Daredevil Season 3 Review: Faith and Forgiveness – An Honest Look at a World Where Religion is Real

Warning: This review contains minor spoilers below. 

While TV shows that embrace Christian values may be rare today, those that confront and articulate Christian themes are almost non-existent. If explicitly identified Christians appear on the screen, they tend to do so as minor characters, possibly with a bit of a silly side. The implication is that people who believe in the supernatural are living in their own little world – not dangerous, but not all that important in shaping the society that surrounds us. Churches are perhaps a more consistent presence, thanks to the weddings and funerals scattered throughout those hours of binge-watching: anchor points in time and emotions that set an outline for the characters’ hijinks or battles, depending on the show. But a series that digs into the content taught by the churches? The personal relationships those believers have with God? That’s as unlikely as a man dressing up in a red spandex suit with horns to fight crime.

Yet, Season 3 of Marvel’s Daredevil, currently on Netflix, presents viewers with both: an exciting superhero story from the Marvel Universe and a sincere look at a world in which faith, the Church, and God have a direct impact on the events of the day and the arc of the story. The outline is broadly familiar: Daredevil’s classic villains, a crime lord nicknamed Kingpin and a talented but immoral marksman known as Bullseye, pursue their illegal and violent plans, and the hero, with his allies, bold reporter Karen Page, honest lawyer Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, and FBI agent Rahul “Ray” Nadeem, must think hard, work hard, and fight hard in the cause of justice.

Season 3’s storyline takes these traditional types and weaves an excellent and unpredictable story with a compelling plot. Admittedly, I often could not tell quite where the story was going, but found myself both completely surprised and completely satisfied in the end. The story moves around several recognizable themes that viewers should be able to trace and ponder to their benefit. Can people change? When the system fails, what is the right way to respond? How do we relate well to our friends and families? Indeed, this last theme may be the most unique and interesting of the show. While past versions of Daredevil and many other shows of its type find themselves spending a lot of time in nightclubs, alleys, prisons, and offices, the most common setting in Daredevil Season 3 is the home. The importance of a wholesome family, the home as a source of strength (or weakness), and the destructive invasion of the home by evil forces and bad choices are regularly presented over the course of Season 3’s 13 episodes.

These themes are excellently brought out by the actors who bring each character to life. Vincent D’Onofrio as “Kingpin” Wilson Fisk is one of the Marvel Universe’s most strong and compelling villains. His sneers, shouts, and glares add reality and depth in a world where many of the antagonists are just rich guys with a will to power. Charlie Cox’s portrayal of Daredevil is vulnerable enough to embrace all the sympathy for his character’s struggles without moving the hero into indecision, melodrama, or moral neutrality. The rest of the cast, newcomers and returnees, fill their roles with enthusiasm and vigor. Daredevil’s world feels real, and that is due in large part to the foibles and feelings successfully brought forward by the full range of characters.

To those who may care a bit less about the battle of ideas waged on the screen, it should also be noted that Daredevil’s third season continues the tense and well-choreographed action sequences set by its two predecessors. Gun battles and hand-to-hand engagements recur frequently and brilliantly, although the natural result is that quite a lot of blood flows before a conclusion is reached. This fact, and a few, brief scenes of sexual activity and substance abuse (particularly in one episode where the absolute annihilation of a character’s life through their own poor choices is produced in a heartbreaking and almost unbearably powerful progression), means that Daredevil Season 3 is certainly not suited for young viewers. Profanities are also present, to the consistent but not oppressive degree associated with Marvel’s formula. However, adults willing and able to skip a few very short sections of the show will find that objectionable content can be mostly avoided.

The engagement with questions of faith in Daredevil Season 3 is legitimate and extensive. When characters face moments of regret, they don’t simply replay the moment in black-and-white flashbacks; the characters discuss the possibility of forgiveness and atonement. If danger threatens the helpless, they don’t flee to a billionaire’s secret base, but the local parish church’s basement. When best-laid plans go awry, the results include moments of soul-searching about God’s plan and how well the characters’ choices fit into it.

Naturally, the answers that are arrived at in Daredevil Season 3 do not always correspond with the Christian worldview. Given the world of fallen people the show portrays, it would be asking too much to expect more. Just the recognition by Daredevil’s producers that themes of redemption, deception, family, and loyalty are worth developing over 13 episodes is something to be thankful for. However, when the series ends with one character realizing that “God’s plan is like a beautiful tapestry, and the tragedy of being human is that we only get to see it from the back…we only get a hint of the true beauty that would be revealed if we could see the whole pattern from the other side, as God does,” Christians can be deeply grateful for a show that has asked the questions they face, and realized the value of the conclusions they have drawn by the Lord’s leading.