Cast: Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter, Finn Jones, Eka Darville, Elden Henson, Jessica Henwick, Simone Missick, Ramón Rodríguez, Rachael Taylor, Deborah Ann Woll, Élodie Yung, Rosario Dawson, Scott Glenn, Sigourney Weaver

Writers: Douglas Petrie, Marco Ramirez, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, Drew Goddard

Directors: S. J. Clarkson, Peter Hoar, Phil Abraham, Uta Briesewitz, Stephen Surjik, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Farren Blackburn

So here we are at the end of the so-called “Phase 1” of the Marvel/Netflix saga. We’ve witnessed the trials and tribulations of our four titular Defenders separately, to varying results. The general consensus is that the quality has dipped steadily since the first season of Daredevil (although personally I regard the first season of Jessica Jones as the best project that’s come out of this endeavour) – so viewers, while hopeful, came into The Defenders somewhat hesitantly. So is this a crossover worth watching? WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

Let’s start with what matters most: the chemistry between the four central characters. Safe to say, this is off-the-scale. No matter what combination you put Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist into, it just works seamlessly. The relationship between Cage and Danny Rand ripped straight from the comic books works just as brilliantly on-screen, and the relationship between Matt Murdock and Jones is unexpectedly great. In any case, this chemistry does the show a lot of favours, and sets up a lot of potential if Marvel wants to do smaller crossovers in their respective solo shows.

The show takes a while (three episodes) to get to these characters meeting, which other critics haven’t taken well to. However, by building up to this meeting between the four heroes, The Defenders not only builds the relationships between specific pairing, but also allows for individual character development you’d think crossovers like this would be tempted to avoid, for fear of disrupting the stories of the individual shows. Danny Rand reaps the most benefit from this, with the character coming across as much more charismatic and actually skilled than in his own show – and it helps that Finn Jones seems to getting better direction and training in order to play the character effectively.

The rest of the characters in the show don’t get so well off in this regard. They appear to be general cardboard cut-outs of the people we know from the other shows, and are given very little to do, barely affecting the plot whatsoever. There’s even a point where they all get shoved into a single room for most of the season, ostensibly to get them all out-of-the-way. It’s briefly nice to see all these characters in one room, but The Defenders does absolutely nothing with it. Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), Misty Knight (Simone Missick) and Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) matter more to the story towards the end, but by then it’s too little too late, and unearned within this show at least.

The villains of the show also fall victim to poor character development. The Hand have been ever-present through the Marvel/Netflix shows (especially Daredevil and Iron Fist), progressively becoming worse with each appearance. This decline in quality hits its critical mass as the Hand come across as ineffectual, inconsistent and downright idiotic. Its main leader, Alexandra Reid, comes across as vapid, despite being played by Sigourney Weaver. In additional, all the Hand leaders, including returning characters Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho) and Bakuto (Ramón Rodríguez), all come across as rather weak – yes, the heroes need to have some stock in battles, but a highly skilled warrior being knocked out by one punch from an alcoholic detective takes the tension out of the show by quite a bit.

Also returning is Elektra (Élodie Yung), who becomes a vessel for the mysterious Black Sky and used as a pawn by Reid. Her particular character development makes absolutely no sense – when the expected moment comes where she regains her own independent faculty, her motives twist into something that doesn’t ring true with how the character’s been presented in this universe. It plays as a cheap trick by the writers to have a sudden switcheroo, which doesn’t work at all in a show with a much shorter length than its counterparts, that have also employed this tactic to varying degrees of success.

It’s this patchiness in terms of writing and development that hampers the season. You enjoy pretty much every scene any of the four main characters are in, but other scenes tend to bore or irritate. The plot and motives of the characters don’t entirely make sense – so the Hand needs to open a door with the Iron Fist to get black goo that lets them resurrect themselves, but apparently this wasn’t an issue before, when Bakuto was very happy to kill Rand without a second thought? And the last of the black goo was used to resurrect Elektra – why exactly? Because Alexandra is an idiot? Is this black goo the same that made Harold Meachum immortal without repeated use? And the hierarchy of the Hand doesn’t really make sense – are Gao and co. under Alexandra, or equal? The show keeps flip-flopping between the two. Speaking of, what happened to the divisions in the Hand, like between Gao and Bakuto? And-

You get where this is going.

The Defenders simply continues the trend of these Marvel/Netflix shows declining in quality halfway through their seasons. This is despite the much shorter length of only eight episodes, and the relatively streamline plot. While many factors could be pointed at, this review points at the Hand being a weak villain, and the show crumbling under the continuity that group bring with them.

But despite all the issues laid out above, The Defenders is still an enjoyable ride, which speaks volumes of the four central characters. They’re brilliantly written, and portrayed fantastically by Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter and Finn Jones. It’s just a shame they’ve been put into a meandering story that falls apart under scrutiny. However, if you don’t look too far into it, you’ll enjoy The Defenders for what it is.

Rating: 3/5 arbitrary mentions of being the Immortal Iron Fist, the living weapon, sworn enemy of the Hand, stop talking Danny