Daredevil facing new challenges in Season 2
Success, Charlie Cox is learning, doesn’t beget a chance to relax. Instead, the hit status of his Marvel/Netflix show Daredevil only increases expectation.
“It’s almost like because of the response from the first season, the pressure is on to maintain a quality and keep the show as interesting and as unique as it was in the first season. Which, of course, is a tough challenge,” Cox said ahead of Friday’s second-season release.
“Obviously I’m thrilled that we’ve been given this opportunity, and hopefully we can live up to all the expectations that we now have.”
Season 2 brought other changes, as well. Steven DeKnight, who produced the first season, left to work on the Transformers film franchise. And the first season was allowed to develop gradually over 13 episodes, as Cox’s character, Matt Murdock, evolved into becoming the title crimefighter in the horned, red-and-black suit.
Cox said he was impressed with the new producers, Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie, and how they handled the second season’s accelerated pace.
“I was very impressed that Marco and Doug were willing to try something different,” Cox said. “Rather than try to re-create something from last year because it proved to be a success, they recognized that the second season(s), of television shows are difficult anyway, and (that), the best thing to do was to try to reinvent it in its own way, while keeping all the elements that had made it successful. I did think it was smart that they didn’t try to stick to the same format.”
Part of that new, faster approach involved giving Daredevil a formidable adversary in this season’s first episode. Enter Frank Castle, the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), who stages a heavily armed, one-man war against the mobsters he feels are responsible for taking away his family.
This season will include Daredevil’s internal battle over the Punisher’s actions. Daredevil wants the Punisher to be put away over his willingness to kill bad guys. But as we’ll see, the Punisher isn’t the clear-cut enemy Daredevil thinks he is.
“I think initially, Matt would like to believe that there is another guy in town (the Punisher), and if he can bring him to justice, everything can return to normal again,” Cox said. “However, he discovers pretty quickly that Matt Murdock (Daredevil), and Frank Castle (Punisher), aren’t as dissimilar as he would like to believe that they are.
“So really, the second season isn’t about bringing a big bad ( guy), to justice,” the London-born actor continued. “It’s more (about), asking kind of a more pertinent question: What is a hero? What is heroic behaviour? What is vigilante justice all about, and what makes it valid and what makes it invalid?
In the new season’s early episodes, Daredevil and the Punisher spend much time in attack mode: Daredevil constantly aims to take down his enemy, and the Punisher always seems to have a counter move. And those scenes rely on Cox and Bernthal pushing each other as performers.
“The screen just eats him up as soon as he comes on camera,” Cox said of Bernthal.
“And so when (the producers), told me that they wanted to cast him, I remember thinking: ‘That’s a show that I want to be a part of.’ Because I think he’s such an extraordinary actor, and he’s so bold and brave and full. ... You can’t turn up and wing it with Jon — you really have to know what you’re doing. I think he’s one of the great actors of our generation.”
This season, other characters will complicate Daredevil’s life, as well, as he also battles his emotions. The producers said that the hero will have three loves this season: Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Elektra (Elodie Yung), and New York City.
Given the success of Marvel/Netflix’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones, Cox said that it’s not too early to get excited about the eventual teamup of all of Netflix’s superheroes. (Luke Cage debuts in September, and Finn Jones was recently cast as the Marvel martial artist Iron Fist.)
“I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I think it’s going to be ( great) ... ,” Cox said of the eventual Avengers-like teaming of the heroic Hell’s Kitchen’s streetfighters. “It’s going to be really interesting to see how the four worlds come together and exist within the same show. I’m fascinated to see how that happens.”