Marvel's The Defenders Review: 5 Ups And 7 Downs
The Defenders have assembled at last, but were they better off staying apart?
The Defenders have assembled at last.
Four years in the making, and four series into the Netflix Marvel Universe, four heroes come together to save New York from a mysterious threat.
It's a project that deserves applauding just for its ambition, as it tries to replicate the success of The Avengers on the small screen, and one with a lot of quality behind it too: Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and Luke Cage were all, to varying degrees, good-to-great, and Iron Fist's failings could be better hidden away.
Put Sigourney Weaver into the mix as the Big Bad, and it's all looking rosy for the team-up event. The results, however, aren't quite as expected. It's not an outright bad show, and there are some genuinely excellent moments, but the series does become less than the sum of its parts.
Even with fewer episodes it can't avoid some problems that have plagued this universe, and creating a few unique ones as well, but fans of these characters should still find plenty to enjoy as Marvel's small screen heroes defend their city.
Warning: this review contains spoilers for all eight episodes of The Defenders.