DAREDEVIL
SEASON 2

A NEW SHOWRUNNING TEAM

STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT LEAVES, AND DOUG PETRIE AND MARCO RAMIREZ TAKE OVER

Netflix renewed Daredevil for a second season on 22 April 2015, just days after the first season’s release, and the announcement came with a change at the top. Steven S. DeKnight, who had run the first season, was not returning. In his statement he said previous commitments kept him from continuing, and that he could not be happier that Petrie and Ramirez were “carrying the torch.”

Doug Petrie arrived with credits on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Horror Story, and Marco Ramirez with Sons of Anarchy. Drew Goddard, who had stepped back as showrunner before the first season, stayed on as an executive producer alongside Petrie, Ramirez and Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb.

Their plan for the season followed from one rule. Ramirez said that the writers had to “point these two wonderful missiles at Matt Murdock every time,” the two missiles being the Punisher and Elektra. Petrie described how that worked in the writers’ room: compelling side stories that did not serve Matt’s arc were shelved. “Everything goes through Matt,” he said.

TWO NEW CHARACTERS FROM THE COMICS

JON BERNTHAL AS FRANK CASTLE AND ÉLODIE YUNG AS ELEKTRA

Jon Bernthal was cast as Frank Castle, the Punisher, in June 2015. Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb said Bernthal brings “an unmatched intensity to every role he takes on,” and the actor was best known as Shane on The Walking Dead.

Élodie Yung was announced as Elektra in July 2015. Loeb said that after a “worldwide search” Marvel found in her the perfect actress for Elektra’s physicality and psychological complexity. Elektra was introduced as a mystery woman from Matt Murdock’s past, and Yung had played Jinx in G.I. Joe: Retaliation and holds a black belt in karate. Yung said that for Elektra, “This world is a game for her, a chess game.”

Bernthal was careful about where Frank Castle starts the season. He said in June 2016 that the man in this story had not yet become the vigilante and was reeling from the loss of his family.

“The Frank Castle you find in this story is not The Punisher.”

Jon Bernthal, June 2016

Rosario Dawson returns as the nurse Claire Temple.

A MATT-CENTRED SEASON

THE TRIAL OF FRANK CASTLE AND THE RISE OF ELEKTRA

The writers used the Punisher first and held Elektra back. Ramirez and Petrie said that they brought Frank Castle in by having Nelson and Murdock take his case, which let them explore the Punisher while keeping Matt front and center, while Elektra was developed gradually, “brought to a boil” in Petrie’s phrase. In episodes 7 and 8, Matt, Foggy and Karen work together to defend Frank Castle at his trial, with Foggy and Karen growing frustrated with Matt’s performance as his involvement with Elektra compromises the case.

Petrie was open about the danger of the two new characters. He said that they “could hijack a story so easily,” and that the team kept filtering everything through Matt Murdock to stop it happening. Ramirez said they brought Frank into Hell’s Kitchen as organically as they could, and the writers deliberately strained the trio of Matt, Foggy and Karen from the first season.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus credits the season’s action but says its new adversaries cannot quite fill the void left by Wilson Fisk, and critics split on whether the Punisher’s introduction felt like a trailer for his own series.

ACTION DESIGN

THE EPISODE 3 STAIRWELL FIGHT AND ITS EMMY NOMINATIONS

Season 1 had a hallway fight, and Season 2 answered it in episode 3, “New York’s Finest.” The eight-minute sequence, in which Matt fights down a stairwell, was filmed in a real Long Island City building, with Matt entering the fight with a gun duct-taped to his palm and a chain. Stunt and fight coordinator Philip Silvera said the camera work involved whip pan tricks and “Texas Switches,” and Chris Brewster doubled for Charlie Cox.

Silvera said the stairwell fight took about three days to film, compared with two and a half for the first season’s hallway, and that the idea behind it was Daredevil “descending into hell” against a gang of bikers, testing whether he would cross a line into lethal violence.

The series earned two 2016 Emmy nominations. Silvera was nominated for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a drama series, limited series or movie, and a team led by supervising sound editor Lauren Stephens was nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series, for “New York’s Finest.”

THE REWATCH

A BINGE RELEASE, A PUNISHER SPINOFF AND A THIRD SEASON

Netflix released all 13 episodes on 18 March 2016, with runtimes from 48 minutes (“New York’s Finest”) to 60 minutes (“Penny and Dime” and “Seven Minutes in Heaven”). The season is violent, with graphic gun violence and scenes of torture, so some viewers may want to check the content first.

Symphony Advanced Media, which tracks a sample of 15,000 people through a smartphone app that identifies programs from TV audio, estimated an average audience of 8.3 million viewers aged 18 to 49 over the season’s first 35 days, ranking it sixth among original streaming shows. That is a sampled third-party estimate from a different firm and method than the Luth Research estimate for Season 1.

The Punisher soon had his own story. Netflix confirmed a standalone series for Bernthal’s character in April 2016, and it was released on 17 November 2017. Season 3 of Daredevil was announced on 21 July 2016 during the Luke Cage panel at San Diego Comic-Con. The series ran for three seasons.

Rotten Tomatoes lists an 81% critics’ score from 57 reviews and an 89% audience score. Metacritic gives the season a 68 from 13 critics. In the Marvel Marathon it sits in the Marvel TV shows in order guide between Agent Carter Season 2 and WHIH Newsfront Season 2, and in the MCU timeline guide between Ant-Man and Luke Cage Season 1.