Netflix’s 3-Part Superhero Series Was So Good, It United a Divided Fandom

Few superhero movies were as disappointing as 2003’s Daredevil, which missed the mark on capturing the tone needed for a street-level Marvel hero. When Marvel regained the rights, the character's next outing arrived as the first series under Marvel Studios' brief deal with Netflix.

Skepticism greeted the project, but the show brought a grittiness that benefited from a serialized format and maintained a consistent level of quality. Rather than repeat a standard origin story, the series introduced Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock by starting him already masked as “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” and used the first season to reveal how he could be a true hero instead of merely dispensing brutal street justice.

Flashbacks traced the tragedies that shaped his convictions about law and faith, and the show presented him simultaneously as a lawyer, a man of faith, and a rogue masked crusader.

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