Daredevil Season 2 Trailer Breakdown

The wait is nearly over. You can get your weekend-binge fix on for Daredevil Season 2 when it lands on March 18th – and judging by the recently released trailer, it’s going to be a bruising encounter.

Putting the focus squarely on the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) this season looks – if you can believe it – to be even darker than the first.

Injected with a shot of confidence following the acclaimed first run, there are few Marvel references in this one – instead, it’s very much played up as Daredevil Vs the Punisher (which, according to writer/co-executive producer Marco Ramirez was how it was referred to internally by the staff) – with all the morally dubious grey areas up for scrutiny.

Frank Castle is positioned as the villain of the piece but it’s not as black and white as that and with Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Electra (Elodie Yung) thrown into the mix, it’s hardly likely that anyone will come out of this battle without blood on their hands.

For those not in the know, Frank Castle was a soldier who, after returning to civilian life, became the vigilante known as the Punisher after his family were brutally murdered. Now depending on what angle they choose to go with, Castle’s family are either witnesses to a gangland slaying that ultimately costs them their lives or they are collateral damage following Castle’s brushes with both the mob and the police.

The trailer shies away from glorification and instead portrays Castle as a rogue outsider element who, like a serial killer, is wreaking havoc on everybody else’s turf – if you are currently thinking ‘just like The Joker’ you’re not too far off the mark – however, Castle has a clearly defined and rather bloody code of ethics that the clown prince of crime does not possess.

Or as Marvel’s Head of Television Jeph Loeb puts it:

“What's fantastic about the story is, is that it's created this enormous division in his life, because the woman that he once loved [Electra] has returned, and she certainly has some issues with morality, and how you get the job done, and going on the other end of the spectrum is Frank Castle, who believes that justice needs to be served in a particular way. For Matt, who believes in the law, the question of whether or not he is a vigilante, and whether or not that makes him the same as these people, is something that will drive the story, and will drive Matt.”

What’s great about this is that each character could conceivably carry their own TV series – the fact that we’re being introduced to them through Matt’s (Charlie Cox) spectrum (and eventually The Defenders purvey) the conflicts feel more defined – we’ve had time to live in Matt’s head and now we need to see the limits of that world and watch him develop.

One of those developments is Electra – now, she’s largely absent from this trailer (there’s a final preview due on February 25th, which is probably where we’ll get a closer look at her in action) but in the past, Ramirez has talked of gradually introducing each element:

“We wanted to mix in one ingredient at a time. I think one of the pitfalls when we have this many great characters to play with is wanting to throw them at the wall at the same time and say, like, ‘Look at all of the fun stuff we have’ I mean, it was an exercise in patience, surely, as two huge fans, to actually try to hold back and say, ‘Let's be very careful about this. Let's make sure that even people who aren't aware of who Elektra and Punisher are will be with us on this journey.’ So it's mostly about finding the strongest journey for Matt Murdock to go on and then letting these two characters get into the water with him at the right time for his journey."

Which seems to suggest that she’ll very much be the catalyst for Matt’s recovery – the end of the second act/third act character that offers Matt a way to handle this unstoppable force with all the morally questionable methods she brings (in terms of structure, there was some talk of how the viewer experiences series like this – with binge-watching posing particular problems for act structure. Each episode ends as the other starts so it really is like a 13-hour play in that sense).

On Elektra in particular, Loeb said:

"She challenges Matt’s quest for justice. Who are you doing this for? Why are you doing this? What’s the end goal that you’re trying to achieve? Because she has a very clear agenda in terms of what she’s trying to achieve and it’s very self-motivated. That’s something that should continually push in the audience. The audience should continually be going, ‘No, she’s right. No, he’s right. No, she’s right. No, he’s right.’ If we can do that, then we’ve really achieved something."

So what else can we glean from the trailer?

Well, there’s a rooftop conversation which is quite reminiscent of a story called "The Choice" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon – a sort of violent chess match where, tired of Daredevil’s staunch moral code, the Punisher sets up a fiendish conundrum to test just how flexible that code of honour is, and, not to spoil anything, it’s one of the few times in comic books that we’ve seen the Punisher enact such a plot and, it’s really the only time we’ve seen Daredevil falter (please let this be in Season 2!)

There’s also Frank’s arsenal which is about as expansive as you’d expect it to be, a brief glimpse of Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who’s speech could be referring to either Matt or Frank and the return of Father Lantom (Peter McRobbie) because if there was ever a time to question your faith, it’s now.