Marvel's The Defenders: 10 Ways It Sets Up Daredevil Season 3

4. Karen Embodies The Spirit Of Ben Urich

The Defenders Karen Matt
Netflix

While we can all agree that season one of Daredevil was some of the best TV we've ever gotten, one can't help but dwell on the premature death of Ben Urich - a key player in the character's source material and an unsung hero of the Marvel Universe in his own right.

Vondie Curtis-Hall was a stellar choice to play the character, and his death still manages to loom over the rest of the MCU in its current form. That said, Karen is doing well to pick up the pieces of his career, and - much like the Urich of the comics - she's faced with a pretty incredible conundrum. She knows that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are one and the same - a story that outlets would pay big bucks for - and yet she refuses to publish it, out of respect for the person beneath the mask.

We've already discussed why the Karen of the comics will never be the Karen of the MCU, and that's fine, but it's clear that she'll be taking on two roles now: that of the cynical, investigative Urich; and that of the love interest with her own tragic past to hide.

Said past will, most likely, come back to haunt her next year. Fisk won't have forgotten Wesley's murder, and there are other skeletons in Karen's closet that we're also yet to discover. Still though, it was nice to see her take on Ben's role in The Defenders, especially since it's one that'll continue the next time we see Daredevil in action next year.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.