The Defenders Review

The best sequence is the restaurant. Four people who cannot stand each other sit in a Chinese place and bicker about whether any of this is their problem, and for twenty minutes the crossover works exactly as intended, because the characters were built separately and the friction is real. Charlie Cox and Krysten Ritter in particular have a dry contempt that the writers clearly enjoyed. Everything structural around that fails. The Hand, an organisation seeded across three shows as an unknowable threat, is finally explained as five immortals who need a substance from beneath New York to stay alive, which is both convoluted and dull, and Sigourney Weaver is wasted playing a leader whose whole personality is patience.

The colour coding, with each hero lit in their own signature hue when they share a frame, is the sort of idea that sounds clever in a pitch and looks like a lighting error. Elektra's resurrection undercuts the best emotional beat of Daredevil's second season. Eight episodes, and it still sags in the middle.