The Netflix Marvel series, ranked by season
Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones—who comes out on top?
Image: Photo: PunisherPhoto: Luke CagePhoto: Iron FistPhoto: The DefendersPhoto: Jessica JonesPhoto: DaredevilGraphic: Jimmy Hasse TV Features Kilgrave
After one very powerful, very bejeweled finger snap, the fate of many of Earth’s mightiest heroes—along with about half of all living things, human and otherwise—remains uncertain (though the outlook is not good). But the future of the street-level crimefighters who comprise the Netflix corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has already been settled, thanks to the end of a licensing deal between the streaming platform and comics-entertainment giant. Don’t worry, there’s still time to stream the shows on Netflix; and of course, we can also look forward to new seasons Marvel’s Jessica Jones and The Punisher. But with the small-screen MCU about to wink out of existence after four individual Defenders series—Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist—one stellar spin-off, and one not-quite-super showdown, The A.V. Club ordered one of everything off the Royal Dragon menu and rounded up its resident Marvel fans to rank the shows by season. Behold our list, which is sure to give you something to fight about at your upcoming family gatherings (but not because our rankings are impeachable).
11. Iron Fist season one
Before Iron Fist’s first season stumbled onto the scene, viewers could readily rattle off the weaknesses of the Netflix-Marvel collaborations: fitful pacing and narrative loose ends (found in every single entry on this list); boring supporting characters (in Daredevil and Jessica Jones); a wooden protagonist (sorry, Luke Cage; though at least Mike Colter’s performance gets better as the show goes on); uninspired fight choreography (only Daredevil is mostly free of it). Former showrunner Scott Buck also seemed to have taken an inventory of these failings—particularly the lackluster lead and meandering direction—and, rather than see them as a cautionary tale, he made them the cornerstones of Iron Fist season one. Finn Jones never looked anything but petulant and lost as Danny Rand, the prodigal billionaire and immortal handful of sobriquets. Beyond the introduction of Jessica Henwick as the far more interesting (and worthy of her own series) Colleen Wing, Iron Fist offered little beyond formulaic corporate intrigue and workmanlike fight scenes. At their best, the Netflix Marvel series rose above the street-level action to explore what it means to be a survivor (of what, take your pick). But the only question Iron Fist season one ever posed was why it was ever green-lit. [Danette Chavez]
10. Iron Fist season two
While they might appear next to each other on this list, it’s worth pointing out that there’s a pretty astronomical difference in quality between Iron Fist’s first and second season. New showrunner Raven Metzner clearly took criticisms of the show’s debut season into consideration, downplaying Danny Rand’s annoyingness, beefing up Colleen Wing’s role, and adding some interesting new antagonists, all within the confines of a shortened season. Alas, those improvements weren’t quite enough to make up for the very shaky ground on which Iron Fist was built. Finn Jones remains the weakest lead of the Marvel Netflix universe and Danny Rand its least interesting character. What could’ve been a transitional season to a genuinely great third outing now stands as a so-so ending to a lackluster series. Oh well, at least season two kinda, sorta gave us that Colleen Wing/Misty Knight Daughters of the Dragon storyline we’ve been begging for. [Caroline Siede]
9. Jessica Jones season two
After raising the bar for Marvel’s Netflix offerings with its acclaimed debut, expectations were understandably high for Jessica Jones’ return, which makes its mixed bag of a second season all the more disappointing. Out of the gate, season two lacked the momentum and focus of the first, slogging through the opening half of the season by spending too much time on storylines that ultimately went nowhere, like Simpson’s return or Trish’s relationship with Griffin. Fortunately, somewhere around the sixth episode, the show finally found a sense of urgency, wisely centering the back-half of the season on the traumatic relationship between Jessica and this season’s antagonist, Alisa, which is partly what made the first season so successful. In addition, the finale teased some interesting new developments—Jessica and Trish being estranged, Malcolm smartly removing himself from either of their orbits—that will be explored when the show returns for its third (and final?) season, but they can’t quite make up for what ended up being a unsatisfying sophomore season. [Baraka Kaseko]
8. Daredevil season two
People understandably get down on the second season of Daredevil for meandering in its story and lacking a compelling villain in the faceless ninjas of The Hand (a problem it then bequeathed to The Defenders), but it did two things very well: First, it gave us Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, for which we should be grateful. And second, it finally loosened Matt Murdock the hell up. The stiff upper lip nobility of Charlie Cox’s hero in season one was too stolid by half, neutering his rougher edges, so getting Elektra Natchios back into his life—and letting Matt start to become a more interesting character as a result—was a step in the right direction. Everything with the Punisher was pretty great, meaning you’ve got at least half of a strong season on television, and even when it was having Karen write atrocious newspaper articles or saddling Elektra with burdensome additional twists that pried her character in half a dozen directions, the actors were delivering performances that anchored the sometimes-silly narrative decisions. It may have been occasionally maddening, but the second season of Daredevil still rose above a lot of MCU TV storytelling. [Alex McLevy]
7. Daredevil season three
There is plenty to like in the third season of Marvel’s flagship Defenders series: new showrunner Erik Oleson continuing Daredevil’s legacy as a premier purveyor of bad-ass fight sequences (including the stellar prison one-take), Wilson Bethel’s compelling turn as Benjamin Poindexter, a.k.a. Bullseye, an angsty Matt wallowing in self-pity, succumbing to darkness. But there are a few stumbles that turn what could have been a comeback season for Daredevil into something more middling. For one, Fisk’s seeming omnipotence was a bit too convenient and failed to give the character’s arc any sort of dramatic weight—Kingpin gaining control over the FBI purely through intimidation from inside his prison cell seems… unlikely. On top of that, the clumsily directed finale (where a female character is literally and figuratively “fridged”) lacked a satisfying conclusion to Matt’s story arc, transforming a character riddled with internal conflict into Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky in an instant. Unfortunately, those missteps prevent Daredevil’s third season from being higher on this list. [Baraka Kaseko]
6. The Defenders
It may not have been able to live up to the outsized expectations generated (especially after news broke that Sigourney Weaver was cast as the villain), but there’s a lot to like in the all-star team-up between the four leads of the initial individual Netflix MCU shows. Just the chance to watch Jessica Jones deliver withering put-downs of her fellow heroes made it worth it, but the show contributed some other notable strengths: Well-coordinated fights that took advantage of pairing up their various powers; transforming Danny Rand from his nigh-unbearable self in season one of Iron Fist to a more comic-relief figure; and—in its best moments—a smart fusion of wisecracking superhero quips and compelling bad-guy beatdowns. It spent too much time clearing its throat and hemming and hawing over its various personalities, but in the end it delivered enough flash and fun to merit our time. Did we mention it made Danny Rand bearable? That’s accomplishment aplenty. [Alex McLevy]
5. Luke Cage season two
After the ill-timed demise of Cottonmouth (a perfectly dapper and menacing Mahershala Ali) almost cratered the back half of Luke Cage’s first season, showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker applied a holistic approach to what was ailing his series while continuing his exploration of U.S. blackness, social inequities, and reclamation. He traded Mariah’s (Alfre Woodard, at her most imperious) moral equivocating for a devious heel turn, rightly elevated Misty Knight (Simone Missick) to co-lead status, and strengthened Luke’s connection to Harlem while also venturing into Brooklyn, where the patient and cunning Bushmaster (Mustafa Shakir) lay in wait—all of which came close to justifying the 13-episode count. (There are just some walls that just can’t be punched through.) And in addressing the villain void, Luke Cage also dealt with its hero problem. In season two, Mike Colter moved better (that “church dad” dab notwithstanding), conveyed greater emotional depth, and otherwise provided a solid core for the series. Of course, as this list attests, a more compelling and fleshed-out Luke Cage doesn’t necessarily make for a better season of Luke Cage. But it does make us feel the loss of the show much more keenly. [Danette Chavez]
4. Luke Cage season one
Similar to its comic book counterpart, Luke Cage was the MCU’s first series to center on a black lead, which showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker used to launch an exploration of blackness, one that starts with the setting: the historically black neighborhood of Harlem. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk may hem and haw about “my city,” but Daredevil and Jessica Jones’ Hell’s Kitchen never felt as characteristic as Luke Cage’s Harlem. The celebrated New York neighborhood has a reputation for being a hotbed for black culture, which Coker used to the show’s advantage, whether highlighting some of the world’s most prominent black artists on the stage of Harlem’s Paradise, reckoning with the realities of gentrification alongside Mariah and Cottonmouth, or fanboying over Method Man in a bodega. The first season understandably gets some flak for taking a left turn three-quarters of the way in, leaning hard into the realms of camp as Diamondback was introduced and the show explored Luke’s origins. But how the show examined the various aspects of blackness, coupled with confident direction and strong performances from Alfre Woodard, Mahershala Ali, and Simone Missick, positioned Luke Cage among the most promising of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s small-screen properties. [Baraka Kaseko]
3. The Punisher season one
He may have started as an antagonist in season two of Daredevil—and not even the primary villain, at that—but Jon Bernthal’s interpretation of the Punisher was so electric, so raw, and so damn watchable, it wouldn’t be surprising if Netflix was scrambling to sign him up for a solo series before the bodies had stopped twitching on the ground of the prison hallway in his brutally compelling fight sequence. As Frank Castle, Bernthal plays a man obsessed with killing anyone and everyone even indirectly responsible for the death of his wife and child, only to become ensnared in a conspiracy that reaches back to his days as a special forces soldier. The initial season was a triumph of exploring masculine identity, a fierce and unvarnished look at the development of a man’s psyche both before and after family. Better still, for as good as the battle scenes often were, the tense back-and-forth conversations between Frank and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s David Lieberman, a.k.a. Micro, were some of the most honest and intimate discussions between men yet seen in the MCU. [Alex McLevy]
2. Daredevil season one
Not only did Daredevil’s first season launch the entire Marvel Netflix universe, it established its fundamental DNA—from the street-level superheroism to the on-the-nose thematic dialogue to Rosario Dawson stealing every scene she’s in. Though not quite as emotionally rich as Jessica Jones, Daredevil’s debut season is still gritty, stripped down superhero TV done very right. Vincent D’Onofrio’s flawless portrayal of criminal kingpin Wilson Fisk came at a time when the MCU was in desperate need of compelling villains. And in a less showy role, Charlie Cox brought wonderful earnestness to blind lawyer-by-day vigilante-by-night Matt Murdock. Daredevil’s first season is a fascinating mix of gory, cynical violence and loving, empathetic character work. You’re as likely to remember the bloody head-smashing deaths, as you are the sweet “avocados at law” friendship between Matt and his best friend Foggy. And while many have tried, no other Marvel Netflix show has ever come close to rivaling Daredevil when it comes to action. The brutal but grounded one-take hallway fight in the second episode still stands as the most iconic sequence in the Marvel Netflix universe. [Caroline Siede]
1. Jessica Jones season one
The race to the top was a close one, as the first seasons of Daredevil, The Punisher, and Jessica Jones all offer street justice (or, as the case may be, vengeance), resonant storytelling, and simmering, multifaceted performances from their lead actors. But what sets Jessica Jones season one above all other contenders is its singular vision. Under showrunner Melissa Rosenberg, the series didn’t just nail the look and tone of a superhero show—it reimagined what a superhero show could be. In this case, it’s a “feminist neo-noir” starring Krysten Ritter, who seems to have retained custody of Chloe’s acid tongue, as the hard-drinking detective and abuse survivor. The first season followed Jessica as she initially resisted the “hero” label only to throw herself into helping other survivors and taking down Kilgrave (David Tennant), whose twisted sense of devotion was more monstrous than blatant cruelty. There were gratifying beatdowns, a visit from everyone’s favorite big-hearted nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), as well as the introduction of a neighboring badass and love interest (Mike Colter as Luke Cage). Not even the Marvel Netflix series’ characteristic loss of momentum could derail the show’s pursuit of closure, or undermine its harrowing yet sensitive look at trauma recovery. Rosenberg and Ritter could easily have delivered a solid crimefighting drama, but in addressing some harsh realities, they soared above expectations. [Danette Chavez]
328 Comments
Iron Fist, Season 1, has one sole but amazing redeeming quality. It shows what should happen to people who prefer vanilla ice cream. Otherwise, hot garbage.Good list, though. Can’t believe I watched all of this (except IF season 2). I’ve wasted my life.
It’s much worse than vanilla ice cream. It’s like Halo Top brand vanilla “ice cream”.
It’s like the batch of vanilla ice cream the factory forgot to add the vanilla flavoring to.
Also, someone substituted salt for sugar.
Also, Finn Jones urinated in it.
Damn… someone’s never had proper vanilla ice cream.You know, where the vanilla is an actual “flavour” rather than just a synonym for “bland”.
French vanilla ice cream, where the colour is yellow rather than blinding white, that stuff … *chef’s finger kiss*
Question: are Deborah Ann Woll and Eldon Henson terrible actors or are they badly directed? Even Rosario Dawson is a bit flat in the first season of Daredevil so I’m leaning to the latter. But Daredevils casting director is excellent. Dawson, Elodie Yung, Ayelet Zurer, Jon Bernthal and Vincent D’Onofrio are perfect.
I couldn’t give two shits for Karen until the episode in season 3 that focused on her, that was actually really well done and Woll acted the hell out of it.I still don’t care about Foggy but I don’t think that’s Henson’s fault, I didn’t like the character in the comics either.
Woll has always been a bit one-note, but I think she’s just fine in DD and was probably the most consistently good character on True Blood.
Neither. They’re both perfectly fine. You’re describing some alternate show that isn’t Daredevil.
I mentioned this a while back on the review of The Defenders season finale, but I still love it when they show disbelief at the abilities and origin stories of the others, when a few years ago they all watched a Norse God fly up and call down lightning from the top of the Chrysler Building with his magic hammer in order to fight an army of space aliens attacking the city from an interdimensional hole in the sky.
The Hammer Guy! Who is friends with The Green Guy! They fought together in The Incident.
And The Flag Waver!That one really pisses me off, too, b/c Cap isn’t some chauvinistic douchebag Fox News commentator.
Yeah, that and the “flag waver” going around, kicking aliens in the face in a bright red, white and blue costume. The disconnect between these series and the films was ALWAYS in the back of my mind, and made a lot of the logic and disbelief seem silly. Really? Dude with a glowing fist that can punch stuff hard is a stretch? But not, you know, the Incredible Fucking Hulk!
At least with the Hulk, or Black Widow or Hawkeye, you could reason that their monikers were not public knowledge in universe. But Tony literally said on television that he was Iron Man. And Captain America was a war hero!
Yeah there’s been a solid history of super powered people and heroes leading into the Netflix shows, the disbelief of each other’s powers was always very odd. Also, I remember the first season of Netflix Daredevil had a promo shot that had Avengers Tower in the background, it was never seen again in another Netflix MCU show, but the Avengers seemed common knowledge throughout New York, Jessica Jones even mentioned “the big green guy”. Continuity and disconnect with the films was a messy part of these shows for me.
It’s really stupid that both budget and non communication between the tv and film side of the MCU made for a boring tv universe. Spider-Man Homecoming really showed how the street level of the MCU worked. Captain America doing PSAs, robbers wearing avengers masks, it made a lot more sense than what the tv series did by sweeping it all under the rug and never mentioning it again.
If legal and contract reasons prevent you from showing Stark Tower in all your wide shots of the NYC skyline, then STOP USING SO MANY WIDE SHOTS OF THE NYC SKYLINE!! It felt like every episode of any of these series had at least one shot that Stark Tower should have clearly been seen in. Very frustrating.
I think it was more of a budget issue. Shoving a large building into the NYC skyline seems expensive. Also the heads of the tv and film divisions at Marvel studios apparently hated each other so maybe they didn’t want to share assets anyway.
So if it’s a budget problem, then simply turn the camera so you’re not showing the spot where the large building should be.
Jeph Loeb had a real bullshit answer when he was asked about it. Something like, “You can’t see every building from every part of the city.”Yeah, no shit Sherlock, but you can see every building when you have shots of the skyline from the outer boroughs or a downtown high-rise.
It’s not that they hate each other. The TV heroes could’ve been in IW but for the fact the movie was jam-packed as fuck.
Also, they hate each other. Somebody hates someone, is what i am saying for sure.
Its probably 100% Perlmutter. He is a world class dick that Disney is sorta stuck with at the moment.
Right. Feige was able to get the life raft nobody’s yet handed Jeph Loeb. Even though it’s ABC Studios that’s co-producing all of the Marvel shows, it’s not occurred to anybody to move Marvel Television under that umbrella.
Dick that saved them from bankruptcy, mind you.
Dick that drove the company to bankruptcy in the first place as wellAlso the dick who was fine with replacing Terrance Howard with Don Cheadle because all black people looked the same. Also the dick who is buddy buddy with Trump. Perlmutter is the worst
1) The comic book bubble burst on everyone in the 90’s
2) Ike wasn’t the reason Terrance got canned. If anything, it was RDJ negotiating for a higher salary at the expense of his co-stars.
3) But yes, Trump sucks
Ike may be shrewd and have questionable allegiances, but his supposed negative impact on Marvel is way overstated.
“Shoving a large building into the NYC skyline seems expensive.” LOL, wut? Adding a distant skycraper to a skyline in what’s very often a static shot is one of the cheapest and easiest f/x jobs there is. (Which doesn’t explain why Agents of SHIELD also failed to do it, but that’s another story.) If there were character walking directly below the building, with the camera at shoe level pointing up, then, yeah, that might cost a few bucks more. But individual buildings, being inanimate objects that don’t have to convincingly appear as human/animal/alien, are about as easy to add and subtract as they come.
Most of the skyline shots on any of those shows were sweeping panorama shots. That’s pretty expensive to add in.
I would be really surprised if legal or contract prevented that. My bet is that the TV division and the Film division didn’t really talk to each other(at least after season one shield) and Netflix release schedules are kinda dart board guesses it seems, so its very hard to coordinate where and when these shows take place in the greater MCU. I mean do they show Stark Tower, Avengers Tower or whatever the building is now or will be(My bet is that when the Fox merger finalizes, a famous little marvel family is gonna change that A to a 4 and move in)
It’s all because Feige was tired of working for the tightfisted shithead Ike Perlmutter.
Its almost as if the TV division is run by a complete moron….Oh wait
I just rewatched ‘Homecoming’ (on Christmas day, actually), and it’s amazing how they actually make “friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man” more than just a catchphrase. You get the sense that New Yorkers really like this guy, and recognise that he does have superpowers of some sort but is not in the same league as Thor or Captain America. He’s their superhero.
Don’t forget bootleg footage of the attack. Also makes me wonder: are there dramatized movies of Iron Man and Captain America *in* the MCU?
I think Captain America mentions he had a TV show made about him at some point. They all definitely have comic books about themselves in the MCU
The most galling thing of all? These people are all New Yorkers. New Yorkers live for proving that they’re totally immune to being weirded out. Especially in Marvel Comic, where the whole setting is practically a love letter to the city.
I can buy New Yorkers not talking about the Avengers, despite the fact that they all live a ten-minute cab ride away from Stark Tower. But it wouldn’t be from disbelief: it would be because “Yeah so what? So aliens invaded, no big whoop, this is New Yoak. Whadda you, a tourist?”
I CANNOT accept that anyone would talk about The Incident in hushed tones, only obliquely referring to the world’s most famous celebrities, in a way that can only be described as trepidation.
It’s Ghostbusters Syndrome. In that movie’s universe, 8 million New Yorkers personally witness an army of ghosts and demons nearly destroy the entire city. But for some reason when the sequel takes place 5 years later everyone has completely forgotten about this and treats Venkman & Co like nutjobs when they warn that it’s happening again.
I think it’s more interesting that they have that disbelief after the unbelievable stuff they each went through. It’s a sort of humanising myopia.Luke Cage still expressing disbelief in Danny’s origin after fighting an army of undead ninjas in the middle of a dragon skeleton, now that’s another story 😛
Luke Cage literally fell apart in the last two episodes.This video perfectly sums up the Luke Cage vs Diamondback match of the last two episodes:And the irony is that the guys who made this video made WAY better fight scenes than the people behind Iron Fist Season 1. Why couldn’t Jeph Loeb hire a bunch of black otakus to run Netflix MCU alongside Drew Goddard?
My main problem with Diamondback was how he was built up through the first half of the season. Shades kept threatening to tell Diamondback what Cottonmouth was doing. It made me think he was this big time crime boss that oversaw everything. Almost like a Kingpin.But it turned he was just some crazy guy who was related to Luke Cage and had a super suit. He’s not a very good boss if he keeps killing off his employees….
If there’s one thing I want action/superhero movies to stop doing straight away, it’s making the villain some long-lost/unknown relative of the hero who is entirely motivated by how much they hate the hero. It completely tanked *SPOILER* the last James Bond film, ‘Spectre’, as well. Blofeld should be a calculating criminal mastermind, not some dude who’s pissed that Daddy loved adopted James Bond a little more.
This! Why do the stakes have to be so personal? Why can’t the bad guy just be a bad guy with his own motivations?When Blofield revealed himself, Bond should’ve said “Who the fuck is Blofield?”“Blofield, man. Outlaw?”
I think by far the worst character in the Marvel Netflix shows is Danny Rand, Former Immortal Iron Fist, Failed Protector of Kun-Lun, and Minor Annoyance to The Hand. By the end of Defenders I was actually rooting for Stick to kill Danny Rand, Former Immortal Iron Fist, Failed Protector of Kun-Lun, and Minor Annoyance to The Hand.It’s wasn’t just the horrible fight choreography that bogged down the character but it was also Finn Jones’ terrible acting. Which explains why in GoT a lot of scenes from the book featuring Ser Loras past the first book were cut from the show or gave him no dialogue. The second worst character is Robyn from Season One of Jessica Jones. She physically, emotionally, and possibly sexually abuses her twin brother, puts 5 people in danger including herself, is indirectly responsible for Hope’s suicide, has the gall to tell Malcom to kill himself, and yet the show still pretends that her character deserves any sympathy.
Worst. Iron Fist. Ever.
Which explains why in GoT a lot of scenes from the book featuring Ser Loras past the first book were cut from the show or gave him no dialogue.Ouch. Brutal but most likely true. Looking back recently, I noticed that even in those few scenes he had he was awful; we were all just too busy listening to the dialogue and looking elsewhere to really notice. But the showrunners sure noticed and just didn’t want to spend all their energy on improving this actor playing a tertiary character. They were already busy enough with riding Sophie Turner near to death in order to give us a passable performance.The actor playing Renly or even the male prostitute/honeypot (currently a rising star) would both have done a much better job playing Danny Rand, no doubt.
I’ve never seen Turner in anything other than GoT, so I don’t know how she compares there. Is she worse in Apocalypse? Is everyone in that movie roughly equally bad, or does she stand out?
Sophie Turner is lazily struggling with a not-passable American accent in Apocalypse, and so doesn’t really give much of a performance at all.
Haven’t seen Turner in GoT, but she’s awful in Apocalypse. And she stands out, largely because some of the other people in the movie are Fassbender, McAvoy, and Lawrence, who can do good work without good material. I suspect that Turner’s one of those actors who shouldn’t ever be asked to do an American accent, because it flattens out their performance overall. Or she might just be a lousy actor.
She’s kind of a void in the X-Men verse. There’s just not much there for her character. They’ve got a lot of character ground to make up in Dark Phoenix. Maybe Turner can do it, who knows, but GoT was a long slow-burn character build from “I’m just a stewpid stew-pid little girl!” to her slow-walk smirk as bloody dogs eat a man alive. (;-)>That’s six years of acting vs a 2hr 15 minute movie where she invariably has less or equal screen time with Jennifer Lawrence & Michael Fassbinder: two actors with buckets of charisma comparatively.
Apocalypse was not a good movie, and most of the characters barely got any spotlight, so it’s hard to tell if they could have been good at it. I think Olivia Munn may have had 1 spoken line, and that was seriously disappointing.
equally bad
The thing is Danny Rand is not all that interesting of a character in general. He is your typical white savior narrative, sprinkle some of Batman’s rich with dead parents stuff and add Kung Fu. He was not all that popular in Marvel comics most of the time. To be honest, neither was Luke Cage. He was a walking stereotype with strength, bullet proof skin and weaponized levels of “street smarts”. It honestly wasn’t until they both kinda failed solo and got put together and became Heroes for Hire that they were ever popular or interesting. Well at least till the 2000s when Bendis tried to make Luke Cage a thing by putting him everywhere. My eyes can’t roll back far enough when I think about that Avengers team that had Luke Cage, Wolverine and Spider-man on it.
Avengers always had a rotating door on its roster. I’m sure Jarvis was annoyed with cleaning up blue fur from the Beast.
They did but I always felt like certain really popular characters sorta stayed away. Wolverine and Spider-Man just don’t seem like good fits for the team
Iron Fist has been pretty popular ever since Brubaker and Fractions Immortal Iron Fist run; he was one of the main characters in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series, one of the playable fighters in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, etc. Also hasn’t been anything approximating “white savoir” in a long, long time. Said comic book run did a lot to deconstruct that idea.
Ah but let me bake your noodle a bit. Is he popular so he appeared in those mediums or did he appear in those mediums so he got more attention thus becoming popular again?
One feeds the other, really. It’s all quite self perpetuating, because obviously at the end of the day, be it on film, tv, comics or cartoons, Marvel are selling their characters.
Chronologically though, he was practically in character limbo until Immortal Iron Fist, which retooled the character a bit, almost in a soft-reboot sense. The critical acclaim from his run gave the higher ups faith in the character, so they began to insert him into more properties at the time.
It’s not too dissimilar to the route they went with Captain Marvel.
I can agree with that
Danny Rand’s great in the right hands, not at all like Batman despite the dead parents and money (if anything, he’s closer to Green Arrow in his politics). Both Danny and Luke were born as insulting stereotype characters until someone had the brilliant idea of putting them together so that the characters could take the air out of (and comment on) the stereotypes they represented. While I didn’t love Bendis’s overexposure of Luke, either, I’ve got to give him credit for modernizing the character.
uh what…Iron Fist had a good run in the 2000’s that was considered one of the best runs of the entire decade..
Yeah that was the start of putting him back in things.
Finn Jones was bad and terribly miscast in this role. But even he wasn’t nearly as bad as the bulk of the supporting cast. The women who played Colleen Wing and Madame Gau gave genuinely good performances. Everyone else was embarassingly bad. Like, soap opera-level bad. The people playing the Meachums in particular were almost unwatchable in every scene of season 1, and they had a LOT of screen time. Setting aside the myriad other problems that plagued Iron Fist, the sheer difference in overall acting talent between its cast and the cast of the other MTU series’ was shocking.
The worst part is that one of the guys on the show is a real martial artist who was trying to get the part of Danny, but ended up being passed over because they wanted to go with someone more bland and doughy.
Who?
Lewis Tan. He plays Zhou Cheng for one episode.
The worst character is what happened to Claire in and after Iron Fist. Danny was semi-decent in Defenders, proving the problem wasn’t the actor so much as the writing and producers.Defenders itself was a decent season, but the problem is it had the same plot as Iron Fist and came after it. If Defenders came first and IF season 1 didn’t exist, or was good in an alternate universe, Defenders would have been received much better.
The fault isn’t on Finn Jones, it’s on the showrunners and writing. There’s only so much an actor can do with half-baked material while learning choreography on the spot. He was much better in the role in Defenders, Luke Cage season 2 and Iron Fist season 2.
GoT?
Defenders above… well anything, but especially Daredevil Season 3 is ridiculous. RIDICULOUS
Jessica Jones s1 is way too riddled with filler and obvious feet-dragging to take the top spot too, pretty much as soon as Kilgrave’s parents come in the mixture it’s a hot mess until the end. there’s at least an argument to be made for Punisher, which uses its time wisely, but it’s a fight between DD1 and DD3 to the top for me no matter whatand Defenders is at rock bottom
I’m fine ranking Iron Fist Season 1 at the bottom below Defenders. I, at least, made it through Defenders… I couldn’t make it more than halfway through episode 2 of Iron Fist Season 1.That said, I don’t really have any strong feelings about the list, just the incredible suckiness of Finn Jones in that role.
You beat me. I got about ten minutes into episode one before I decided ‘Iron Fist;’ was terminally unwatchable.
IF season 1 just gets so much worse as it gets to the end. If you thought the fist half was bad, I promise you the last 3 episodes are worse than you can imagine.Defenders was actually pretty good on its own, but it had the same plot as IF (Hand scheming to gain immortality) and came right after it, so nobody was going to give it a break.
I hated the weird incest siblings/twins(?) subplot in jessica jones season 1 so much. I still wonder what the point of them was. Were we supposed to feel bad for them or were they supposed to be LOL INCEST IS GROSS?
Punisher probably does the best at avoiding the slog in the middle. That by itself puts it in the top 5.
I think Micro by himself puts Punisher in the top 5, probably the best non-Matt character in the whole universe. add in a great Bernthal performance and two pretty good villains and you have a show that’s consistently very good even if it never reaches the highs the others could reach
There is a turning point in this Marvel TV universe: when Cottonmouth dies. Before that, everything ranges from good to excellent. After that it becomes bad with a few good moments.
This is the correct take.That’s about the time I lost most of my interest. I still watched them all and I hoped for some greatness, but I stopped looking forward to them.It took me forever to start watching Luke Cage S2 and Iron Fist S2. I still haven’t finished Daredevil S3 and I am not even sure I want to. I have other things to do.
“Shit we got a really good actor for this role! … Shit, we got a really good actor for this role.”
Trivia: Ali was only available for half the season; Cottonmouth was gonna have to be written out no matter what.
I wouldn’t say it was excellent, but it was good. You are right that the show goes completely to shit when Cottonmouth is killed however. Same problem Jessica Jones had with The Purple Man. If you make a really compelling villain surrounded by a bunch of two dimentional cutouts, you probably shouldn’t be too eager to kill off that villain.
I love Krysten Ritter and wanted to love Jessica Jones, but there was just so much wheel-spinning. I’ve captured Killgrave! Now Killgrave’s captured me! Now I’ve captured Killgrave again! Should have been eight episodes.
Or, at the very least, 8 episodes about Killgrave and 5 episodes that were standalone stories of Jessica being a detective. Like the mix you used to see on the X-Files.
Yes. I desperately wanted some standalone case episodes.
That was exactly what I wanted from Defenders. They so missed the Heroes for Hire boat. The team doing odd jobs and cases for cash (cuz money is always a real problem). It would have been epic and number one on this list.
THIS!
All of these shows would improve vastly if the seasons were cut down to 8, or at least 10 episodes.
Agreed. They all lose steam in the back half.
Counterpoint: The Defenders was still wheel-spinning at 8 episodes or whatever it was. I love JJ and DD but the flaws with regards to the plotting in these shows ran deep.
I agree that the problems went beyond length ( /that’s what she said). I especially hated the story lines where characters lost their powers or couldn’t use their powers for extended stretches of time. Iron Fist is almost 2 seasons of a show about Danny Rand. I thought Defenders was about the right length but far from a perfect show.
Case in point: Defenders was 8, I believe, and just the right length. I disagree that it had too much throat clearing. I dug the cross-pollination of characters in the first episode & a half. By the end of episode 2 they were in the hallway fight – team assembled.
Defenders reminded me of a crossover or graphic novel from back in the 90s. Enjoyable, not great, but still worth reading. The only thing missing was the obligatory Wolverine cameo.
Oh, darn. I posted the EXACT same thing elsewhere. Forgive me.
I’m pro-Jessica Jones, but the very first line of the series is Jessica in voice over saying, “They say New York is the city that never sleeps. But it’s definitely the city that sleeps around.”That’s one of the worst lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard in my life.
Word. Jessica Jones is a great character trapped in a dreadfully mediocre show. She deserves better.
I agree with this. In fact I thought S2 much improved on this dynamic because it made a lot more sense for Jessica to have trouble resolving the conflict with the Big Bad when the stakes were so personal. The repeated ineffectual clashes with Kilgrave turned tragedy into farce, not a good look for a neo-noir story centered on a wounded soul. Eight episodes would have solved the problem, as would making Kilgrave more difficult to find — the usual superhero trope when you want to delay a final showdown is to throw a mini-boss or two in the mix.I rewatched Daredevil S1 ahead of the release of S3 and there is not an ounce of flab on it. All of the Netflix shows have been watchable — yes, even Iron Fist S1 — but D’Onofrio’s take on Wilson Fisk makes that the high-water mark for me. A fairly good rule of thumb seems to be “the more your story has to do with The Hand, the less compelling it is.” That’s not the only thing wrong with Iron Fist S1, but it’s a big part, and the only thing that makes The Defenders work is the banter between the heroes (and especially the secondary characters).
The Hand ruined everything they touched.
You’re exactly right about the Hand. The shows all start to fall apart when they show up in the plot.
“Should’ve been eight episodes” applies to nearly all of the above-mentioned seasons.
It does.
I remember late in JJ’s 1st season run that the show really picked up in momentum and I thought, “Great, now there’s only one more episode as we race towards a killer finale!” And then I realized it was 13 episodes, not ten, and my heart sank.
I’m pretty sure I had the exact same experience.
Literally every netflix marvel show should have been 8 episodes MAX.
That only happened twice. Quite exaggerating.
People can fairly argue which was better, DD S1 or JJS1. That’s a tough call. But Punisher and LCS1 should swap places, then you’re set.
My biggest issue with Season 3 of Daredevil was how unnecessary Julie’s fridging was. All it really accomplished was to make Matt culpable in Bullseye’s rampage and putting a lot of innocent people in danger. Julie’s contribution to the plot ends when she finds out Bullseye was stalking her. It would have made more sense for Bullseye to go on a rampage because Fisk “took him off the team” following the painting incident.
I really liked Julie and Bullseye’s “date” for how it characterized Fisk. The third season of Daredevil wanted Fisk to be some subtle manipulator but the plan to have Bullseye fuck up his encounter with Julie on his own is one of the very few things Fisk does that seems: realistically within his power, at all subtle, or something that could rightfully be called manipulation.
I haven’t watched S3 yet and I have know idea who this “Julie” is. But now I’m disappointed it wasn’t Karen who got ‘fridged b/c fuck anyone who just walks in off the street and suddenly becomes a New York newspaper’s leading investigative journalist.
Mid-Season 3 she gets fired because she won’t reveal that Matt Murdoch is Daredevil and ends up becoming a PI for Nelson & Murdoch.
Pft. Nelson & Murdock ought to be hiring Alias Investigations for that work.
*After getting the last investigative journalist killed by your reckless investigation
Julie was Pointdexter’s lifeline. Even after he had his first big psychotic break, it was her involvement after that, willing to be his new ‘beacon’, which threatened Kingpin’s ability to manipulate Benjamin, which is why Fisk ended up eliminating her. Makes a lot of sense, to me.
I get that but after she found out he was staking her, there was no reason she would bother to listen to what he had to say. It served no purpose for the story to bring her back only to kill her off. Not to mention that the final result leads to Matt putting a lot of innocent people in danger.
She listened because that’s exactly what her job is: she listens to people in trouble and helps them. It wasn’t in line with her character to shun someone in need all of a sudden now – though she did have reason to.
The other thing her death showed is how scarily clockwork Fisk’s operation was and the full extent of his power, that he could make someone disappear in a split second. It was pretty chilling.
But she was still fridged. Her death has nothing to do with her as a character and reduces her to a plot point in Bullseye’s arc. She doesn’t need to die to suit the plot, especially considering the comic has a history of fridging female characters.By the time he tracks down Julie he’s already massacred a room full of innocent people. He’s too far gone to need her as a beacon. Having her come back into the story to literally fridge her was unnecessary. All it accomplished, as I’ve said before is make Matt culpable in Bullseye’s massacre on Fisk’s penthouse.If they needed a reason for why Bullseye would attack Fisk, just have Fisk bench him after the painting incident and remove him from his security detail. Bullseye thinks Fisk is abandoning him and you get your climactic rampage without making Matt an accomplice to murder or relying on shitty tropes.
How else would you mine tension from Pointdexter almost being saved from the precipice? Sure, she could have shut him down a final time but that takes away from Kinpin’s manipulation, which her character was unknowingly caught up in. If Kingpin merely sent her away somehow or if she left town of her own accord, that’s not really enough of a line crossed in terms of incrimination on Fisk’s part. It wouldn’t make sense he’d control someone like a chess piece and just let them leave the board of their own accord. She wasn’t the only person he killed here (that he started making such moves spoke to him either getting sloppy/desperate or overtly confident), so considering that a) Bullseye is a villain and as far as I know fridging is classically used to cause anguish to male protagonists b) her character and death played into Kingpin’s story as much as his, and c) she was one of many end game casualties, I don’t know if I agree with this being a thoughtless ‘fridging’.
I’d flip Daredevil S1 and Jessica Jones S1 and put DDS3 closer to 3 or 4.Defenders should be lower just for its sheer disappointment and negative impact on the entire Marvel Netflix universe. Its aggressive mediocrity probably doomed the whole enterprise.
To me, Jessica Jones always seemed super under-powered in all of these shows, and incredibly under-used in Defenders. I only watched it once, but I seem to remember that her contribution to the climactic confrontation of the show was pulling an elevator up a shaft or something (which is, admittedly, an impressive feat of super strength.)
I want to see her throwing people across the room one handed and shit.
Both Jessica and Luke are wildly underpowered compared to the comics. I’d assume that’s in large part due to not having a budget for having characters fly or throw cars around with ease. There’s also the “street level” and more “realistic” aspect they tried to maintain to differentiate the shows from the super-super-powered characters in the movies.
Yeah, I hate to be one of those “but in the comics!” guys, but in my heart I am. It’s such a disappointment, personally, to see her powers toned down -so- far, especially considering she doesn’t get to be bulletproof or have super senses. It seems like she could still toss a couple cars, and if she couldn’t fly that would be okay.
Would it have been too much to ask to see her fly, just once? I know the character didn’t like doing it, but she flew from wherever her childhood home was to Manhattan in S1 (unseen), so surely the could have done SOMETHING.
Oh, I missed them saying she flew in season 1. That makes it even more disappointing that we never got to see it. >_<
Yeah, the scene is at night if I recall correctly and is shot from far away. Basically she jumps and when we see her next she’s back in Manhattan. Some people think the implication is that she flew there. Nothing is said about it and it’s pretty blink and you’ll miss it. It could’ve just as easily been a long jump to escape Sampson’s team as they were closing in on her, which is what it appeared to be to me.
Well Jessica only ever described it as jumping, or “guided falling,” but it seems she’s capable of very Incredible Hulk-style leaps, so I always took it that she made it from her house to that derelict building in Manhattan in one jump.
Yeah, that’s quite possible from what we see. It is a bit needlessly ambiguous though. If she’s capable of that you’d think it would come in handy more.
Yeah, right after she knocks out Kilgrave at her old house, she runs into one of his bodyguards outside before she can get clear of the trees. Simpson takes him out, then she leaps into the air leaving Simpson and one of his guys looking up and saying “no way,” or something like that.
Even Daredevil is lacking compared to the comics, but it seemed deliberate.
I love Ritter so much, and that elevator grab was one of the best things to ever happen in the MCU. I also choose to believe that makes her stronger than just about anyone but the Hulk and Spider-Man. Definitely stronger than Luke Cage, and theoretically stronger than Captain America, but he did hold down a helicopter in Civil War, which is crazy since Cap isn’t actually supposed to have super strength at all. He is peak physical human not super.
Thor could definitely lift that elevator, did you see that crazy shit in Infinity War to restart that Star Forge?
Ok, yes, Thor definitely- just forgot about him. He’s at the high end of the Marvel super strength scale, close to Hulk.
Defenders was probably the one everyone was looking forward to the most when these were announced. It was the Avengers of the Netflix series!Instead of getting the cool Super-hero landing, we got Bruce Banner flopping onto the Rainbow bridge, just not as funny.
This is the correct take. I don’t disagree with the criticisms of any of these blurbs, just wit their placement. Swap DD1 and JJ1 and then LC1 with DD3 and you’ve got my list.I’m still surprised at how much P1 is flying under the radar. It’s really, really solid.
I rank Punisher w/JJ and DD seasons 1. It could have so easily just been Death Wish-esque but they created something SO good.
P1’s *my* favorite
Defenders would be higher if it came out before Iron Fist soured everyone on the Netflix Marvel universe, and also had the same plot as the worst season of television ever. basically, Defenders was IF season one if it was good, but by then it was too late.
This was my take as well. It was so refreshing to see Daredevil S3, like they are the one who does the superhero TV thing right. I don’t think it gets the credit it deserves. And I was also disappointed in Defenders… maybe I should give it another shot.
Season 1 of Jessica Jones is really great but also about 3 episodes of filler too long to be #1 over Punisher and Daredevil season 1.
Luke Cage and Iron Fist are as bad as each other.
I kind of feel the same way. I legitimately liked S1 of Luke Cage until Diamondback showed up, but I never got around to finishing that season, and I stopped 2 or 3 episodes into S2 of Luke Cage as well. In general, Luke Cage was way more competently made than Iron Fist, but I did think the character was so wooden that it was hard to really be too into it. I actually made it through both seasons of Iron Fist, but a lot of that had to do with its “so bad, it’s good” quality and actively rooting for Danny Rand to screw up.
I feel like anyone who puts that big a gap between the IF and LC seasons is trying to hard.
Luke Cage seems to be graded on the same curve as Black Panther. I can’t imagine why.
I’m white. Luke Cage is a good show. Also you’re in absolute denial if you can’t see the anti-leftist crowd who hate on Black Panther are equally as bias.
I’d say LC at its worst was as bad as IF at its worst, and IF at its best was as good as LC at its best.There was more of LC at its best though, and more of IF at its worst.
I felt Luke Cage was nowhere near as good as people made it out to be, and Iron Fist not as bad.I may be judging them unevenly, but I can’t decouple how I felt about those shows from the expectations I had going in.
JJ season one has like 6 or 7 good episodes. I’d put that WAY lower on the list.
JJ gets a very generous rating for its exceptional villain, but it’s no less a show of a ‘good half’ and ‘bad half’ than Luke Cage S1 or DD S2.
I like all of Luke Cage season 1…then again I’m one of those weirdos who likes the ‘kid with horrible PTSD who had everything taken away from him and was tortured by monks for years’ storyline in Iron Fist season 1.
JJ had 13 quality episodes.
I’d swap DDS3 and LCS1 on the list, but for the most part can’t argue with the rankings.I will say this – I enjoyed the hell out of the Defenders. It wasn’t the best show, the only season we got from it deserves all of the points made against it … but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.
This list is wrong. Daredevil season 3 was amazing. Jessica Jones 2 as well. Top 5 in my opinion
Hot take time!1) JJS1
2) DDS1
3) DDS3
4) LCS1
5) PS1
6) IFS2
7) LCS2
8) Defenders
9) DDs2
10) IFS1
11) JJS2
Defenders should be at or near the the bottom. Daredevil S3 should be near the top.
Other than that, the list is pretty accurate. I’d be interested to see how the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons would be incorporated into the rankings
11. Jessica Jones S2.I’m harsher on this season because I loved S1 so much. Aimless, action-less, and a story that could have been told in 2 hours tops. After The Defenders, you won’t find another 13 episodes that waste more of your time. 10. The Defenders.The single biggest disappointmet of this entire Marvel Netflix endeavour. The only reason I’m not putting it dead last is there are sparks of good in the interplay between our heroes, including Luke and Danny, and a great DD vs IF fight.9. Luke Cage S1.Cottonmouth makes the first half interesting, but only barely. This was still a surprisingly boring show that only got worse once he was out of the picture. It’s the only Netflix series I couldn’t bring myself to finish.8. Iron Fist S1.This show is bad at a lot of things, but one thing it is not, is boring. Danny’s bafoonery makes this funny in a hate-watch sort of way. I admit I liked just laughing at this. At least the supporting cast does what they can to bolster it.7. Luke Cage S2.A mild improvement over S1, but still not much to write home about. There’s a desperation to latch onto new villain Bushmaster because Cage still has the problem of being the least interesting person on his own show. 6. Iron Fist S2.Of all the post-Defenders seasons, I was most impressed by how much better IF got. There’s a great fight every episode, characters are course-corrected, and they (smartly) leaned on Colleen. It ended with a ton of promise.5. The Punisher.Bernthal grunts like an ape and cries like a baby, but he’s good. They give the gun-totting vigilante more pathos than anyone might expect, by focusing on delicate PTSD discussions. I just wish Frank actually dealt with the mafia like he’s supposed to.4. Daredevil S3.It’s hard for tv to make the same villain work across multiple seasons, but Kingpin was great once again. My only criticisms are, it took too long for Agent Nadeem to matter, and for Bullseye to become Bullseye, which speaks to Netflix’s frustrating pacing.3. Daredevil S2.I’m still in love with so much of the DD/Punisher dynamic, and how that challenges him on one side, while the DD/Elektra temptation challenges him on the other. Only some wonky logic with The Hand knicks this incredible season.1. (Tie) Daredevil S1 and Jessica Jones S1.Yes, I’m basically saying it’s all Daredevil at the top. Jessica Jones’s first year is right up there, too. Marvel Netflix got off to such an amazing start, with two shows so good, I can’t decide which is better. Having to put up with years of mediocrity from shows like Heroes, The Cape, Arrow and Gotham, it was hard to imagine superheroes on TV could ever be more than a guilty pleasure. But DD and JJ, coming out of the gate with hard-nosed styles, broken characters and nuanced relationships between hero and villain, stands among the legitimate best of any cable show, drama or otherwise.
This is a much more sensible ranking.
DD all day, son.I’m just glad we got 3 amazing seasons that told a more-or-less cohesive story.
JJS2 was just so bleak. These shows need some element of catharsis to break up the tension, but I don’t really get the decision to have everyone suffer constantly through the 13 episodes.
What, S2 of JJ was bleaker than the first? Goodness me – S1 was the among the most depressing TV I ever watched, so I didn’t bother with S2.
Agreed with almost this entire thing except DDS2.
Iron Fist 1 above Luke Cage 1? That’s a hot take.Otherwise, I can’t say that I disagree (although I’d probably drop DD 2 below Punisher), pending watching IF 2 and DD 3.
The first half of Luke Cage Season 1 is just fantastic… and then it totally collapses going into the second half.Season 2 just dragged and dragged and dragged. And then had a musical number every five minutes to really hammer home how chaacters were FEELING.I know we all wanted LC to be good, but it really wasn’t overall. Colter never really grew into the role properly, while the writing consistently worked AGAINST the character’s strengths.Same with IF actually. It’s almost like the two of them should have been combined into one show which took advantage of the best parts of each while covering for their weaknesses…
I didn’t make it all the way through Luke Cage season 2. I wanted to like it, I tried really hard, but it was just so boring to me.
And I think consolidating both characters into one show would have done a lot to keep Marvel Netflix feeling fresh with each new entry. At the time, even 3 series in, you could tell the season formula was starting to show. It also felt like they were fulfilling some obligation to serve an idea (everyone gets their own show!) rather than serve the characters (we have no idea what to do!) until Defenders arrived.
Good ranking, but David Tennant’s performance as Killgrave would put Jessica Jones S1 in the top slot imo. Vincent Dinofrio was truly great as Kingpin, but Tennant was even better.
And more importantly, the Killgrave sized hole turned out to be impossible to fill in the second season. That said, they really should have tried harder than “basically just Jessica but more broken and also her mother”.
Everyone insisted David Tennant was the only reason Jessica Jones was so good. I refused to believe that. I wanted so much for everyone to see that there was more to this show than just Kilgrave. Season 2 irrefutably proved me wrong.
They say that because it’s tempting low hanging fruit as far as criticisms go. Whenever there’s a stand out performance, people deny the rest of the product. People to this day still insist Heath Ledger was the only good thing in TDK, which is wrong.
We’d seen mind control so much before, but never quite the way we got from David Tenant. There are scenes so unnerving to think about, that made him possibly the scariest, most powerful villain I’ve ever seen. I had no clue how Jessica could beat him
Notably, even the writers didn’t have a clue how she could beat him. Eventually they came up with “well, I guess she’s just kind of immune now for reasons”.
But really, a sniper rifle would have taken care of him pretty quick. He wasn’t controlling everybody in a full mile radius all of the time.
I hated the show cos JJ actually HAD Kilgrave a couple of times but let him get away. That was just so frustrating to watch, and also made me lose respect for her character – I wanted a badass but her incompetence got lots more people killed.
They stated that Killgrave’s power was biological. Based on a virus. They tell you in grade two that organisms develop an immunity after prolonged exposure. I thought it was easy to piece together and I was glad the writer didn’t feel the need to spoon feed me.
The problem with that theory is that Jessica is the ONLY person who ever develops the immunity, despite him using it for many years on thousands of different people.
I more or less agree with all this, except I found JJ s1 pretty boring, too. Not as offensively stupid as s2 tho!
“Having to put up with years of mediocrity from shows like Heroes, The Cape, Arrow and Gotham…” I hear you so much on this. I tried so hard to stick with them (and Supergirl – cute but ehhhh). Daredevil is an entirely different level.
Agree with your ratings much more. I would give jj season1 the clear number 1 though.
JJ season one was awful. It was 10 episodes too long. It took way too long for people to think “huh…what if I blocked my ears from hearing him.” I was screaming that from episode one.
The Defenders is clearly the worst. 10th seems high; 6th is madness. I’ll grant that the actors are charming together, but virtually everything else is hot garbage. Thinly sketched villains with an overly complicated and often nonsensical plan who never quite manage to be threatening, Daredevil getting about half a character arc to everyone else’s nothing, and the most impressive action scene ranking, at best, fourth or fifth in the Netflix U.
Jessica Jones Season 2 features arguably the best of the four leads and clearly defined arcs with actual stakes for at least two of the main characters. I agree that it takes way too long to get going, but the last run of episodes stacks up better against the Defenders’ catastrophic bed-shitting.
That said, it’s nice that none of the seasons are completely devoid of redeeming qualities. You could edit even the Defenders down to some kickass bonus features for the solo series’ DVDs, like four mini-episodes of the team shooting the shit.
Agreed on Punisher. He needs to be dealing out absurd carnage to mafiosos. The show became pretty decent but focused too much on its own realism and pathos. And as much as I like Bernthal in the role, Punisher is not supposed to be all that emotional
To me, this list feels much more accurate. I would have put Defenders at the last place spot, but then I remembered that Jessica Jones season 2 actually existed (that’s how unmemorable it was).
Luke Cage s1 was better than Iron Fist s1, but I mostly agree with this list. Daredevil is the best hands down as a series and overall I might agree and put those seasons ahead of everything else in the Netflix MCU. Jessica Jones s2 is horrible and I’m just trying to get through it. Season 1 was so good so I don’t know how they made season 2 so annoying. I particularly hate how Trish is a fucking psycho now.
I’d definitely put Luke Cage season 1 near the bottom. I slogged my way through it, but every episode had at least 5 endings and there were about 6 more episodes than there needed to be. It was enough to put me off ever watching season two.
The fact that Caroline Siede got to participate in this after her abysmal reviews of Daredevil Season 3 is an affront not only to the article, but to AVC in general. I still don’t believe she actually watched the episodes.
However well you write this, you’ll always be wrong. Lists must be punishment for writers.
Iron Fist was never nearly so bad as the press has maintained. It’s as watchable as most of the Marvel shows post-Jessica Jones S.1, which absolutely is damning with faint praise, but neither is it markedly worse (and personally I enjoyed it more than Luke Cage).I’m convinced that it’s a victim of the culture wars; because Iron Fist became a target over racial casting issues, folks were (at least subconsciously) determined not to like it.
This comment is at least as bad as Iron Fist Season 1.
Star for being so woke.
No, I’m a fairly un-woke, PC-hating suburban white boy, and I thought IF sucked hard.
Oh, it did, but there were people with a chip on their shoulder going in to review it. It’s as bad as Luke Cage and surprisingly similar. Both shows have leads who are the worst part, the super powers are inconsistent (LC’s strength, Danny’s chi), and about 5 episodes too long. Luke Cage might be a tiny bit better because of Alfre Woodard and Mahershala Ali’s acting chops.
diminishing returns my guy. by the time iron fist came out we’d enjoyed dozens of hours of mcu netflix content. sure it may not be ‘much worse’ than anything else, but when you’re introducing your 4th series you better come with something better than ‘not quite so bad’.
Genuinely intrigued. I hated IF more than any show I’ve seen in years and race and gender had nothing to do with it. The lead character was poorly written and badly portrayed and had no clear motivations or arc. His powers and goals varied wildly through the season and I wasn’t sure if we were even meant to root for him. He let Kunlun get destroyed or relocated, and then the next season it’s a non issue? And his whole goal in life was to protect Kunlun?
I’m with ya. Iron First S1 is the worst season of a show I’ve ever made it all the way through.
FACTS
No. Iron Fist Season 1 sucked through and through. The actors did what they could, but were clearly not trained in kung fu. For a character who is supposed to be a kung fu master, the kung fu has to be passable, at least, and it wasn’t. That’s not just a fight choreography problem, it’s also a casting problem.
By the same token, I feel the other shows were over-praised. I admire that Jessica Jones is a strong female character but she’s also incredibly one-note. If you’re not charmed by her smarmy sarcasm, it’s a looong ride.
The bad reception for Iron Fist wasn’t because of some “PC backlash” about the casting. It’s because nearly every aspect of the show was substandard: the plot dragged on and went nowhere, the dialogue was cheesy, the characters were uninteresting and did things that made no sense, the supernatural powers were ill-defined, the fight choreography was lacking, and the show spent an entire season teasing things that it never showed (such as Kun-Lun).But the biggest problem with Iron Fist was that the acting just straight up sucked. Colleen Wing and Madame Gau were the only characters on the entire show whose actors gave genuinely good performances. Finn Jones is a decent actor but was woefully miscast in this role. And the rest of the supporting cast is bad. Like…. woefully, embarrassingly, soap opera-level bad. The Meachums in particular are almost unwatchable in every scene they appear in, and there are LOTS of them. The overall level of acting talent on this show was seriously on par with one of those shitty teen melodramas you see on the CW network. It was cringey to watch a lot of the time.I wanted to like Iron Fist. I really did. I ignored the bad reviews, ignored the casting “controversy”, and genuinely gave it a chance for a full season. But the whole thing was just an exhausting, uninteresting mess where almost nothing worked. After 13 episodes I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in returning for S2.
I didn’t hate IF1 the way some people did, but I did find it very frustrating at times. Plus, Finn Jones is just an atrocious martial artist, and it showed in every fight scene. (One need only watch Lewis Tan’s cameo to see what an actually talented fighter looks like.)
The dude was learning choreography on the fly, cut him a break.
It’s not just the choreography; he just doesn’t move like a martial artist. Someone who knows what they’re doing can move efficiently, with a minimum of wasted effort and a constant sense of balance and control. Jones never managed that. Granted, he’s not a professional stunt performer, but considering he wasn’t exactly stellar on the acting side either, there’s no excuse to look that bad.
I’d say if you have next-to-no martial art experience and production is forcing you to learn everything on the job because of a rushed schedule, I mean that sounds like a pretty solid excuse to me. Did you watch any of Iron Fist season 2? I don’t have any martial arts experience myself so I can’t make informed declarations, but opinion across the board seemed to be that with more training behind him he was a lot better. The choreography was definitely a huge step up.
Better, but far from good. (Even with work, the best he managed was not looking completely incompetent.) I have some sympathy for the actor given the situation, but the simple fact is that if you’re playing a martial arts master, you should at least look adequate, and he didn’t manage that. Even if he didn’t have the choreography down beforehand, he could have been better-trained before the first season. It’s like having a terrible foreign accent; if you’re going to have an accent different than your own in the role, then it’s going to be noticeable if you sound nothing like the accent you’re supposed to have.
From what I understand there was literally no time between him being cast and going to work on the show – it was straight from one to the other with next to no prep time in the middle. The production team and suits should have delayed the series, maybe even until after Defenders – but they were intent on rushing it out so that it would hit before when Defenders was slated to come out. That all said, I understand how these things can stick out like a sore thumb if you have a background in martial arts; kind of like how people trained in archery were dogging the way Jeremy Renner held a bow, or musicians balking at the actors in probably any musical biopic ever.
Well, to be fair to him, they should have brought in an appropriate showrunner and had him trained. Instead they brought in a jobber, who rushed through the production with no affection or ability.
True! IF S1 actually was pretty good if you could accept Danny as having been in living in such unusual world before returning to the modern world. He was almost understandably a bit child like.
idk, I’d say people were expecting it to be bad for the wrong reasons, but then it was bad anyway.It’s not Inhumans-level bad, but it’s still miles worse than the rest of Netflix’s stuff.
After how bad Daredevil S2 was I don’t really understand how anyone justified watching Iron Fist in the first place.
I watched it before Daredevil S2.
Iron Fist was poorly and quickly assembled by a showrunner with no affection for the character, not one good project to his name, and little – if any – experience with martial arts. Finn Jones might not have been great as the Iron Fist, but we can forgive him for not being a trained martial artist and getting scene blocking sometimes no more than fifteen minutes before shooting.
If by “the press”, you mean my eyes, ears and brains, then guilty as charged. As far as casting, the Danny Rand I always knew was a white dude. I never understood that whole controversy.
11) The Punisher. I’ve tried three times to get into this but get bored10) Iron Fist S1. Danny Rand at peak dullness9) Luke Cage S1. First half was great, second half dire8) Daredevil S2. Didn’t like all the ninja crap7) The Defenders. More ninja crap and a huge disappointment6) Luke Cage S2. Misty improved things5) Iron Fist S2. Misty and Colleen rocked.4) Daredevil S1. Good start for the Marvel Netflix shows3) Jessica Jones S2. Yes it was messier but I cared about the characters2) Daredevil S3. Excellent throughout and a surprising happy ending1) Jessica Jones S1. David Tennant’s Kilgrave is the best Marvel villain for me
I haven’t seen all the shows, so I can’t rank ‘em, but I watched Punisher. Iron Fist was at least entertaining in how bad it was. Punisher was boring. How can you have a show about a guy who’s sole purpose is grindhouse violence and then have episodes go by where nothing happens?
Danny Rand in season one Iron Fist is a wonderful example of an antihero. People hated this because people hate antiheroes. Non-people who like antiheroes found this by far the most outstanding Netflix Marvel. The others are all unimaginative revenge fantasies compounded with suffering hero fantasies. How a superhero suffers more than regular people is a question the series don’t even seem to notice, much less answer, except for the unappetizing antihero Danny Rand. Sympathy is for heroes, not antiheroes.For me perhaps the best symptom of how badly they bungled the revenge fantasy aspect was the insistence that Daredevil, whose senses supposedly make him a human lie detector still needs to torture, even while assuming that torture, unlike lying, doesn’t cause the heart to race or the skin to sweat. The idea that Colleen Wing is a genuine character relies on thinking she actually takes up with a homeless bum who just accidentally turns out to be a billionaire who is the mortal enemy of her own religion…which she more or less abandons instantly because, well, some reason. Jessica Henshaw didn’t bring this nonsense to life, which is no reflection on her skills as an actress. No one could have. Wing wasn’t more interesting, Wing was sexier and not an antihero.
‘Non-people who like antiheroes found this by far the most outstanding Netflix Marvel.’you can come down on me for prejudice all you want but i just don’t care what non-people think!
No, Malcolm Reynolds is an antihero. Danny Rand is a terribly written and acted hero.
Heroes are cool and sexy and have agency. Malcolm Reynolds is every bit as much a hero as Walter White. Antiheroes are not cool and not sexy and generally lack agency. Danny Rand is an antihero, just like Hank Schrader. Malcolm Reynolds and Walter White doing mean things and supposedly bad things only they are man enough to do is just a view of heroism that doesn’t accept PC ideas about right and wrong. Calling characters like this antiheroes just is a way of denying that what they do is simply fun, no matter how ridiculous or contrived or pointless. The problem with the antihero nonsense is that it’s a way to pretend the moral values in antiheroes are just bad writing, instead of a rejection of heroism as brutality, winning as essence of virtue and agency the very definition of humanity.
Armond, please return to the National Review. You’re dangerously close to reiterating your love of Zack Snyder.
Honestly, I have no idea what this guy is rambling about.
“doing mean things and supposedly bad thing”Ladies and gentlemen: dissolving children in a barrel full of acid is now a “supposedly bad thing”
Is this satire?
While these lists are inherently subjective, while I would personally shuffle some seasons around and drop Defenders near the bottom, I can’t really deeply disagree with it. However, for me personally, thinking on it now, I think JJ Season 2 is probably the worst, even below Defenders and Iron Fist.The problem I have with that season is that even beyond the pacing issues, it is probably one of the most hostile series towards female relationships I’ve seen in ages. Which is bizarre considering the female creative talent involved. Like I completely understand and support the want to portray complicated female relationships, but all the female relationships in that season were toxic. They even made one of the most beautiful adoptive siblings dynamic in to something horrible.
I really, really hated the decision to have Trish straight-up murder Jessica’s mom. They should have at least had Alissa in rage-mode, threatening to kill someone RIGHT THAT VERY MOMENT. I think the would have put Trish in a more defensible position for using deadly force, but still provided a lot of tension b/t her and Jess as a result. Instead, they took the one person in Jess’s life that she actually seemed to have feeling for, and had her do something indescribably alienating to her.
Yeah, but they had already ruined Trish’s character and relationship to Jessice before that. The murder was just icing on the cake. And even it would have actually worked if Jess and Trish had a genuine relationship at that point as they could have made it about Trish being honestly afraid for Jess.Seriously, what they did to Trish and Jess was abysmal. It wasn’t even making the relationship more complicated as it simplified the hell out of it for unfathomable reasons.
Trish’s jealousy and misguided attempt to engineer powers of her own was bad, but it wasn’t something she and Jess couldn’t have overcome. But Trish shot Alissa in the head while Alissa was just sitting there, not presenting an immediate threat to anyone. That was pretty cold, and to me, it will be impossible for the writers to believably repair Jess and Trish’s relationship.
To me that moment of no return was passed when Trish started telling Jessica how she was wasting her powers and so forth. They established that Trish was bitter and envious of Jessica, which just destroyed that relationship.
Nothing enrages me more in any Netflix Marvel series than what JJS2 did to Trish. What were they thinking? The show needs SOME kind of heart to stay watchable.
Wha? Trish seemed sane and due to become a hero herself in season 1…
yeah, they flew way off the rails with her in season 2.
People wildly overrate Luke Cage. Or more accurately, they cop to how much of a nosedive the back half takes but fail to correctly account for it. The stuff with Diamondback is *horrible*. Like, at an amount capable of destroying all previously established goodwill.Also in season 2 I could never figure out if Mariah was becoming unhinged or just using the appearance of such to manipulate people. Alfred Woodard is a good enough actor to pull of either of those flavors, so I just blame the writing/directing/show.
I can’t believe how highly you ranked Defenders and Punisher. Defenders I managed to make it through because ok, it was the big team up – but it was overall so disappointing to me. Punisher…well, it’s the only Marvel show I didn’t get past the second episode of. The Punisher is truly a monster, a horror story about training and then not caring for the welfare of veterans and it’s a strong story, but also a dead on one note story. I just spent that two hours and realized I didn’t need another ten hours of that grousing around.
1. Punisher2. Jessica Jones 13. Daredevil 1Wile it was a little slow to start, The Punisher was the only season that felt like it could justify its whole runtime. DD1 didn’t have a satisfactory ending and JJ had the ending in sight but then carried on for another 4 episodes.
I was calling BS when I saw that Punisher was ahead of Iron Fist season 2, but in third place overall? I finished every other season within a week, Punisher was a hellish slog that took me over a month.
IFS2 was miles better than JJS2. JJS2 was an unbearable slog.DDS1 was also a hair better than JJS1, I have memories of JJS1 being about 3 episodes too long, while DDS1 was only 1 or 2 eps too long.
defenders turned me off of the entire netflix MCU so seeing it so high was a real shock.
I watched Daredevil S1 and S2 and Punisher S1 and I have to say anything with Frank Castle was the best part. I did love D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk in Daredevil though. I watched parts of Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist and none of them really kept me interested for that long. Luke Cage was pretty good, but he’s so strong and can withstand so much damage it kinda makes it interesting. I like my super heroes to be regular dudes in tights or with a skull on their shirt.
I feel like ranking these should require that Daredevil season 2 be split into two halves, because everyone I’ve talked to either says the Punisher half is excellent and the Elektra one sucks or vice versa. Personally I like the Punisher half.Although I guess awkwardly cramming two seasons together kinda makes it deserve its lower rating…
The Iron Fist guest episode was the best part of Luke Cage season 2 and probably the best part of Iron Fist’s whole run. It makes me sad that we’ll never end up with the Heroes for Hire show that those two shows should have ended up as.
For me it comes down to this:Would I watch Daredevil s2 over the Luke Cage seasons? Yes.Would I watch Daredevil s2 over the Iron Fist seasons? Yes.Would watch Daredevil S2 over The Defenders? Or Jessica Jones S2? Absolutely.For as much crap as S2 gets, I’d still take it over the majority of Marvel Netflix’s stuff. Even the Punisher is better in DD S2 than his own show. Whatever “half” of the season folks prefered, the good far outweighs the bad, which people have found trendy to pile up on to make the show seem worse than it was.
I think it’s particularly telling that the top for shows are all seasons 1. None of the sequel seasons improved on the original (Punnisher not included — yet). That, more than any other factors, probably contributed to Netflix cancelling the shows. Sure, business got in the way too, but networks air shows owned by outside studios all of the time. Truth is, none of the shows were able to capitalize on popularity, possibly because they released so far apart from each other (within the same titles). Daredevil went 2.5 years between seasons so the other shows could air. It’s a different way of doing a connected universe on the small screen that seemingly failed. On TV, it works better to connect shows like CW’s Arrowverse rather than how Netflix does it.As for the rankings, I’d put JJ S2 last, followed by Iron First S1 and Luke Cage S2. Iron Fist S2 was much better than second-last. And Daredevil S1 has MASSIVE pacing problems that get overlooked because of the hallway fight in Ep2. It also lost its showrunner in production and the lack of pacing is a product of that mid-production shift. I honestly think S3 is the best Daredevil season with the fewest pacing issues and the tightest character developments in the series.
I did appreciate Rosario Dawson’s befuddled contempt for Danny and everything going on around him in the first season of Iron Fist. Her last scene in that season is basically her telling Danny and Colleen, “You two are goddamned sociopaths, you need some serious help and I’m out of here.”
Rosario was never not great in these shows. Claire always seemed like the sanest person in the room.
Luke Cage season 2 tried to ruin her, but mostly succeeded in making Luke look like an even bigger dick than before.
I loved DD season 3, I was just spellbound throughout. I guess behind those I’d put the often-spellbinding-but-also-bloated DD s1 and JJ s1. Then the perfectly okeydokey Punisher.
SCORCHING HOT TAKE:
Bullseye and Mary Walker are very similar characters in these shows, and Walker was way more interesting than Bullseye.
The official Marvel branding may half-assedly lump Marvel Netflix in with the MCU, but can the rest of us stop pretending that’s the case? Correct me if I’m wrong, but not a single MCU movie or TV character has appeared on even one Marvel Netflix episode, whereas, say what you like about the increasingly disconnected AoS, it has Coulson in every episode, and has had a number of movie cameos.
What are you talking about, it had Absorbing Man! Even if he was offscreen…and… that one biker gang! >_>
Any list without JJ1 at the top is wrong. Period. And while I agree with the criticism of IF1, I remember seeing Defenders and realizing, “hey, that was all plot and character development for this.”
“Well-coordinated fights that took advantage of pairing up their various powers…”At the end of the day they all have the same kinda-boring powers, in varying degrees: kicking, super punching stuff, smashing people through fake walls. They’re good at Defending, as long as you only require a moderate beating.
LOVE all things superheroes, but even I didn’t have the time to watch these shows. Glad others enjoy them though!
I watched all of this stuff…even that which has been universally pilloried as godawful for one reason: I read the books…and I loved the books.In the entirety of the Netflix IF cannon, the only good part is when IF delivers a punch which LC can actually feel. Dayum. That’s nice. The fact that this punch is delivered without the need to include any line delivery from Finn Jones is icing on the cake. Other than that, the entirety of IF is poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly acted and, generally, quite boring.I really dug the mood and vibe of the LC1, but the pacing (standard issue Netflix problem) and Diamondback were a bummer. Overall, I wish they’d done more with Shades and the implied Hammer connection (in LC2).DD is pretty good. The angst and ass-kicking works well. The omnipresence of Fisk is what DD has in a ground-level Thanos. DD has never been my favorite character (he’s always the guy who isn’t quite as good as someone else), but I’ve liked all of these shows despite not loving the character.P1 was my favorite and the worst disappointment. Loved the tone and Bernthal’s portrayal. It should be a slow burn and it is. That said…The Punisher should blow people’s legs of and then cave in their skull with a hammer. He has an absolute lack of conscience and is only able to forget the cries of his wife and child when he’s causing the cries of a wrong-doer. Opinions vary, but The Punisher is usually worse than the worst, but for a better reason. The Lieberman/Micro-chip character is a bummer too. Chip isn’t a conscience, he’s an enabler. Moss-Bachrach’s portrayal is compelling, but for the wrong reasons. JJ1 is really good, but I’ll reiterate one thing I’ve read on this very board, the drag in JJ1 could’ve been ameliorated through some case-of-the-week episodes interwoven throughout the main story arc. And, while I might quibble with some aspects of the Purple Man, I love that JJ doesn’t uses her powers so infrequently…she hates them. And, for the viewer, it makes it spectacular when she does use them.Finally…god help me…I’ll keep watching whatever they produce. Understanding that, I’m probably more a part of the problem than the solution.
Daredevil season3 is the top dog of the list. The rest it gets very hard to rank where they would go…but Iron Fist season 1 is definitely at the bottom.
DD S3: Not ranked yet because I am only on episode 9…I feel like it might end up mid-pack10) IF S1: It was the worst of them, but not by the orders of magnitude that many people claim. It could have been the second coming of Jesus and the commentariat here would have hated it because IF was white. The whole Luke Cage teamup thing wouldn’t have worked, because part of the point of IF was for Danny to get repeatedly lectured about his white wealth privilege. If he is Asian, those conversations become “Oppression Olympics”. Also, the Meachams were one of the better sets of backing characters in NetflixMarvel, especially Ward, and Colleen Wing showed potential that was not realized until season 2.9) IF S2: Still not great, but that is because Danny Rand is played by Finn Jones, not because he is white.8) Luke Cage S2: I blame this partly on Jar Jar Binks. His existence has destroyed my ability to listen to Carribian Patois. Every time those guys spoke, it gave me Star Wars Prequel flashbacks. Theo Rossi and Alfre Woodard were pretty good though.7) The Defenders: So much wasted potential6) DD S2: The Elektra stuff wasn’t that interesting5 Luke Cage S1: The villains didn’t do much for me, and I guess I am the only one that was mostly just annoyed by Mahershela Ali’s portrayal of Cottonmouth(showing my age here, but his portrayal came off to me as “MC Hammer, Ghetto Kingpin”, in no small part because of his tremendously annoying laugh.) I liked most of the good guy characters, and the look and vibe were great.4) JJ S2: Alisa was not a great villain. A better villain easily moves it up to #2, because I liked the other storylines.3) Punisher S1: I expected nothing from this, I didn’t think Punisher would work as the star of his own story, and I thought the risk of this turning into a really bad “Death Wish” imitation were really high. That said, I thought it was pretty great. Extra point for dramatically beating expectations.2) DD S1: Kingpin was one of only two great villains in the Marvel NetFlixverse, Hallway fight scene, and it sets up the NetFlixverse. If S1 Foggy and Donna Moss…errr, Karen Page(I can’t be the only one who think the actresses look like twins) where better, it goes to #1.1) JJ S1: Best Villain, I love the portrayal of JJ, loved Trish and Malcolm, liked Hogarth, and was OK with the character Robin.(I mean, she was a sick, annoying freak, but I think she worked as a character. The one character that really annoyed me was Hogarth’s wife. She was an annoying wet blanket that made me sympathize with Hogarth for cheating on her, and I don’t know that that was the intention. It’s too bad, because I’m a big fan of Robin Weigart, but even she couldn’t rescue that character.All the shows suffered from the dreaded “Netflix Bloat” to some degree or another, and between the eleven shows, there were only two great villains.It might look like I am fairly harsh on a lot of these shows, but I actually liked most of them, and I didn’t actively dislike IF, I just wouldn’t have watched it if it wasn’t part of the Marvel NetFlix universe… and, tbh, AOS is better than all of them except maybe JJ S1.
Kingpin in Season One of Daredevil was the worst. Such a whiny baby. And the Foggy casting was just terrible. That actor is terrible.
And I hate watching him flirt. Karen annoys me too. And we spend SO MUCH TIME with these characters!
The best way to watch DD is to skip any scene where Matt Murdoch or Kingpin aren’t present. It speeds up the plot by like 90%. You will not miss anything.
Karen’s arc annoyed me more than the character. Like, she’s fine after the first season, but when she ended up in Ben Urich’s office I just started groaning and never stopped. I groan to this day.
It took me forever to think of who they meant re: the “fridging” comment, because Julie’s death actually happens several episodes BEFORE the finale— the last episode is just the one where he discovers her refrigerated remains. But I guess a gag is just too hard to pass up even if it’s not accurate.Speaking of which: that season killed off at least two male characters, and in arguably gratuitous ways than they did Julie. Her death doesn’t even match the definition of “fridging” that was coined several years back (killing off or otherwise brutalizing a female supporting character simply to give the male protagonist more pathos), as it was done for a specific strategic purpose. But again, her body was stored in an actual refrigerator, so how dare I get in the way of a good gag.
Although, of course, I don’t entirely agree with this list (say whhhaaattt), I do think season one of JESSICA JONES gave us the best villain in Kilgore. FIGHT ME!
Everyone says that. And I honestly don’t get what people see in him.
Luke Cage season 1 was, in my opinion, the worst of the lot. Alfre Woodard became the main character while Cage floundered around pursuing a bad guy who wasn’t. An awful season that put me off all the streaming Marvel shows. Do any of the showrunners actually understand comic books?
I’d rank Daredevil S3 higher. There wasn’t a weak spot in the cast — indeed, performances that initially seemed soft (I’m thinking of the struggling FBI agent tricked by Fisk) got better as the season progressed. Joanne Whalley was wonderful, the show’s interpretation of Bullseye worked really well, the action set pieces continued to be brilliant, and S3 actually built momentum in its back half. Certainly there were faulty creative choices, the fridging being the primary one, but overall it was a strong season and a definite improvement on season 2.
I feel like, in order to properly rank this, some of the seasons needed to be broken down even further. The first half of Daredevil Season 2, featuring the introduction of the Punisher and bouncing Matt off of him, was fantastic. The second half, which somehow managed to make ninjas boring and featured shockingly uninspiring fight choreography from a show that had made its bones on great fight choreography, was flat awful. Same with Luke Cage Season 1 – it’s almost two completely different shows before and after Mahershala Ali’s exit.
I’ve yet to finish JJ2 or even start Punisher, LC2 or IF2 so I can’t comment on the collection overall, but I will say I was engrossed by DD3. D’Onofrio IS the Kingpin, and between Bullseye’s psychopathy and Murdock’s story arc, it kept me invested the whole way through.Also I’m still wondering how they managed to make Defenders so boring.Also also, I’m really pleasantly surprised to see a lot of goodwill towards Punisher. Initial reviews had led me to believe it was pretty boring and skippable, but now I’m leaning towards it being my next binge.
Punisher is SO good. I had zero/low expectations honestly and totally loved it. The violence is insane but the casting and writing balance it out.
Punisher is excellent and I highly recommend it. In the middle of a lot of violence, Bernthal does a great job of bringing a surprising amount of empathy to the part, and the show also manages to touch on topics like PTSD, gun rights, and grief vs. vengeance in ways that don’t feel preachy or one-sided. I’m not a huge fan of the character in the comics, (beyond some good runs), but my wife and I loved the series.
The Defenders spent 90% of the season having the characters express disbelief with each other and acting too cool and/or fed up to deal with each other and whatever was going on. That shit should have stopped by episode two.And the villain and plot were boring as fuck. They having Sigourney Weaver stand around in fancy clothes while classical music played was enough and…it wasn’t.
11. Luke Cage S210. Iron Fist S109. The Defenders08. Luke Cage S107. Iron Fist S206. Jessica Jones S205. Daredevil S204. Daredevil S303. The Punisher S102. Daredevil S101. Jessica Jones S1
This is a good list. Daredevil Season 1 set the stage for the rest. If it sucked, there wouldn’t have been any other Marvel shows on Netflix. And unlike the Iron Fist Season 1, the fighting in Daredevil was actually good. Season 1 of Luke Cage and the Punisher both had strong overarching themes – blackness, toxic masculinity, PTSD – that pushed the shows to greater heights.But Jessica Jones Season 1 was special in that it used the superhero genre to explore gaslighting, abuse, and recovery.
For me JJ S2 was the worst, it was brutally slow and dragged out with no real villain, oh her psycho mom as opposed to her pyscho stem mom. The side stories were all bad too. I will say though in general all the Marvel shows seemed like they were a good 2-3 episodes too long. They all seemed like they could have been shorter.
Every single entry on this list would have made for a far better season if they were 10 episodes instead of 13. (Or zero episodes, in the case of Iron Fist.)
I’d swap Luke Cage S1 with Daredevil S3 & Jessica Jones S1 with Daredevil S1. Oh! Also swapping the Defenders with Iron Fist S2.
Can we all just agree that SHIELD and Agent Carter are/were better than any of the Netflix shows? Great!
Jessica Jones S1 is one of the TV experiences that has been most special to me—and I could barely get through the first ep of S2. Did not attempt the second ep. But it’s worth it for that wonder of a first season.
Even though they had the M59 going to 14th Street. I might never forgive them for that.
Daredevil season 3 is way too low – bump it up to just below the Punisher. Other than that, totally agree.
Ranking the Defenders higher than anything else but Iron Fist seems rather optimistic…
I really loved Jessica Jones’ first season, and it rightly deserves its spot at the top of this list. Also, we really need a Daughters of the Dragon show!For Luke Cage season 1, I agree that the second half of the show really dragged, but I really, really loved Mariah’s sideplot, and her transformation into the true villain by the finale. Diamondback was a disappointment, but Mariah’s descent from morally dubious politician into crimelord kingpin with Shades at her side was incredible
Daredevil season 3 should be higher and Daredevil season 2 should be lower.
1. Punisher S1 – this show ended in a truly brave, interesting way almost no superhero media has matched. Ever. 2. DD S13. DD S3 4. Luke Cage S1- once you get past the Cotton mouth thing and recognise Mariah as the villain, this has some stand out style. 5. Luke Cage S2 – Bushmaster was amazing, but Coulter got even worse. 6. Jesssiiicah S17. Iron Fist S2 – the series had its weaknesses but it wisely focused on the good stuff (Colleen and Misty, WARD, Typhoid Mary). 8. DD S2 – The Punisher is good, the Hand are the worst thing ever. 9.Iron Fist S1 – yes yes. But Ward was greaaat. 10. JJ s2 – this tracks so low because it actually made me like season 1 less. It was so so bad. 11. THE DEFENDERS – oh my god the Hand are the worst.
Really? As a big fan of the character I found The Punisher to be rather dumb and ugly. Not to mention, waaayyy too chatty for a killing machine.
Scorching hot take: Iron Fist S1 isn’t nearly as bad as everyone pretends it is when they submit their material for a Performative Wokeness Oscar.
Ok putting Defenders before Daredevil S3 had me almost do a spit take. Come on guys. Some of these are open to discussion. That one is not.
I’m disappointed the write-up for season 1 of Daredevil didn’t mention the amazing job Bob Gunton did as Leland Owlsley. Yeah, yeah, the tortured Fisk brought an intimidating gravitas to the show. But how can you not mention the sheer delight of Gunton’s criminal accountant snarking his way through every scene he was in? Total highlight.
My least favourite part of all these shows was how Alfre Woodard, who is a great actress, suddenly becomes a terrible actress in any scene with Theo Rossi. I’m not sure if he is dragging her down but they are some of the most cringe worthy scenes in TV, you can almost see the cue-cards.
This is a ranking of the shiniest turd as all these seasons are varying degrees of bad
Is this list meant to troll fans who actually like the Marvel shows?Jessica Jones Season 1?! You need to fucking apologize right now.
Daredevil 3 worse than Defenders? Cage 2 worse than Cage 1? Thanks for the chortle.
I think if we’re judging these shows on all levels (storytelling, characters, action, directing, editing, etc.) there’s no way Jessica Jones season 1 is better than Daredevil season 1. I’d also argue that much of season 2 and 3 of Daredevil are so good that it’s weird to see them ranked fairly low. Opinions though, and I know how much people loved JJ season 1. I just personally found it to be a tad underwhelming in a lot of aspects. And sadly, as much as I loved the first half of Luke Cage, the moment Cottonmouth was killed the story almost completely fell apart.I am pleased to see Punisher ranked at number 3 though because they did a knock out job and finally gave us a Punisher actually worth watching. My ranking would be more like this.1. Daredevil season 12. Punisher3. Daredevil season 24. Jessica Jones season 1/DD season 35. Luke Cage season 16. Defenders. Explanation; whether intentional or not I found it to be pure camp and very fun.7. Luke Cage season 2/JJ season 28. Iron Fist season 29. Iron Fist season 1
11. Iron Fist Season 110. Iron Fist Season 29. Jessica Jones Season 28. The Defenders7. Daredevil Season 26. Luke Cage Season 25. Daredevil Season 34. Luke Cage Season 13. Punisher Season 12. Jessica Jones Season 11. Daredevil Season 1
In many ways, I find ‘Luke Cage’ S2 the biggest disappointment (though not worst series) of the bunch, because it had so much potential: Mariah on the ascendant was great, and Afre Woodard was doing such great work with her; Bushmaster was a charismatic villain who posed a genuine threat to Cage; Reg E. Cathy (RIP) brought some real energy as Luke’s dad; and Rosario Dawson continued to be wonderful as Claire. And then it all fell apart, and left us with a dull, frustrating season that focused it’s energies in all the wrong places. (I don’t care what Shades is up to, I really don’t.) It got interesting once Mariah went to jail, which was unfortunately the second-to-last episode.
I knew the comments would mostly go after Jessica Jones. I keep looking for a reason other than “I wanted to like it but….”, but unfortunately none of them are good. I should stop looking. The AV Club list is actually quite good, but I’d put DDS3 way higher, even with the poor finale. I also think JJS2 is underrated. The pacing reminded me of early (and good) Dexter, which not everyone liked at the time either, until S4 impacted the suddenly active fanbase.
JJ S2 was awful – Janet McTeer was very good in a pretty thankless role, but man the rest of that season really sucked. Pointless plots that went nowhere and that damn Flashback episode which posited that a bunch of aspects of Jessica’s character (down to her freaking Jacket) are actually all about this guy we never met before who might be terrible and we’re just now hearing about. It retroactively made me like S1 less. S1 had probably the strongest hero vs protagonist arc of any of the shows, loaded with real world context and thematic depth. From it there was about a 6 or 7 really solid episodes. It’s just that there’s the whole rest of the show – lacklustre chemistry with Luke Cage, the complaints of her terrible neighbours, a Lawyer cheating on her wife, not a whole lot of PI’ing, and wheel spinning. I agree that it should be ranked pretty high in the grand scheme of things, but first place is generous in my opinion.
Reading the list and the comments I guess I was the only person who actually enjoyed The Defenders.
I actually probably thought it was the best, if only by virtue of the fact it was the shortest.
I thought it was fun. It’s just that if you’re ranking shows, quite a few did better. Doesn’t mean Defenders was bad though.
I really enjoyed it too. The plot was a little weak, but it didn’t drag the way some of the other shows did; and the main cast all had more chemistry and energy than they did in their solo shows.Like, I legit don’t know why everyone seems to hate it. Were they all pinning their entire appraisal on the hotly-anticipated Sigourney Weaver villain?
Weaver was totally wasted, but my reasons for disliking Defenders is because whilst the team coming together interactions were decent in the early going, it ended up being about The Hand and their Black Sky ominous vaguery which I haaaate. They had 3 different seasons across 2 other shows to make The Hand a viable threat but their motivations were so murky and pointless they never managed it, and it rendered pretty much all of the Defenders after Stick showed up a boring, messy slog.
The Hand were boring and messy, but not obnoxiously bad the way Diamondback or season-1 Danny were. I get why they’re disliked, but not why they’re so utterly loathed.
Now I know you guys are nuts. JJ season one was AWFUL. It was a 2 hour movie plot turned into 13 hours. It consistently insulted the audience’s intelligence. I wonder how you stop a person whose voice can make you do stuff? Don’t ever plug your ears…that would never work. Until the final episode…funny how people figured that out in the last hour.
Luke Cage S1 over anything Daredevil is just foolishness. That season was boooooring.
My $0.02 on JJ season 2, which helps me put it into perspective.
“Jessica Jones” season two is about people doing things in an attempt to regain control in their lives. Most of those things turn out to be awful. Jessica is having to deal with re-awakened memories of trauma so she attempts to hunt down a murder who turns out to be her mom. When she figures this out, she tries to reconnect with her, despite her being a monster. Jeri has been given a life altering, perhaps life ending, diagnosis. She in turn goes on a drug fueled orgy, blackmails a man who she thinks can help her, and murders him when he cons her in return. Malcolm has to make peace with the decisions he’s made and the banality of his current life. So he uses women, sleeps with Trish, and goes behind Jessica’s back (not entirely unwarranted) to join her rival’s PI firm. And Trish….Trish. Trish wants to help Jessica, help everybody, but her lack of superpowers and the editorial blocking by her producers send her spiraling back into addiction and other bad life choices.
1-JJ S12-Punisher S13- Daredevil S1the rest aren’t worth rating /or worth really disagreeing over considering the minimal degree that one might be better or worse than the other
Defenders was utter trash. The fact that it made it into the top 6 undoes any of the goodwill gained by your placement of Punisher in the top 3.
My top 5…1. Punisher2. DD S1
3. JJ S1 (competently made, but too long)
4. DD S2 (although the 2nd half (the whole elektra/hand plot) sucked)5. DD S3 (mostly by default… didn’t like it nearly as much as this website, but its competition was weak.)
I thought Luke Cage S1 was boring, and the character even more so, Iron Fist was only entertaining either in a ‘we’re laughing AT you’ sort of way or as the Ward Meachum show, Defenders was almost astonishingly stupid.
Huh. At the Kinjapocalypse I lost the ability to see comments here. No matter what browser I used and through several updates to each nothing brought comments back. They just weren’t there … just constantly trying to load to no avail. Once in a blue moon I could see comments, but 99% of the time they were gone.I’ve moved on for the most part to The Avocado. My anger and frustration at the Kinjapocalypse have long subsided thx to that site.But today, after all this time, comments are here and I can see them and even comment myself. Weird.
I’m glad I finished reading your comment; I was going to propose to you, knowing you’d never see it.
I know extensions can really fuck with Kinja. Fortunately, Chrome natively blocks most of the ads here.
If luke Cage season 1 is really the fourth best out of 11 seasons (which i agree with) then boy oh boy, those shows really SUCKED ASS right? i mean, LC has a nice and important™ theme but i struggled hard to finish it. damn. also, i would swap dd1 and jj1, if only because the bloat in jj was bad, which makes no sense since she’s the best character to have procedural elements in her seasons. i mean, shes a detective and they couldn’t pad her season in a fun way? that’s what 3 law and orders, a couple of CSI and countless other shows have been doing for the past 20 years. THIS STUFF SHOULD BE EASY
Nope.
This is a solid list. You could switch this or that, but it’s good. I concur. Jessica Jones was the best, but they killed the best villian ever. What the hell?
JJ S1 is incredibly overrated IMHO. It’s good but nowhere near as great as people make it out to be. She had the purple man dead to rights when he was in the box, didn’t do what she did anyways and got 4 more characters killed and others injured. Oh and made us sit thru 5 more episodes. The nuke/hellcat arc was stupid and boring. I get the ptsd /rape allegory and it’s a great storyline that’s weighed down by so much extra lameness
Just pushed my father out of a moving vehicle because this list is so wrong.
A season that has a character like Robyn in it does not deserve to be #1.
1. Daredevil S12. JJ S13. Daredevil S34. Daredevil S25. Punisher S16-? Everything else
11. Iron Fist season 1
10. Jessica Jones season 2
9. The Defenders
8. Luke Cage season 2
7. Daredevil season 2
6. Luke Cage season 1
5. Iron Fist season 2
4. The Punisher season 1
3. Jessica Jones season 1
2. Daredevil season 3
1. Daredevil season 1
The thing is, even though JJ season 2, Luke Cage season 2 and Defenders are lower on the totem pole, they’re still pretty decent shows. Only Iron Fist season 1 was what I’d consider overall mediocre in the Netflix offerings.
Weird.I’ve tried watching JJ Season 1 about four times, but have never made it through the second episode. Bored…to…tears…
I agree with this list, and it shows the real problem with the entire endeavor – the second seasons of each show stunk compared to the first. (Exception: Iron Fist, but it still sucked). Result: Lost viewers.
whew… could only imagine that this site would put JJ s2 near the top of the list. Pleasantly surprised to see it where it belongs although personally I thought Iron Fist s2 was better than JJ s2. Really loved JJ s1, that may be my favorite next to DD s1. What a drastic drop off between seasons for JJ….writers really dropped the ball on that one.
1. Punisher, 2. Luke Cage 1, 3. Daredevil 1, 4. Jessica Jones 1, 5. The Defenders…that is as far as I will go.
How can Finn Jones be cast as the most badass fighter in his realm in two of the biggest series in the last decade when he can’t fight?
Awful list. Hugely overrating Luke Cage. 2nd season was not very good, and the first has some severe issues as well. Easily behind the third season of Daredevil.
My list has DD3 at the top, as I found it better than just about every MCU movie. It was dark, violent, and featured a perfect performance of hero angst without sounding like a whiny, overwrought DC hero as portrayed by most other actors.
I found the pacing to be perfect as the payoff for the slower first two episodes worked really well. All the actors raised their games and the cinematography was so well thought out and so much better than what we see in so many other hero television shows.
Maybe we should all spend a little more energy lobbying Disney+ to pick the shows up so we’ll have more to debate and review?
Can the AV Club do a ranking of all the seasons of every MCU TV show on any network? (“Inhumans” S1 is definitely the worst among them.)
*zooms out and this list is located somewhere after #10,000 of ranked TV shows period*
with the small-screen MCU about to wink out of existenceNo, it isn’t.
SHIELD’s got two more seasons coming, Cloak & Dagger has at least one more, Runaways might be renewed again, and New Warriors is still supposed to happen.
On top of that, there’s a batch of miniseries coming for the Disney+ service: Vision & Scarlet Witch, Loki, and Bucky & Falcon are confirmed so far with a couple more rumored.Under showrunner Melissa Rosenberg, the series didn’t just nail the look and tone of a superhero show—it reimagined what a superhero show could be.I mean, the show was as close to a direct adaptation of Alias as it could be without access to mutants or Carol Danvers.
Luke Cage S2 deserves credit for giving us an episode that showed how much better Heroes for Hire would’ve been than standalone LC or IF
I’m glad someone is finally being objective with Daredevil S3. Too many people are putting it on a pedestal. And often flaws they judge the other shows harshly for fall by the wayside here. It’s fine because it’s Daredevil. The fanbase has become too much of a circle jerk, barring off other shows from sharing the same podium. Which is ridiculous, because when you get right down to it the Netflix MCU shows are pretty much of the same quality sans Iron Fist.
Literally everything you said about Daredevil Season 3 was wrong. First off, Kingpin didn’t get control of the FBI by just intimidating them. He has an entire network of people working for him all around the world, and it was established that the head of the FBI had 3 kids, and 2 of them were killed, and their murder was made to look like a hit and run. She started working for Wilson under the threat of the death of her other child. Also Wilson caused Nadeem’s sister to lose health coverage, and that made him want to get that job and he dug his nose in too deep and was thrown into this. As for Matt, you couldn’t be more wrong. His arc was the most satisfying character arc of all the seasons. I mean did you not see the “I BEAT YOU!” speech? Also he never became a happy go lucky guy. His character arc was that he didn’t have to be “The Devil” in order to save lives. He realized that all the bad things he had been through were done to him for a purpose, so that he would eventually become Daredevil. And if he never went through all this tragedy then he would never have become Daredevil. He’s not a happy go lucky guy he’s just a little more optimistic. It’s called a CHARACTER ARC! Seriously did you even pay attention to the show?
1. Daredevil Season 32. Daredevil Season 13. The Punisher Season 14. Jessica Jones Season 15. Daredevil Season 26. Luke Cage Season 17. Iron Fist Season 28. The Punisher Season 29. The Defenders10. Jessica Jones Season 211. Luke Cage Season 212. Iron Fist Season 1