”
I love that little exchange. It’s so what one Catholic might say to another.
In a future post, Petrie and I discuss Murdock’s confessor, his sex life (or lack thereof) and his ethical framework.
Image: Courtesy Netflix
Don’t miss a thing: head over to my other home at CatholicVote and like my Facebook page; also like the Patheos Catholic FB page to see what my colleagues have to say.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In