Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 Review: 8 Ups & 2 Downs

Downs...

2. Matt’s Character Gets A Little Too Emo At Times

To make something clear: Charlie Cox is great. Every year he manages to bring new layers to Matt Murdock, and the affectations in his performance - when pretending to be blind and powerful, blind and powerless, or not blind at all - are remarkable.

He’s also a character who is constantly struggling with his sense of self, his actions, and his faith. And it’s here, especially in the latter, Season 3’s Matt has some issues. Sure, Matt Murdock is a character with a lot of inner darkness, but he spends a lot of the season moping around, angry at God and angry at himself, while pushing away those closest to him.

It ties into the thematics of the season, but when he has to deliver lines with the angst of a 14-year-old who’s been growing out his hair and listening to his first Dashboard Confessional album, it becomes a bit much. And it certainly doesn’t help when he gets the worst of the dialogue this year, with comments on God, the Bible, and his parentage that come off more as ‘Dear Diary, mood: apathetic’ than the kind of crime epic the rest of the season suggests.

It’s not enough to derail the season by any means, and Cox is good enough in other areas that you still root for Matt (and in the last couple of episodes, he's ridiculously good), but coupled with so much darkness it does get a tiring.