Marvel's Daredevil

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Marvel's Daredevil is a 2015 Netflix exclusive series starring Daredevil set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an excellent reception it was greenlit for a second season, which premiered in March 2016.

Season 1 opens with Nelson and Murdock taking the case of Karen Page, a secretary accessed of murder after being found covered in blood standing over a dead body while clutching a knife, after being alerted by Nelson's childhood friend cop that she is a potential case for Nelson and Murdock. Sensing a Revealing Coverup Murdock decides that their new firm take the case (over Nelson's objections that Page can't afford to pay them). Murdock is correct and the three find themselves deep in a plot by organized crime.

Tropes used in Marvel's Daredevil include:
  • Ascended Extra: Brett Mahoney, who was a very minor character who made only two real appearances in the comic book. Here he's an important contact for both Foggy and Daredevil and benefits greatly from it.
  • Almost-Dead Guy: In season 2 a nameless criminal left impaled on a meat hook lives long enough to tell Daredevil the massacre was done by one man.
  • Always Murder: Unusually for a rookie firm, Nelson and Murdock take nothing but murder cases and do rather well despite their inexperience.
  • Confessional: A recurring scene from the catholic Murdock.
  • Disability Superpower
  • Friends Rent Control: Justified for Murdock's apartment: there's a massive neon billboard right outside the window which deterred any renters but Murdock, who being blind is not bothered by it. And while the apartment is big, it's very spartan as the blind man doesn't care much for visual aesthetics.
  • Friend on the Force: Brett Mahoney is a childhood friend of Foggy's who Matt, as Daredevil, gives information to carry out busts because he's the only NYPD officer he's reasonably sure isn't corrupt. This earns him rapid promotion from a desk job to detective by the end of season 2. This is a big promotion from his comic's counterpart, who was a supporting character in a single arc that wasn't even Daredevil-related and made one cameo after that.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Several parts of fight scenes are off-screen, with auditory cues (which indicate far more violent things than shown on screen) plus stuff and bodies flying into the camera's view to give ideas of what is happening.
    • In Season 2 The Punisher buys a stolen police radio from a shady pawnshop. Just as he's about to leave, surprisingly without violence, after making his purchase, the guy tries to sell him child porn: cue Frank picking up a bat and approaching him before a screen transition.
  • Good Lawyers, Good Clients: Matt Murdock wants to be this, but Foggy Nelson correctly asserts that innocent until proven guilty renders this ethically wrong on top of being completely unworkable from a financial prospective.
  • Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: A dream team of them in season 1:
  • Multinational Team: Russians, Yakuza, Triad and more seemingly enemy criminal groups have allied for Kingpin's plans.
  • Not Wearing Tights: Most of the first season has Murdock fight crime in a hat pulled over his eyes while the nearest thing to a superhero name he has is the newspaper given nickname "The Devil of Hell's Kitchen". Averted at the end, as acquiring his iconic (here armored) costume is an Eleventh-Hour Superpower for the final fight and he gives his name as Dardevil when he finally stops in front of a non-criminal, non-victim long enough to give it.
  • The Oner: The first two hallway fights are cleverly edited to appear as if they were but there in fact some hidden cuts. The hallway fight in season 3 however is a genuine single shot, with Charlie Cox and stunt-double Chris Brewster pulling off a switch in the scene.
  • Race Lift: Ben Urich. Weird as in the comics Ben is Those Two Guys with Robbie Robertson, who was always black and and the character here is closer to Robertson than Ulrich.
    • Elektra is Asian instead of Greek in season 2. The not being Greek part was presumably mandated by the Greek bankruptcy during production.
    • Blake Tower is black in season 2. Unusually the black version has gotten more screen time than the original did for decades despite an adaption demotion to ADA.
  • Revealing Coverup: A guard is blackmailed into trying to murder Page, which is suspicious enough the police just go along with Nelson and Murdock's demands they release her.
  • You Have 48 Hours: The holding limit version is invoked by Nelson and Murdock as why they need to release Page at the start.