With the Punisher getting his punishment, Matt Murdock’s life should be less complicated. But true love never plays fair and the past comes back to haunt him in the form of Elektra…
After Matt (Charlie Cox) and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) share a long-overdue kiss, Matt’s sixth-sense of karmic bad-timing rings true with the arrival of his old flame Elektra (Elodie Yung),a Greek-born debutante with a crisp English-accent and a sense of entitlement that’s only matched by her zest for experience. Matt remembers all too well how badly their young romance ended and knows that her return will always have an agenda. As he tries to put her presence aside and concentrate on both his work and the romantic opportunities with Karen, he elarns that the Yakuza are far from gone – and Elektra has dropped him right in the middle of her troubles…
The fifth episode in Daredevil‘s latest run is quite an abrupt change of pace from the opening salvo. While the immediate Punisher arc was down and dirty, the arrival of Elektra swaps a rusty and angry juggernaut for a gleaming sensual Ferrari – and not just metaphorically. Anyone who is familiar with comics continuity knows that the arrival of Elektra was always going to affect Matt’s life in any number of turbulent forms In many ways the love of his life, one of the few people who knows many of his secrets, shares his martial-arts ability as well as his frustrations and boredom with the everyday world (but operates from a different tax bracket and moral axis) is a magnet for all kinds of emotional and physical trouble. Their shared, charged history is the stuff of romantic classics but with an equal amount of tragedy and regret. A fundamental difference in the nature of personal justice sets them on difference courses – the kind that don’t converge again, merely collide.
Elodie Yung makes an enigmatic Elektra. She won’t be everyone’s idea of the infamous assassin, but she’s certainly as streamlined as any of her numerous vehicles and imbues her character with the type of arrogance that is both as annoying as it is attractive – a sense of self that fills the room and overpowers all other elements. There’s a clear chemistry between her and Charlie Cox’s Matt – and the episode spends a lot of time recounting their original courtship and the way it ended. But there’s also a different chemistry between Matt and Karen… a sweeter but perhaps no less passionate energy. Again, love rarely plays fair, but it makes good dramatic punctuation.
The violence is still there and intense – the fight sequences, both in the ring and elsewhere are as effective as we’ve come to expect – but a rough and tumble now with a certain added grace, a dance that tests boundaries rather than a brawl that tests muscle. It’s largely fun to watch the adventure unfold rather than the wincing that accompanied the previous episodes.
8/10
