Think back to 2015. The Avengers were teaming up once again for the massiveAge of Ultron, DC’s clash-of-the-titansBatman v. Supermanwas deep into production, and the comic book movie business overall was positively boomin' (minus a hiccup or two— shoutoutFantastic Four). It was all buoyed by the more mature sensibilities ofThe Dark Knightand the genius billion-dollar universe-building being done by Marvel Studios. On the small screen, though, things were … less momentous.
Superhero TV wasfun, for sure. The CW had built a soap opera-ish universe of tights and fights starting withArrowandfollowed byThe Flash(and nowmanyothers).Fox’sGothamwas a delightful bit of camp, and ABC’sAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.was a serviceable trip to the MCU between big-screen installments. But nothing on TV truly tapped into that unique blend of comic-book storytelling and visuals that the movies had discovered. Until 2015. UntilDrew Goddard’sDaredevilkicked off Netflix’s Marvel Universe.
That first gloriously violent clash between a conflicted Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and a multi-layered Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) set the stage for a new brand of comic book TV: something darker, more grounded. This was a show that will mess you up with a brutal one-take fight scene, but also wasn’t afraid of flashes of heightened reality that make comic books fun even in the blackest nights. What followed was an entire mini-MCU with its own tone and New York aesthetic;Jessica Jonesbrought a noir twist,Luke Cagebumped to the inimitable rhythm of Harlem, andIron Fisttried its darndest to blend curly-haired earnestness with the culture of Chinatown. The Netflix MCU then teamed up inThe Defendersand spun-off intoThe Punisher. And like any entertainment universe, there have been just as manylow-lows as there has beenhigh-highs. For that, there’s been no better example recently than when Netflix debuted the critically acclaimedDaredevilSeason 3 whilesimultaneously cancellingbothIron FistandLuke Cage.
But all that change means there’s no better time to revisit the past. With allthatsaid, here is every Netflix Marvel season ranked from worst to best.
13) Iron Fist Season 1
Pinpointing a single issue with Netflix’s fourth Marvel series is like making it through an entire conversation without mentioning you are the Immortal Iron Fist. It simply cannot be done, at least without dangerously draining your chi. Under showrunnerScott Buck,Iron Fistwas plagued with criticism from the moment Finn Jones was announced as estranged boy billionaire Danny Rand; it isn’t that the choice wasn’t comics accurate—Danny has always been a blonde-haired white dude—it’s that those original comics about a skinny white New Yorker who becomes thebestat martial arts were more than a little ehhhhhh to begin with. But Netflix powered on, hoping the quality of the show would be high enough to tamper down the detractors.
Folks, it wasn’t. Your choices of antagonists are A) One half of a shadowy ninja cult so secretive they don’t actually have a personality, B) The other half of that ninja cult, which turns out to mostly be a day camp, or C) Harold Meachum (David Wenham), who spends 90% of the season locked in the same room. Opposing these forces of vague evil is a man we are reminded again and again—and again, and again, and again—is aLiving Weaponwho takes part in fight scenes so blandly terrible the editing team had to put the film in an actual blender to hide the fact everyone is actually standing still.
The lone bright spot that isn’t a glowing yellow fist is the introduction ofJessica Henwick’s Colleen Wing, a fierce, fiery performance that should have been the series' focus from day one.
12) The Defenders
Marvel’s first big team-up between Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand is what happens when you don’t plan past the point of the team-up itself. I was not on the writing staff ofThe Defenders, but I do confidently assume the whiteboard just said: 1) Meet 2) Banter 3) ??? 4) Profit.
It’s a miracle thatThe Defendersis the only Marvel Netflix season that runs eight episodes and yet still feels like it was stretching its story too thin. Because really, for most of the runtime there is no story; a large portion ofDefendersis spent discussing how The Hand is definitely up tosomething, not surewhat, butsomething, and it’s pretty likely to bebad. A lot of this puffed up vaguery falls on poor, misusedSigourney Weaveras Alexandra Reid, who spends too long monologuing about the mystical Black Sky, which appears to give Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung) the power to be like, 1% better at fighting.
The rest of our time is spent coasting on the idea that seeing these heroes sitting at the same Chinese restaurant table will be enough to hold your interest. And italmostworks; there is, admittedly, some top-notch banter here. Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox prove that New York’s two mopiest superheroes deserve their own spin-off—possibly a rom-com?—while Finn Jones, ten times more charming here than in his own show, works best as a foil to his Heroes for Hire soulmate Mike Colter. But in the end, all that charismatic bickering can’t hide the fact that the story itself is as hollow as a set of old dragon bones.
11) Jessica Jones Season 2
More than any other Marvel Netflix season,Jessica Jones' sophomore outing falls victim to the 13-episode-mandate slog.Jessica JonesSeason 2 is theReturn of the Kingof Marvel Netflix seasons, a superhero story that pushes on past so many logical endpoints you start to feel like a crazy person trapped in a Netflix loop.
Janet McTeeris fantastically balanced between unhinged and maternal as Jessica’s mother Alisa, but the odd pacing and logic loopholes of that storyline do her no favors. It also largely leaves the season without a true antagonist, which could be interesting in a contained character study but, again, falters in a story that must in no uncertain terms be 13 hours long. Krysten Ritter is the perfect Jessica Jones as she always is, but the nature of this drawn out plotting means there’s alotof scenes where we just watch Jessica get drunk and pass out at her desk. Jessica and Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) also have the same conversation about trust roughly 13 separate times.
While I completely understand why Melissa Rosenberg did it, I do think the decision to center one episode around the (hallucinated) re-appearance ofDavid Tennant’s Kilgrave was a mistake. It’s the danger of fan service; when you remind the audience of something at its best, they realize they’re currently watching it at its worst.
10) Luke Cage Season 1
Luke CageSeason 1 is the only show in history where you can literally say “man, that story really went out the window.”
ShowrunnerCheo Hodari Cokerbrought a completely different, breath-of-fresh-air sensibility to Netflix’s MCU withLuke Cage, a show so immersed in the sights, sounds, and street-corner personalities of Harlem that your couch turned into the curb at East 125th and Lexington. For seven episodes,Luke Cage—bolstered by the mighty Mike Colter andMahershala Ali, a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime talent, as the villain Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes—was on its way to being a top-tier superhero series. And then, in the episode titled “Manifest”, Mariah Dillard (a fantasticAlfre Woodard) launches Cottonmouth through the window of Harlem’s Paradise and the show quite simply could not recover.
I’m not even saying that Ali was carrying the show, but it’s hard to deny that the character’s death jarringly derailed the story and faltered from that point forward. Cottonmouth was replaced by the incredibly bland Diamondback (Erik LaRay) and a twist (that Diamondback is Luke’s brother) so poorly explained and executed it barely counts as a twist at all. The climactic fight scene is laughably bad, with bystanders chilling like ten feet away and talking into a news camera as Luke and Diamondback tussle like drunk dads at a softball game in the background.
9) Iron Fist Season 2
To its credit,Iron FistSeason 2 worked hard to fix most of the baby-punch problems that plagued its debut outing. Danny Rand is still a dingus, but less obnoxiously so – it’s now in a lost-child-at-the-mall way. Though the bar was so low, the fight scenes were drastically improved thanks to new choreographerEmmanuel Manzanaresand stunt coordinatorClayton Barber. And most importantly, there’s a lot more of Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing, whose chemistry with bionic-armed Misty Knight (Simone Missick) makes a strong, strong case for a Daughters of the Dragon spin-off series.
Unfortunately, all that maintenance work also resulted in a middle-of-the-road story. Davos (Sacha Dhawan) as an antagonist and story driver was … fine. His quest to steal the heart of the dragon from Danny is equally fine.Iron FistSeason 2 is fine! Really, the best way to describe it is not as actively, insultingly bad as Season 1, but not particularly great either. It’s the Finn Jones American Accent of seasons, perfectly serviceable in short bursts but definitely flat in the long run.
Rising above all that mediocrity, however, isAlice Eve’s incredible performance as Mary Walker. Eve’s double-sided Mary is a top-tier Netflix villain alongside D’Onofrio’s Fisk and Tennant’s Kilgrave, and it’s a shameIron Fistintroduced her and then decided to get truly bonkers in the lasttwo minutesof the season right in time for Netflix to pull the plug.
8) Luke Cage Season 2
For a season that sees Luke tossing monster truck tires and Misty rocking a robot arm,Luke Cage’s second chapter is probably the quietest story in the Netflix MCU. But thanks to Coker’s much more tightened focus the second time around, it works. Luke Cage’s whole thing is that he’s a Hero forHire. It’s a living, as they say. He’s weary, a man with a whole lot of responsibility thrust on him simply because of the bullet-proof-ness of his skin. In Season 2, Colter does a tremendous job embodying that quiet storm that’s always rumbling inside Luke, occasionally rising to the surface and (literally) punching its way through the wall of Claire Temple’s (Rosario Dawson) apartment.
Luke CageSeason 2 is more like a stage play than it is a superhero story, focusing on individual performances and the ironic tragedy of it all. Again, likeJessica JonesSeason 2, this doesn’t hold up for 13 straight hours—this season hits a deep slog for a few episodes—but it does stick the landing better than a good number of its Marvel peers.Luke Cagehas always been the most Shakespearian of the Netflix MCU shows, and there aren’t much more situations ol' Willy liked more than a well-meaning man living long and hard enough to become something of a villain. Luke inheriting Harlem’s Paradise is a stellar ending, setting up whatwouldhave been a highly intriguing Season 3.
7) The Punisher season 2
The Punisherseason 2 is a tough gun to cock. On one hand, it almost completely does away with the quiet meditation on PTSD, gun violence, and familial bonds that made season 1 such a miracle. (More on that below.) On the other hand,The Punisherseason 2 straight-up whips ass. All kinds of asses. Every ass available to be whipped is, in fact, whipped in season 2. For better or worse, this isThePunisher, blood-soaked and packing heat for gun fight after gun fight, decked out in that iconic skull vest more than he’s not.
Plenty about season 2 doesn’t work. While I do admire what showrunner Steven Lightfoot was trying to achieve with Billy Russo’s transformation into Jigsaw being more about mental scars than actual physical deformity, it comes off more unintentionally funny than anything when he still just looks 95% likeBen Barnes, a.k.a. more attractive than 95% of people on Earth.
But season 2 also has more than a few bullets in its chamber that keep it burning hot. The addition ofGiorgia Whighamas runaway Amy develops into a girl-and-her-monster story that grounds Frank in a really endearing way. And there’s just no denying that Jon Bernthal is the best Frank Castle adaptation there ever was—dude just has aseethingintensity that’s unmatched on-screen—and possibly ever will be, given what a Disney version of the character might look like in the future. Despite the flaws, getting a chance to spend more time withthisversion of the Punisher is a killer opportunity.
6) Jessica Jones season 3
The expectations that come with being the “final chapter” of Netflix’s Marvel universe are unfair to begin with, especially because theJessica Jonescreative team didn’t know season 3 would evenbethe final chapter until well into production. The funny thing is that season 3 is satisfying no because it’s some grand finale, but because it’s low-key as hell. Melissa Rosenberg and Co. stripped down the story, bringing in a non-super serial killer antagonist in Gregory Salinger (Jeremy Bobb) and using his personal attacks to focus in on the relationship between Jessica and Trish.
In a lot ways, season 3 is Trish’s story, her official transformation into violent vigilante Hellcat, and Rachael Taylor is more than up for the heavy lifting, even if 90% of the scenes she’s in begin with her aggressively doing push-ups. The Jessica Jones character works best when she’s bumping up against a line even she won’t cross, and that story in season 3 essentially places her in a battle for Trish’s soul. The tragedy of it all is that she loses in the end. But Jessica Jones has always been a tragedy, both the show and the character; it’s always been about somehow making one of those superpowered leaps out of rock bottom, again and again. That season 3 ends on such an uncharacteristically upbeat note after all that darkness—purple-lit Kilgrave cameo notwithstanding—is maybe the best way for Netflix’s MCU to end. The fact that it goes out to the sound of Le Tigre’s “Keep On Livin'” is just one final bit of brutal irony.
5) Daredevil Season 2
DaredevilSeason 2’s massive one-take fight scene between Matt Murdock and an entire biker bar pretty much sums up the season as a whole; it’s good, really good even, but it’s also socrowded,an attempt to go bigger and badder that succeeds but ultimately loses the simple, personal thrills that made season one a near-masterpiece.
Really, this season’s biggest sin is just being too busy for anything to shine. New showrunnersDoug PetrieandMarco RamirezintroducedJon Bernthalas Frank Castle—better known as the one-man army The Punisher—as well as Matt Murdock’s assassin ex-lover Elektra Natchios and an endless horde of shadow ninjas in The Hand. The elements that work aremasterful. Bernthal’s Punisher grabs your actual damn face in every scene and demands your attention, and the central thesis of his beef with Daredevil—killing criminals is Good, Actually—cuts right to the core of both characters.
But everything that works is constantly ruined by The Hand, the least interesting Big Bad in the MCU, big-screen or otherwise. (Yes, I’m includingChristopher Eccleston’s evil Party City elf inThor: The Dark World.) There are only so many times you can watch faceless members of The Hand pouring out of the woodwork like ants before it becomes more of a parody than a threat. There are a few scenes where I’m pretty sure you can actually see Charlie Cox roll his eyes, like “here we goagainwith these ninjas.”
4) Jessica Jones Season 1
Daredevilhad a lot of responsibility to introduce the world to Netflix’s Marvel Universe, butJessica Joneshad to shoulder the work of keeping that vigilante train rolling. There are two things the character hates, responsibility and work, but hot damnJessica Jones' first season is a great ride. From the moment that tinkling piano theme kicks in, Melissa Rosenberg’s story is superhero noir through and through, using an unwanted case of super-strength to illustrate the ways past trauma shapes us into who we are, but doesn’t need to define what we become.
Of the core four Defenders crew, Krysten Ritter is not only the most magnetic performer, but she understands her character the best, from every roll of the eyes to the smallest hints of humanity that peek out from under Jessica’s carefully hardened exterior.
And woof, what a villain. Kilgrave was the the kind of villain that no other live-action comic book series was touching; the man in the purple suit is not only a casual murderer and rapist in this story, but he serves as a stand-in for every sexual assault perpetrator that gets away with it, every awful man who rises to power anyway, every cat-caller on the street who thinks a woman’s attention is his right by default. The genius stroke was casting the endlessly watchable David Tennant in the role, ensuring this inarguable monster would also be horrifically charming. Kilgrave has the power of persuasion, and Tennant ensures that ability works on the audience as well.
Jessica JonesSeason 1 ends on the most satisfying neck snap in TV history. But it wouldn’t have worked if every moment before that wasn’t such a perfectly-plotted example of creating a character who walks such a moral tight-rope that even her best decisions look like murder.
