Marvel's The Defenders: Ranking Every Episode From Worst To Best
One miniseries, four heroes, eight mixed-quality episodes.
At last, Marvel and Netflix have delivered The Defenders, the eight-part miniseries that brings Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist together for the first time. Unfortunately, despite (or maybe because of) all the hype, the end result is frustratingly mixed.
Under Daredevil showrunner Marco Ramirez, our heroes remain perfectly in character even when jostling for space with each other - Iron Fist actually showed some improvement over his debut appearance - and all four of them have their own arcs across the season.
Unfortunately, while it was unequivocally exciting to have these four heroes share a screen, the actual storyline that brought them together could have been stronger. The pace was more pedestrian than we had hoped from the trim runtime, the Hand mythology seemed to hardly make any sense and, worst of all, it committed the cardinal sin of wasting Sigourney Weaver.
With the series fluctuating from good to disappointing on a dime, it is difficult to rank the episodes against each other as each have positives and negatives. Even so, there are some clear favourites that fans will want to watch over and over again - and others that they will likely skip on the rewatch.
8. Episode 2: Mean Right Hook
The One Where: Our heroes separately deal with the earthquake that has hit New York and follow up their investigations that lead them closer to the Hand. Eventually, Luke and Danny come to blows and Jessica becomes Matt's latest client.
Verdict: Just because episode 2 is sitting at the bottom of our ranking doesn't mean it is an utterly terrible episode of TV. There is actually a lot to enjoy here. Most notably, the team-up begins to form towards the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Matt's failed attempts to stop being Daredevil continue to be fascinating. Plus, we get Carrie-Ann Moss' sole appearance in the series.
Still, on the whole, this one feels like a bit of pot-boiler for the most part. Before things start to come together at the end, the initial intrigue of episode 1 has mostly worn off and things aren't moving quick enough just yet.