History Headscratchers / TheDefenders2017

** Davos is Indian (at least on his mother's side, according to ''Iron Fist'' season 2), so K'un L'un is more diverse than one would expect. There are also likely other gateways to K'un-L'un that we don't know of. Arguably, the differences in accents could also be attributed to each Finger spending enough time in a certain regions that they ended up picking up the local accent along the way (which could explain why Bakuto has a Japanese-sounding name yet has a Brazilian / Puerto-Rican accent).

** Or, even simpler: The Hand have no idea how the substance actually works. They know it brings you back, afterwards you don't age or get sick, and seem to resurrect indefinitely. This makes it exceptionally useful, so they start mining it to stockpile for loyal followers (Nobu) or as an effective bribe (Harold), destroying several cities along the way. However, they don't properly ration it, thinking each person only needs it once. Then Alexandra gets sick, which should be impossible, and they go into panic mode, accelerating the digging in New York when they realize they are all potentially vulnerable. This makes sense because if they knew they had a finite number of resurrections from the start, it would be exceptionally stupid to give it to Harold or the unnamed soldier in the story in Iron Fist, instead of just hoarding it all for themselves.

** Luke's argument about Cole doing it for the money here, is him just presenting the situation as he understands it: as far as Luke can tell, Cole and his brother took the job for the purpose of money. There’s clearly a lot more to it than that, but Cole’s tight-lippedness on the subject makes that tough for Luke to pick apart. And more to the point, it’s not just a problem limited to Cole: he's just one of several underprivileged kids the Hand have been recruiting from Harlem, and Luke doesn’t know every victim’s story, but the one overarching motivation that Sowande seems to be exploiting when it comes to recruiting youth from Harlem, is that most of them are probably financially desperate. Danny argues that money isn’t a strong enough reason for someone to dispose of dead bodies for a shady criminal organization; Luke argues that it is. The root of Luke’s message is that personal details are irrelevant: it doesn’t matter whether or not Cole has had a horrible year with the recent deaths of both of his siblings. His reasons for taking the job are actually irrelevant too. Cole is still a relatively innocent kid with a lot of time to turn his life around, and is currently vulnerable to systemic injustice, and Luke believes that Danny should have taken that into account and left him alone. This is compounded by the fact that Luke is upset about his own failure to prevent Cole from getting arrested, and is pinning that guilt on Danny. And Luke also isn't going to admit to how he failed Candace anytime soon, since that was the last thing that happened to him before he went back to prison.

** They were rallies in Harlem asking cops to use Judas bullets, they aren't a secret half way through the first season of Luke Cage so unless the Hand refused to follow that story about weapon made to kill superhuman it's more plausible they just didn't anticipate super humans despite being super themselves.

** Foggy believes that he's actually trying to help Matt, but he just can't help himself and act superior as hell while doing so. Seriously, on a second viewing, Foggy seems to get really passive-aggressive with Matt without realizing it. A huge part of why Foggy acts like he does, the way he only manages to see the bad side of what Matt does, the way he acts unnecessary shitty about it like in this specific situation, where this specific comment felt very uncalled for and quite absurd - I think it's about his self-esteem issues. It's very clear throughout the comics, and through both seasons of ''Daredevil'' (moreso in season 1), that for a long time Foggy felt inferior to Matt (that Matt was the hotter, better lawyer who got all the girls, etc) and while there was a lot of admiration in that and a lot of trust, Foggy still didn't like feeling inferior. So now? He uses any situation he gets to make himself feel better. Even in the scene at the precinct, Foggy kinda sounds more like Matt's lawyer than his concerned friend, and he kinda makes it a bit about himself, instead of acknowledging that Matt has some very valid reasons for his actions and that it's actually quite admirable that he does it. It should be considered that Matt and Foggy's friendship is flawed, just like Matt and Karen's romance is flawed, which is why it feels so real.

** Well, it makes sense when you consider how Claire has always drawn a short stick every time she's crossed paths with Matt: the first time, it is to stitch him up after he's injured fighting the Russians. The second time, it is because she gets kidnapped as bait for Matt. The third time is when Foggy has to have her stitch Matt up after Nobu and Fisk cut him up. And the fourth time is when he indirectly causes the Hand's attack on the hospital that kills her friend and gets her fired.

*** At this point it would be easy to ask the question: if she was distancing herself from vigilantism, why would she jump right into the middle of Luke’s problems (besides the obvious "otherwise we'd have a Claire-less ''Luke Cage''")? Well, technically, she doesn't. She introduces herself to Luke when she sees him having breakfast with Bobby Fish at her mom's diner, and steps over to see if he’s doing alright after the whole incident with Jessica shooting him in the head with a shotgun. Claire has been consistently characterized as someone who will always help when needed, so when her casual conversation with Luke then turns into her having to save a dying Detective Scarfe, she has to do something. Because the situation escalates with the arrival of Diamondback (as all superhero stories are bound to do), Claire finds herself inadvertently sucked into Luke’s story. She's not in a place where she can decide, “Well okay, I think I’ve found my footing again, so I’ll just leave Luke here to die and go check on Matt”. Her decision to break up with Matt in ''Daredevil'' season 1 was out of concern for both his and her safety, and fear of his apparent shaky morality. But her decision to leave Hell’s Kitchen in season 2 appears to be purely situational. By that point, Claire knew Matt a little better, Daredevil had become a more established figure in the community. And had the Hand's attack on the hospital hadn’t happened, she would have stuck around Hell's Kitchen for god knows how long. It’s hard to determine whether she would have regained an interest in being romantically involved with Matt, but she certainly would have continued to help him.
*** But we also need to be realistic about Matt. As lovable a character as Matt is, he can be difficult person to be around. He can be stubborn, untruthful, emotionally volatile, make poor decisions (his fight with Fisk and Nobu), takes unnecessary risks (his first fights with Frank)… and these are all things that make Matt Murdock a fun and fascinating character, but they’re not desirable boyfriend traits unless you're someone like Elektra. Claire decided to stop dating Matt at a point when she was disturbed by the moral line toward which he was edging. By ''Daredevil'' Season 2, Claire knows Matt has stepped away from that line, but he still has a lot of his personality/lifestyle elements that initially drove her away. She has decided to maintain a platonic distance for now, but remember that by choosing to break up with Matt she is not abandoning him, or ignoring his problems. Of course, Luke is far from perfect too. Like Matt, Luke has his problems, and he certainly does have a lot of baggage. The big difference is that Luke doesn’t bring his baggage into the lives of those around him to the large degree that Matt does. His pain over losing Reva and then discovering the true nature of her feelings toward him doesn't negatively impact his interactions with Claire. (On the other hand, this ''does'' impact Luke's relationship with Jessica. However, since she was the person who killed Reva, and she was under Kilgrave's control at the time it happened, that’s a bit of a special case…).
*** But this is all debatable. Claire never actually comes out and says why exactly she’s more comfortable dating Luke than Matt, so it's up to the audience to draw meaning from it. There’s also the fact that not all of Claire's motivations can be logically extrapolated, because when it comes down to it, she’s a character in a TV show. She does what she does because it’s what the writers want her to do. The show implies that Claire chooses Luke over Matt for a reason, and it’s up to each viewer to decide whether that choice seems to make sense in the context of the story.

** The very unreliability of the angry young gangbangers from Harlem is probably why they're the perfect place to go hunting for labor: they need leadership after the disorganization of so many gangs thanks to Diamondback's actions, and they're also very expendable, enough to the point that they're on Misty's radar by the time Luke gets back to Harlem.

** Matt probably got put up in the office at Foggy's request (the office in question is the Captain's office, given Thomas Ridenhour is shown working from this space in ''Luke Cage'' season 2). Foggy's known Matt the longest, he knows Matt's heightened senses. So he probably requested when Matt and the others were brought in, "Hey, is there a private room you can put Matt in? Preferably away from the bullpen? He's blind and...he just can get easily overwhelmed or disoriented if he wakes up in a strange environment.” Also, remember that when delivering the suit to Matt, Foggy says, "the people in this building need to always, and ''only'', see you as a lawyer." This means that putting Matt up in a private room was the only way Foggy could change Matt's shirt without any cops in the room who'd definitely notice the scars on Matt's chest. And Foggy didn't leave Matt alone. He's holding a coffee cup in his hand when he comes in, and he's walking to the door, not running to it, which implies that it just a stroke of bad luck that that phone rang to startle Matt awake while Foggy had stepped out for a stretch break.

** Since the show is so packed with side-characters, most of them were going to have a reduced presence. Unfortunately, for a few of the side characters, this actively weakened their characterization. This is very much the case with Karen, whose existence on the sidelines of the action rather than right in the thick of it (despite having more personal motivation for going after the Hand than Jessica or Luke have) is kinda odd. Claire is another example, as she hangs out in the background for most of the show, handing out clumsy advice and reminding the other characters how important and special they are. She doesn’t even get to perform her standard plot function of providing spectacularly daring medical help (unless you count her treating Matt offscreen). She's kinda been reduced to being just Luke's love interest, with no real significance to the overall plot (and how she was handled in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 didn't help this view of her for many fans).

*** With ''Daredevil'' season 3, there wouldn't have been a convenient disappearance for Fisk to take advantage of when scapegoating Matt to Ray Nadeem, while Matt, Karen and Foggy would've probably been able to figure out Fisk's conspiracy much sooner.

** Going off what's shown from the flashback in the first episode of ''Daredevil'' season 3, Karen seems to be upset that Matt lied to her again. Maybe she could read it as evidence that he'd been doing Daredevil stuff behind her back prior to the Hand returning (counting the looters he beat up after the earthquake). That said, the way it's written does make Karen come off like she's being unreasonable and a little silly. Read the room, Karen. Matt's here saying the Hand is back, the Hand who kidnapped you, so you're possibly in danger, you should go with Matt and ream him out after he's gotten you to safety. Granted, what we later learn of Karen in ''Daredevil'' season 3 does give some justification for her behavior and reasons behind why she said some things, but ''The Defenders'' was written and filmed before the ''Daredevil'' scripts would have even been written. So Karen's position is understandable, but the way the scene is written does make her come off more like she's another "superhero's girlfriend who doesn't understand her boyfriend's issues". Plus, at that juncture, without the context of ''Daredevil'' season 3, it almost comes off like Karen made Matt give up Daredevil to have a chance at fixing their relationship.

** The war between the Hand and the Chaste has been two top secret ninja conspiracies [[ShapedLikeItself fighting each other in secret]]. Sure, Frank can mow through ninjas as well as anyone, as demonstrated when he gave cover fire to Matt in the season 2 finale, but he's not really designed for the kind of tracking you'd need to really hunt down the Hand. As demonstrated in Frank's own series, he's vulnerable to manipulation and subterfuge, and nearly died a bunch of times to an operation that was pretty hamfisted. Not that the Hand's been much better. If anything, Frank's a solution to a problem the Chaste didn't really have: like Matt was facing with taking down Fisk in ''Daredevil'' season 1, it's not killing the Hand leaders individually that's the hard part, it's pinning them down long enough to cut off the head, literally and metaphorically. Not only that, but the Hand have the advantage of numbers, and they can split up. One Finger provides a target for Frank, allowing the others to go on about their business as usual.\\
In addition to that, Stick probably wouldn't want Frank's kind of exposure either. Because again, like the Hand, the Chaste also operate in secret, and they commit their own crimes. Elektra murdered ninjas in Matt's apartment. Stick himself flat-out murdered that Black Sky boy that Nobu and his men were bringing in. Sure, that kid was the Black Sky who preceded Elektra, but would Frank Castle of all people care about that logic? Not that Matt or Stick would have to tell him, but that boy at the docks almost certainly was not the first or last kid Stick was prepared to kill (since he did try to kill Elektra, his own surrogate daughter; and he was also prepared to kill Danny to keep the Hand from using him), so if and when it came to that, it'd probably be best to not have a wildcard like Frank watching your six. Best to stick to those with actually useful skillsets: Matt and Danny's martial arts training, and Luke and Jessica's superstrength.

** Danny is probably more experienced, given he has been training for years, learned to master his chi and was the best student in K'un-L'un (and given the flashbacks, saying his life wasn't on the line during sparring matches is probably not true). But Matt's body armor, enhanced senses and high pain threshold makes him a better vigilante, but that's not martial arts. That's just him winning by endurance alone, like how his father was never knocked out in the ring but was still a rather mediocre boxer. Matt struggles against guys like Rance, Healy, Fisk, and Dex, and would have died in his first face-off with Nobu. Whereas Danny went to a Hand kumite and defeated them all with his bare hands, even if they used poison and dirty tricks. Looking at their hallway fights, unless throwing a TV counts as experienced martial art moves, Danny and Davos fleeing the Hand compound was done way more skillfully while Matt just powers through with determination.
*** For those of you who believe Danny has been training longer, you forget that Matt is several years older than him and has been training since he was ten years old. And since he was trained by Stick, we can assume he learned more than boxing. And you forget that he didn't start with body armor. In ''Daredevil'' season 1 and in ''Daredevil'' season 3, he's wearing thick black long-johns which provide him with no protection whatsoever. And while he may endure a lot of pain, there's so much more to it than that. Throughout season one, we see Matt constantly improving his skills, repeating certain moves with more finesse. His style is more brutal than Danny's but no less effective. And Battlin' Jack wasn't a ''mediocre boxer'' by a longshot, since he won against Creel by a knockout, something no one else could do. And while Matt struggled with Rance, Healy, Fisk, and Dex, those men were all ''formidable'' combatants in their own right, Fisk himself also having immense strength and durability to add to his already decent boxing and wresting moves, and Dex being a former US Army sniper wearing a Daredevil suit procured by Fisk and taking advantage of Matt not being in 100% fighting condition. And Nobu was Murakami's second-in command, not to mention he had his ''kyoketsu-shoge'', which gave him a major advantage. In the meantime, Danny struggled against singular members of the Hand, like King who was only a big and strong guard (not like Fisk), the Veznikov Brothers, Zhou Cheng and so on. And while Danny and Davos' escape from the Hand was impressive, you neglect to factor in that Danny had backup. Matt on the other hand was alone. And the fact is, throwing a microwave (not a TV), while not martial arts, is actually a good idea, considering those men were armed. The Hand generally didn't go for knives and guns, plus they were all young men and women, skilled no doubt but still inexperienced and physically weaker. The Russians and the Dogs of Hell were all hardened criminals and they did not go down without a fight. Danny's fight against the Hatchet Men who tried to snatch Joy would be a better comparison, but even then, there were only seven of them while Matt had to fight eight Russians in the first hallway fight while also recuperating from a bad stab wound; FIFTEEN to TWENTY Dogs of Hell in the second, all of them armed with machetes, some with guns, while recovering from a concussion and being chained by Frank to a chimney for hours with a gun taped to one hand, and a chain on his other, and in the third season fought his way through a prison full of Fisk's henchmen while drugged with sedatives.
** He was trained by Stick for two years at most, after that all self taught and he probably had to do other stuff like studying for his law degree, compared to Danny who did have downtime but still trained until he had to kill a dragon. Murdock ''was'' a mediocre boxer has we were told numerous times he had a poor track record and beating a guy who was told "wait until the fifth to lay him out" is not that awesome (you can't fix a game with just one in on it). Add that everyone was armed in the Hand kumite but Danny (who again poisoned half-way when it was singular fight) and there is no reason to underscore those victory over Fisk's assassin (or for that matter believing King is weaker than Fisk, one is an enforcer and the other is a kingpin whose main tactic is throw a tantrum and headbutts).
** If that's how you see it, you are wrong. Just saying. Matt may not have trained for long with Stick, but those two years were no less intense than what Danny went through. Plus, even during his college years, he could match Elektra, and the season 1 finale established that he trained in his free time (Foggy knew Matt regularly traveled to Fogwell's, but said nothing because he thought it was due to Matt's sentimental attachments to the place, which was just half the truth). Matt's father was not mediocre, far from it. The only reason Jack had a losing record was because he ''accepted'' the bribes from Roscoe Sweeney to throw some of his fights (he did it more than once.) He also, as I said before, defeated Carl Creel, who was notorious for cheating and would later become the Absorbing Man. And you're excuse that Creel was caught off guard by Jack not following the plan? That may have given him two or three punches at best, and then it would become clear that he was not quitting. And I'm sorry if you don't believe that an EliteMook of the Hand is not up to snuff with Wilson Fisk or Dex, but take a look the facts: Fisk has unnatural strength for a human, overpowered Anatoly with sheer brute force, shrugged off Owlsley's attempt to tase him, and took a great deal of hits from Matt's billy club before going down. Plus, he knows how to use his size, acting as a bull or a linebacker and he also had the same protective garments that make up Matt's suit. There's just no comparison. Dex later ends up being the same thing, him having a lot of self-training, Army training, and Fisk supplying him a Daredevil suit.

** Priscilla Ridley's absence is explained in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 as being because she was promoted to Deputy Chief and moved down to One Police Plaza. She doesn't come back up to the 29th until after Thomas Ridenhour is killed. Thomas Ridenhour, meanwhile, is established in the first episode of ''Luke Cage'' season 2 to have been transferred up to the 29th after Strieber got reassigned to the 15th Precinct (where he's seen in ''Daredevil'' season 3 overseeing the cops responding to Dex's attack on the church). As for Nandi and Bailey, they were probably offscreen handling the crime scenes left by the fights that the heroes were having with the Hand (it was the police who found Matt, Jessica and Luke at the theatre)

** She only hit one person with a car, and again someone who could survive it despite her having no clue, and if she didn't hold back on henchmen, they wouldn't be tossed across the room, they would have had their chests caved in like when Diamondback murdered that cop.

** Would Jessica CARE if Madame Gao can withstand her punches? No. Gao is the leader of a cult of assasins, and had just murdered someone right there. Jessica would surely prefer to point her that GoodIsNotNice nor [[GoodIsNotSoft soft]].

** [[http://archiveofourown.org/works/11899347?show_comments=true#comments This is what would've happened if Matt had made it out alive]].

** Frank would likely laugh at Stick's warnings of mystical ninjas who want to lay waste to New York City by digging dragon bones from under Manhattan, and dismiss Stick as a psycho. Remember Matt doesn't wholly believe Stick's words, and both Jessica and Luke were very skeptical of it too. Even if he did believe Stick, this version of Frank is mostly focused on revenge. There aren't many instances across ''Daredevil'' or ''The Punisher'' where Frank targets random thugs who had no involvement in the Central Park shootout: just the child porn pawnshop owner, Lance's crew, and the thieves at the chop shop. Worth also asking is, did Stick even know about Frank? Everyone considered the Punisher dead, there were only three people (Matt, Karen, and Curtis) who know Frank is still alive (four if you count David among them). If the Hand couldn't track Frank down, Stick wouldn't either.

** Kid was in a hazmat suit and yell "I don't know we are just the clean up" unless Danny assumed Luke is brain dead he already knows what Cole was doing. Even his he was just looking for a job fell already flat when Danny says he works for a death cult. And it's already ridiculous to call him out for not using his money for good when that's all he did in Iron Fist, like maybe Harlem wasn't that riddled with Leishmaniasis or worked at the plant that was foreclosed with workers still on payroll but that shit does makes thing better and can avoid a bunch of crimes. Luke is kind of being an asshole saying your money can stop black people to go to jail.

*** Furthermore, even if the Hand had access to Judas bullets, they wouldn't actually be effective against Luke at all. It's later revealed in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 that Luke's skin was actually extra strengthened by the acid bath in Dr. Burstein's barn, as Luke finds out when Arturo Rey tries to use a Judas shotgun on him and it does nothing. Misty also tries to get Arturo Rey to snitch by mentioning that it's a federal crime to be in possession of weaponry made from alien metals salvaged from the Incident (with a hefty jail sentence attached), which even for an organization the size of the Hand would mean Judas bullets are hard to come by. Really, the Hand had no counter-measures to Luke that would prove effective. The only reason Elektra was able to defeat Luke during her kidnapping of Danny was because, much like why Luke lost the showdown with Bushmaster on the High Bridge, he'd been drugged (of course, Elektra wasn't deliberately drugging Luke to put him at a disadvantage; she took advantage of Luke having already been weakened by Stick's incense).

*** For those of you who believe Danny has been training longer, you forget that Matt is several years older than him and has been training since he was ten years old. And since he was trained by Stick, we can assume he learned more than boxing. And you forget that he didn't start with body armor. In ''Daredevil'' season 1 and in ''Daredevil'' season 3, he's wearing thick black long-johns which provide him with no protection whatsoever. And while he may endure a lot of pain, there's so much more to it than that. Throughout season one, we see Matt constantly improving his skills, repeating certain moves with more finesse. His style is more brutal than Danny's but no less effective. And Battlin' Jack wasn't a ''mediocre boxer'' by a longshot, since he won against Creel by a knockout, something no one else could do. And while Matt struggled with Rance, Healy, Fisk, and Dex, those men were all ''formidable'' combatants in their own right, Fisk himself also having immense strength and durability to add to his already decent boxing and wresting moves, and Dex being a former US Army sniper wearing a Daredevil suit procured by Fisk and taking advantage of Matt not being in 100% fighting condition. And Nobu was Murakami's second-in command, not to mention he had his ''kyoketsu-shoge'', which gave him a major advantage. In the meantime, Danny struggled against singular members of the Hand, like King who was only a big and strong guard (not like Fisk), the Veznikov Brothers, Zhou Cheng and so on. And while Danny and Davos' escape from the Hand was impressive, you neglect to factor in that Danny had backup. Matt on the other hand was alone. And the fact is, throwing a microwave (not a TV), while not martial arts, is actually a good idea, considering those men were armed. The Hand generally didn't go for knives and guns, plus they were all young men and women, skilled no doubt but still inexperienced and physically weaker. The Russians and the Dogs of Hell were all hardened criminals and they did not go down without a fight. Danny's fight against the Hatchet Men who tried to snatch Joy would be a better comparison, but even then, there were only seven of them while Matt had to fight eight Russians in the first hallway fight while also recuperating from a bad stab wound; FIFTEEN to TWENTY Dogs of Hell in the second, all of them armed with machetes, some with guns, while recovering from a concussion and being chained by Frank to a chimney for hours with a gun taped to one hand, and a chain on his other, and in the third season fought his way through a prison full of Wilson Fisk's henchmen while drugged with a sedative.

*** But we also need to be realistic about Matt. As lovable a character as Matt is, he can be difficult person to be around. He can be stubborn, untruthful, emotionally volatile, make poor decisions (his fight with Fisk and Nobu), takes unnecessary risks (his first fights with Frank)… and these are all things that make Matt Murdock a fun and fascinating character, but they’re not desirable boyfriend traits unless you're someone like Elektra. Claire decided to stop dating Matt at a point when she was disturbed by the moral line toward which he was edging. By ''Daredevil'' Season 2, Claire knows Matt has stepped away from that line, but he still has a lot of his personality/lifestyle elements that initially drove her away. She has decided to maintain a platonic distance for now, but remember that by choosing to break up with Matt she is not abandoning him, or ignoring his problems. Of course, Luke is far from perfect too. Like Matt, Luke has his problems, and he certainly does have a lot of baggage. The big difference is that Luke doesn’t bring his baggage into the lives of those around him to the large degree that Matt does. His pain over losing Reva and then discovering the true nature of her feelings toward him doesn't negatively impact his interactions with Claire. (On the other hand, this ''does'' impact Luke's relationship with Jessica. However, since she was the person who killed Reva, that’s a bit of a special case…).

** We also saw that Bakuto escaped after being stabbed in ''Iron Fist'', establishing his immortaliity. Even Harold Meachum exhibited resurrection abilities and even regenerated a severed pinkie finger. The process that gives people immortality gives them a HealingFactor that allows them to take quite a bit of damage. It isn't until their heads are removed that they have to worry about dying. In the meantime, bullets taken by Bakuto probably stuck in him, kinda like we later see with Bushmaster in ''Luke Cage'' season 2.

*** So most likely, Alexandra had some hand in forging The Hand's connection with Fisk, but she wasn't directly involved. Her conversations with Madame Gao suggest that even before her illness forced her to rely on Elektra to do all her dirty work, Alexandra tended to be less hands-on than her colleagues. She may have had the idea for the alliance, but had Gao and Murakami (and thus, Nobu) do the actual process of making contact with Fisk. Thus, Gao and Nobu were the ones who reached out to Fisk (by way of James Wesley) and the Ranskahov brothers, and struck deals.

** The very unreliability of the angry young gangbangers from Harlem is probably why so many of them wound up dying, enough for this Hand faction to be on Misty's radar.

** The fate of Matt's apartment is ultimately revealed at the start of ''Daredevil'' season 3: Karen, refusing to believe Matt is dead in the absence of a body, is paying his rent and keeping the place clean so it's waiting for him for when he comes back. Although it's a bit of a stretch to believe that Karen can pay for the rent of two apartments on her ''Bulletin'' salary, it seems like narrative-wise the writers did this on the belief that Karen took Frank's advice from the diner conversation of "Hold on with both hands and don't let go" to heart. Of course, Matt doesn't move back into his apartment until the end of the season after Fisk has been defeated. He does visit the apartment once, to get a suit and tie for his visit to the prison, and presumably again to get these for his surrender at the ''Bulletin'' (before Dex's attack), but otherwise he stays at St. Agnes (which is somewhat necessary since part of that time, Matt is having to deal with the fact that Fisk has convinced Ray Nadeem that Matt was an accomplice of his).

** There's a few things going on: first off, a lot of the issues people have with Karen's behavior in ''The Defenders'' would have been cleared up if we had gotten a flashback to Matt revealing his secret to Karen so we could see exactly what was said in the reveal conversation. Most likely, Matt did tell Karen about his senses, about Stick and Elektra and whatnot, but he must have also said something along the lines of "I'm giving up Daredevil because I'm not making a difference." At the start of ''The Defenders'', Matt has retired from Daredeviling. When Karen tells him at the diner, "I think you should know I really think Daredevil made the city a safer place", she's genuine. She's trying to reassure Matt that he ''did'' make a difference. While it's speculation, Matt most likely told Karen that he ultimately thought being Daredevil was bad for him, as he feels he got Elektra killed, and he drove Karen and Foggy away. It seems that Karen very much took him at his word that he was giving it up. Again, if we had actually gotten to see that conversation, a lot of people's problems with how Karen was portrayed in ''The Defenders'' wouldn't have been nearly as bad.\\
Thing is, Karen didn't get much room to grow and kinda got pushed to the side, in part because of timing and scheduling issues. Whereas the solo shows save for ''Iron Fist'' season 2 have been 13 episode outings, ''The Defenders'' was only eight episodes. The writers had a huge cast to work with and wanted to keep it mostly about Matt, Jessica, Luke, and Danny coming together to solve a problem. Unfortunately, that just didn't leave a lot of time for the supporting characters who weren't Colleen or Misty to contribute much to the plot. And in Karen's case, it must be noted that Creator/DeborahAnnWoll was simultaneously filming ''The Defenders'' and season 1 of ''Series/ThePunisher2017'', and shuttling back and forth between the two sets[[note]]It's this tight schedule that is probably the reason Karen's presence in ''The Punisher'' is also very minimal[[/note]]. So between Deborah Ann Woll's shooting schedule, and the ''Defenders'' writers having to work all of the supporting actors into the show, there was really only so much they could work with on the subject of Karen in ''The Defenders'', thus the important elements regarding how Karen reacted to the reveal are most likely going to be backtracked to in ''Daredevil'' season 3, where there's more room for said elements.\\
Anyways, on Karen's negative reaction to Matt starting up as Daredevil again. Well, is it really unreasonable and out of character for her to react negatively, and be worried about him? She cares for Matt very deeply, and knows he's starting something up again that could very well get him and Foggy disbarred if he ever gets exposed (as well as cause Fisk to come after them), and she doesn't want to see him lose everything ''again''. Matt originally revealed his secret to Karen after he had, in fact, lost everything: Karen, Foggy, Nelson & Murdock, Elektra, etc. So when Karen says to Matt before he, Luke and Jessia break out of precinct that "You're finally just getting your life back," that's the truth. Matt's practicing law again, he and Foggy are repairing their friendship, he and Karen are trying to repair their relationship. And keep in mind, just like Foggy from "Nelson v. Murdock" onwards, this is all still pretty new information to Karen. So she's still processing everything and doesn't fully understand yet just what Daredevil means to Matt...\\

** Karen is trying to protect Matt from Daredevil. Her reaction to Matt being Daredevil is actually quite different from Foggy's because unlike Foggy, Karen has a darker side, and she's like Matt in every way with one big exception: Karen has crossed that no-killing line that Matt refuses to cross when she killed James Wesley, and possibly had crossed it even earlier. It's where she fears things are going to go: that one day Matt will finally snap and kill someone. That's why Foggy's issues with Daredevil are different from Karen's issues. Foggy doesn't think Matt is capable of murder, but Karen knows from her experience with Wesley, and possibly her past as well if her "Do you really think this is the first time I've shot someone?" remark prior to emptying the gun into Wesley means anything, that ''anyone'' is capable of murder. So Karen doesn't want Matt to be Daredevil, and she's speaking from a place of experience, not ignorance. She wants Matt to be better than her, a murderer. It's not about her love life. It's about trying to save his soul, the thing that makes him Matt Murdock. She puts Matt on a pedestal because she knows Matt's a genuinely good man: he took her in for a few nights when Fisk had her framed for murder, he believed her innocence when not even Foggy did, and as Daredevil he's saved her life twice. She expects Matt to be better than her, and based on what she's seeing, Matt's slipping and making big mistakes (first in mentioning that bad guys who did business with Fisk might be aware of Matt's identity, and then Matt getting essentially arrested alongside Luke and Jessica following Stick's death), and she doesn't want to see Matt land hard on his ass because the fall could kill him. Not to mention the risk to his professional career if this information falls into the wrong hands (like when Fisk ultimately found out later in ''Daredevil'' season 3).

** Over the course of ''Daredevil'', Karen has been framed for murder, survived an assassination attempt, had her life saved by a "masked hero", got tangled in an organized crime investigation, got Ben Urich indirectly killed because she couldn't let go of her investigation into Fisk, shot James Wesley to death and covered it up, befriended and then cut ties with a known mass murderer, and then found out that her crush and potential future boyfriend is secretly a vigilante. No surprise her worldview and behavior would go through some rapid shifts, too.

If anything, Karen and Foggy ''have'' to be selfish...[[CruelToBeKind for Matt's own good]]. As season 2 demonstrated, when Karen and Foggy aren't around to ground Matt, he'll just throw himself into the meatgrinder every day until it finally kills him. Their selfishness is because they want him to care about them, and himself, more than random strangers. Matt's arc in ''The Defenders'' is pretty clear - learning to let other people in and learning to work with others (which is going to be very necessary in ''Daredevil'' season 3 when they're going up against Fisk again) - and part of the reason why is because of Karen and Foggy acting this way. This isn't even limited to Matt and his inner circle; we see Colleen get annoyed at Danny for similar reasons. Danny is the most important person in Colleen's world since he freed her from the Hand, and she's also crucial to his world, yet to Stick he's just a thundering dumbass.

*** Of course, it actually makes sense that Karen might liken Daredevil to a drug addiction, given that her flashback episode in ''Daredevil'' season 3 establishes that she used to be a heroin addict.

*** Like with the Hand's alliance with Fisk, Ramirez clearly had to do some retroactive worldbuilding to make everything fit together, but there's a small problem: [[AllThereInTheManual this connection was never fully explained in the show itself]]. Obviously, not everything should have to be spelled out to the viewer, but this detail wasn’t clarified nearly enough. And it's never explained why Madame Gao was making the drugs. Why would she use the Hand’s rapidly-diminishing substance supply for this? Why was this drug enterprise so important to her? Because she was clearly serious about it– it was her main motivation in both seasons of ''Daredevil'', while ''Iron Fist'' established that she did massive amounts of work cultivating her presence at Rand Enterprises because of it, and again– she wouldn’t have used the substance for something that wasn’t important. This is presumably going to get addressed at some point in ''Iron Fist'' season 2.

** Davos is apparently Indian or Pakistani so K'un L'un is more diverse than one would expect. There are also likely other gateways to K'un-L'un that we don't know of. Arguably, the differences in accents could also be attributed to each Finger spending enough time in a certain regions that they ended up picking up the local accent along the way (which could explain why Bakuto has a Japanese-sounding name yet has a Brazilian / Puerto-Rican accent).

* Considering how powerful The Hand is, and how many organisations they have infiltrated, shouldn't they have known about the Judas bullets? And easily get some of them to deal with Luke Cage once it was clear he was becoming a problem for them?

** They were rallys in Harlem asking cops to use Judas bullets, they aren't a secret half way through the first season of Luke Cage so unless the Hand refused to follow that story about weapon made to kill superhuman it's more plausible they just didn't anticipate super humans despite being super themselves.

*** Furthermore, even if the Hand had access to Judas bullets, they wouldn't actually be effective against Luke at all. It's later revealed in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 that Luke's skin was actually extra strengthened by the acid bath in Dr. Burstein's barn, as Luke finds out when Arturo Rey tries to use a Judas shotgun on him and it does nothing. Misty also tries to get Arturo Rey to snitch by mentioning that it's a federal crime to be in possession of weaponry made from alien metals salvaged from the Incident (with a hefty jail sentence attached), which even for an organization the size of the Hand would mean Judas bullets are hard to come by. Really, the Hand had no counter-measures to Luke that would prove effective. The only reason Elektra was able to defeat Luke during her kidnapping of Danny was because, much like why Luke lost the showdown with Bushmaster on the High Bridge, he'd been drugged (of course, Elektra wasn't deliberately drugging Luke to put him at a disadvantage; she took advantage of Luke having been incidentally weakened by Stick's incense).

** If that's how you see it, you are wrong. Just saying. Matt may not have trained for long with Stick, but those two years were no less intense than what Danny went through. Plus, even during his college years, he could match Elektra, and the season 1 finale established that he trained in his free time (Foggy knew Matt regularly traveled to Fogwell's, but said nothing because he thought it was due to Matt's sentimental attachments to the place, which was just half the truth). Matt's father was not mediocre, far from it. The only reason Jack had a losing record was because he ''accepted'' the bribes from Roscoe Sweeney to throw some of his fights (he did it more than once.) He also, as I said before, defeated Carl Creel, who was notorious for cheating and would later become the Absorbing Man. And you're excuse that Creel was caught off guard by Jack not following the plan? That may have given him two or three punches at best, and then it would become clear that he was not quitting. And I'm sorry if you don't believe that an EliteMook of the Hand is not up to snuff with Wilson Fisk or Dex, but take a look the facts: Fisk has unnatural strength for a human, overpowered Anatoly with sheer brute force, shrugged off Owlsley's attempt to tase him, and took a great deal of hits from Matt's billy club before going down. Plus, he knows how to use his size, acting as a bull or a linebacker and he also had the same protective garments that make up Matt's suit. There's just no comparison. Dex later ends up being the same thing, him having a lot of self-training, Army training, and a Daredevil suit courtesy of Fisk.

*** For those of you who believe Danny has been training longer, you forget that Matt is several years older than him and has been training since he was ten years old. And since he was trained by Stick, we can assume he learned more than boxing. And you forget that he didn't start with body armor. In ''Daredevil'' season 1 and in ''Daredevil'' season 3, he's wearing thick black long-johns which provide him with no protection whatsoever. And while he may endure a lot of pain, there's so much more to it than that. Throughout season one, we see Matt constantly improving his skills, repeating certain moves with more finesse. His style is more brutal than Danny's but no less effective. And Battlin' Jack wasn't a ''mediocre boxer'' by a longshot, since he won against Creel by a knockout, something no one else could do. And while Matt struggled with Rance, Healy, Fisk, and Dex, those men were all ''formidable'' combatants in their own right, Fisk himself also having immense strength and durability to add to his already decent boxing and wresting moves, and Dex having the benefit of wearing a Daredevil suit procured by Fisk as well as Matt not being in 100% fighting condition. And Nobu was Murakami's second-in command, not to mention he had his ''kyoketsu-shoge'', which gave him a major advantage. In the meantime, Danny struggled against singular members of the Hand, like King who was only a big and strong guard (not like Fisk), the Veznikov Brothers, Zhou Cheng and so on. And while Danny and Davos' escape from the Hand was impressive, you neglect to factor in that Danny had backup. Matt on the other hand was alone. And the fact is, throwing a microwave (not a TV), while not martial arts, is actually a good idea, considering those men were armed. The Hand generally didn't go for knives and guns, plus they were all young men and women, skilled no doubt but still inexperienced and physically weaker. The Russians and the Dogs of Hell were all hardened criminals and they did not go down without a fight. Danny's fight against the Hatchet Men who tried to snatch Joy would be a better comparison, but even then, there were only seven of them while Matt had to fight eight Russians in the first hallway fight while also recuperating from a bad stab wound, and FIFTEEN to TWENTY Dogs of Hell in the second, all of them armed with machetes, some with guns, while recovering from a concussion and being chained by Frank to a chimney for hours. And he had a gun taped to one hand, and a chain on his other.

** If that's how you see it, you are wrong. Just saying. Matt may not have trained for long with Stick, but those two years were no less intense than what Danny went through. Plus, even during his college years, he could match Elektra, and the season 1 finale established that he trained in his free time (Foggy knew Matt regularly traveled to Fogwell's, but said nothing because he thought it was due to Matt's sentimental attachments to the place, which was just half the truth). Matt's father was not mediocre, far from it. The only reason Jack had a losing record was because he ''accepted'' the bribes from Roscoe Sweeney to throw some of his fights (he did it more than once.) He also, as I said before, defeated Carl Creel, who was notorious for cheating and would later become the Absorbing Man. And you're excuse that Creel was caught off guard by Jack not following the plan? That may have given him two or three punches at best, and then it would become clear that he was not quitting. And I'm sorry if you don't believe that an EliteMook of the Hand is not up to snuff with Wilson Fisk or Dex, but take a look the facts: Fisk has unnatural strength for a human, overpowered Anatoly with sheer brute force, shrugged off Owlsley's attempt to tase him, and took a great deal of hits from Matt's billy club before going down. Plus, he knows how to use his size, acting as a bull or a linebacker and he also had the same protective garments that make up Matt's suit. There's just no comparison. Dex later ends up being the same thing, him having a lot of self-training and a Daredevil suit courtesy of Fisk.

** Matt has more experience than the others knowing that the Hand will go after people close to you to get you. They kidnapped Karen on Nobu's orders as bait for Matt and Elektra. Remember what Matt said to Danny at the Royal Dragon: "You don’t get second chances with these people. All right? If you’re not careful, next thing you know, you’re - you’re dead! Or worse, you’re holding the people you love the most in the world and you get… you get the privilege of watching them die." While he was clearly talking about Elektra's circumstances, Matt could easily imagine it being Karen or Foggy who died instead of Elektra. Matt is in love with Karen, and he doesn't want to remotely take the chance that she gets hurt again because of her association with him either as Matt Murdock or as Daredevil.
** They didn't take Karen for that, she was part of a bus they took hostage.

* I could chalk this one up to scheduling conflicts perhaps, but seeing how Karen is smart and formidable - given how she found Wilson Fisk's mother despite Fisk's efforts to hide her and uncovered Reyes' cover-up of Frank Castle's family - I feel it's a bit out-of-character that Karen would willingly lay low in the precinct away from the action instead of offering to provide Matt with assistance. I mean, she's got a similar disregard for her own personal safety that he does for crying out loud, if her encounters with James Wesley and Colonel Schoonover mean anything. Plus, like Colleen, she kinda has a personal stake in taking down the Hand because they kidnapped her once before. I mean, look at Trish. She's asking the tough questions and trying to find out more about who tried to silence her attempt to cover the tremors on ''Trish Talk''. Why isn't Karen looking into that?

** Karen agonized over killing Wesley and hid it from Matt and Foggy, not because she didn't trust Matt, but very obviously because she knew he had a strong moral code and she was afraid of him rejecting her over her perceived lapse in morals. Matt, meanwhile, has had no idea of Karen's feelings of unworthiness or her morally grey position, but I actually think he keeps the reality of his life from her not necessarily because he fears judgement, but as a kind of self-sabotage. Matt has deep feelings for Karen that he hasn’t really acknowledged. With the identity reveal, Karen now knows that Matt does not have a moral high ground of any kind over her, not just because he treated her and Foggy so poorly while he was helping Stick and Elektra fight the Hand, but also because he’s not nearly as squeaky clean morally as he’s been pretending to be this whole time. He's no better than her. Karen knows that killing Wesley doesn't make her unworthy of Matt, and he doesn’t have the easy excuse of Daredevil to fall back on anymore if he gets nervous. Especially given Karen has become a journalist at the ''Bulletin'', and is stepping into Ben Urich's shoes, and thereby has an ideal vehicle to better understand Matt's Daredevil side.

** What pattern? The police are just gonna blame it on Shades and Mariah anyway and Sowane's [[AmoralAfrikaner looks]] works better in Harlem than anywhere else.

** The very unreliability of the angry young men from Harlem is probably why so many of them wound up dying, enough for this Hand faction to be on Misty's radar.

** The fate of Matt's apartment is ultimately revealed at the start of ''Daredevil'' season 3: Karen, refusing to believe Matt is dead in the absence of a body, is paying his rent and keeping the place clean so it's waiting for him for when he comes back. Although it's a bit of a stretch to believe that Karen can pay for the rent of two apartments on her ''Bulletin'' salary, it seems like narrative-wise the writers did this on the belief that Karen took Frank's advice from the diner conversation of "Hold on with both hands and don't let go" to heart. Of course, Matt doesn't move back into his apartment until the end of season after Fisk has been defeated. He does visit the apartment once, to get a suit and tie for his visit to the prison, and presumably again to get these for his surrender at the ''Bulletin'' (before Dex's attack), but otherwise he stays at St. Agnes (which is somewhat necessary since part of that time, Matt is having to deal with the fact that Fisk has convinced Nadeem that Matt was an accomplice of his).

** If they captured Elektra, Matt would have wanted some quality time with Elektra to fully undo the mind wipe and help her recover. Luke would have wanted her locked up. Danny would have wanted her dead, as would Stick (if Stick survived). And it’s tough to say which option Jessica would have argued for, but she would have definitely argued. Meanwhile, the Hand would have split. Murakami and Alexandra would have tried to kill each other. If neither succeeded (which seems likely, as they’ve all done assassination attempts on each other for centuries), they would have been divided about whether it was worthwhile to risk their own lives and the lives of their henchmen to get Elektra back. This discussion likely would have concluded with them attacking the heroes as a group in order to capture both Elektra and Danny. Which would result in a big climactic fight, with Elektra maybe (maaaaybe) siding with the heroes in order to protect Matt and get her revenge on the Hand.

** Just like it's debatable in ''Daredevil'' season 1 whether Matt intentionally killed Nobu or not by setting him on fire, Midland Circle is a bit finicky. Matt did take the time to discern that the building was empty, however, and he wouldn't have signed off on blowing it up if it hadn’t been. And the plan was for them to go down into the hole and rescue anyone there who needed rescuing (Danny, Elektra, any willing henchmen…) before detonating the bomb. The fact that this didn’t end up happening was out of Matt’s control. As far as the rest of the Hand is concerned, this was, like with that first fight with Fisk and Nobu, an extreme situation, in which Matt’s no-killing policy might waver. As far as Matt could tell, the Hand were unreformable (they’d been bad guys for centuries), extremely powerful and dangerous, and a direct threat to at least the population of New York City, if not the world in general. They couldn’t be locked up, and they’d already caused a ton of damage. If blowing up their base was going to take them out of the equation permanently, Matt decided it was worth it– and that didn’t seem entirely out-of-character for an extreme situation. His standard no-killing rule that is used for Fisk and regular street thugs will probably persist into ''Daredevil'' Season 3, because it has to. It’s a key element of his character. It's no different from how Karen killed James Wesley only because he forced her into a corner.

** On the flipside, Misty does have some valid grounds. Namely, that being super-powered doesn't automatically mean you are right. There are plenty of super-powered bad guys in the shows: the Hand leaders, Bushmaster, Davos, Kilgrave, and Jessica's mother. It really isn't a good policy to simply ignore every super-powered person as being outside the purview of the police simply because they are super-powered. Misty knows Luke is a good person who tends to operate outside the law. She knows nothing about Jessica except that she is strong and sassy, people have a habit of dying around her, and she stopped Kilgrave who may or may not have been a strange hoax (cops probably can't prove it either way). She knows nothing about Matt and has no idea he is a superhero. She trusted all three enough to believe they had good intentions and to agree to protect their friends. But that trust isn't infinite and shouldn't be infinite if you don't have all the facts. Even people with the best intentions can make horrible mistakes and she didn't know if Luke and the team were doing the right thing or the wrong thing because no one would tell her what they were doing or why.\\
At the same time though, Misty didn't know that the NYPD couldn't handle this because Matt, Luke and Jessica (understandably) were reluctant to let anyone else get hurt (extra so in Matt's case given what happened with Brett). She might have agreed that sending in Luke, Jessica, and Matt was the best option if she had all the facts. And the NYPD could have potentially provided support. Even something as simple as surrounding Midland Circle with ESU teams to prevent innocents from going in and arresting baddies who try to leave. I mean, Misty's job is to enforce the laws and find out what is going on.

** If you want a run-down of who knows Matt's secret identity:

*** ''Daredevil'' season 3: Sister Maggie, the other Sisters at the convent, Ray Nadeem, Wilson Fisk, Big Ben Donovan, and Vanessa Marianna. Brett Mahoney and Marci Stahl are implied to have learned the truth[[labelnote:*]]Brett was summoned to the climactic three-way fight between Matt, Dex and Fisk because Foggy had tipped him off about what Matt was going to do. And even if they were too busy dealing with Fisk, there's no way Brett didn't ask any questions to Matt about where he'd been when Matt and Foggy brought Nadeem's family to his place. As for Marci, we know Foggy has been having nightmares about Matt at the start of the season, but we don't know the details of them or whether he's decided to just tell Marci because he figures there's no real secret left to tell[[/labelnote]].

** Trish was just too far away from Jessica to help her. She was on the ground and by the time Trish got up and got over there, Jessica would have been dead. Even if she was close enough to rush Murakami, there's a difference between training and actually putting your training to use in a real world situation against someone trying to kill you. Trish may be proficiently trained in krav maga, but she still lost to Simpson the first time she fought him. The second time around, even though she was on his pills, Simpson still had the upper hand on Trish until Jessica was able to recover enough to give her an assist. Although Murakami is not a trained Special Ops soldier like Simpson was, he is a practitioner of multiple disciplines of martial arts. So it's unclear how Trish would've fared against him.

** Priscilla Ridley's absence is explained in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 as being because she was promoted to Deputy Chief and moved down to One Police Plaza. She doesn't come back up to the 29th until after Thomas Ridenhour is killed. Thomas Ridenhour, meanwhile, is established in the first episode of ''Luke Cage'' season 2 to have been transferred up to the 29th after Strieber got reassigned to the 15th Precinct (where he's seen in ''Daredevil'' season 3). As for Nandi and Bailey, they were probably offscreen handling the crime scenes left by the fights that the heroes were having with the Hand (it was the police who found Matt, Jessica and Luke at the theatre)

** This means that all of the circumstances surrounding Matt’s "death" are vague. Of course, we know he made it to a convent. If someone official found his body in the rubble, Matt's secret identity would have been blown right then and there because he had the armor on at the time. So we don't know if anyone outside of the heroes' inner circles know Matt is "dead". They obviously would have to tell some lies, because if they say Matt was killed in the Midland Circle explosion, then that means someone like Brett Mahoney would consider Luke and Jessica– Matt's “kidnappers”– as primary suspects. It's also possible that his "death" was kept a secret, with Karen and Foggy holding a private funeral for Matt, and them spreading false stories to keep up the appearance that Matt is alive but he's moved away to another city and is unreachable. We don't even know if the NYPD or Matt's clients think he's just missing. It's a messy situation that will presumably be resolved in ''Daredevil'' season 3.

*** ''Daredevil'' season 3: Sister Maggie, the other Sisters at the convent, Ray Nadeem, Wilson Fisk, Big Ben Donovan, and Vanessa Marianna. Brett Mahoney and Marci Stahl are implied to have learned the truth[[labelnote:*]]Brett was summoned to the climactic three-way fight between Matt, Dex and Fisk because Foggy had tipped him off about what Matt was going to do. As for Marci, we know Foggy has been having nightmares about Matt at the start of the season, but we don't know the details of them or whether he's decided to just tell Marci because he figures there's no real secret left to tell[[/labelnote]].

*** At any rate, Elektra should be expected to have a reduced or even no presence in ''Daredevil'' season 3, because Matt's narrative demands it. One reason is simple story variation. His and Elektra’s relationship has now played out over the course of two shows and he, too, needs to have a life separate from her. ''Daredevil'' season 3 will be bringing in new characters and new stories– and that’s necessary to keep the show from stagnating. Elektra shouldn't be gone from Matt’s life completely, but she shouldn’t be a constant presence. It also has to do with the development of Matt’s identity. Most of the audience presumably wants Matt to find a balance wherein he feels comfortable operating as Daredevil without completely abandoning his civilian life, and with Elektra around, that is less likely to happen.

Of course, agile and strong as Matt is, he doesn’t have super-strength, and there’s no way he dragged himself up through several hundred feet of rubble. But there's been some speculation that there's a second escape route. If there was a second escape route that Matt didn't tell the others about, he would make sure they got out the quickest way possible, while having the freedom to stay down there with Elektra a little longer without guaranteeing death. Resurrection powers are also a possibility as Elektra exhibited possible super-strength and super-speed at various points in the show.\\
Regardless of that, having survived, Matt might decide to wait a while before telling the world he’s still alive. He may conclude that this would finally allow Foggy and Karen to stop worrying about him, while giving him some time to sort his life out. That's all dependent on when Fisk begins making moves against Karen and Foggy.

** It does seem like Daredevil's real identity is something they should know, especially considering how much time Madame Gao has spent around Matt, and how astute she's shown herself during interactions with the other Fingers as well during interactions with other associates/enemies like Fisk, Harold, and Danny. It's possible a few of the Fingers did know, but just pretended they didn’t because they didn’t want anyone else to have that information, kinda like Fisk handled this in the comics[[note]]When Fisk found out Matt's identity, he kept his knowledge of this a secret from even his closest henchmen because he felt the info was too valuable[[/note]]. But if the Fingers were all in the dark on this (as the show seems to imply), and assuming Gao did survive, it would be enough information for her to figure it out, considering how easily the Hand had earlier pieced together Daredevil's association with Brett Mahoney. The question is whether or not Gao would care enough to do so. She has shown an interest in Daredevil in the past, and she could certainly use that knowledge to blackmail Matt and/or win back favor with Fisk, but it's more likely she'll just move on to greener pastures, depending on her future goals. It's ultimately jossed in ''Daredevil'' Season 3, where Fisk learns Matt's secret identity from watching footage of him at the prison.

[[folder: Future series]]
* Are they still gonna make defenders season at the same time or they are just gonna have say Danny showing up in Luke Cage season 2 as secondary character? Because it'S gonna be hard to have them never interact with each other and running six series together.
** As of now, Matt is believed dead and will either be recuperating or leading a new life under another identity, depending on the direction of ''Daredevil'' season 3. It's doubtful he will be seen anytime soon. As for the other three, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
** Well Danny ''is'' showing up in ''Series/LukeCage2016'' season 2, since they're doing a Heroes for Hire arc.
** As for Jessica, she will work her cases all by herself, and won't jump to aid any of the other three. Her charming personality works that way. The only way she can be in a team-up or group is if for some random reason something involves her and the others at the same time (and even then, she will try her hardest to leave and do things on her own). Feel fortunate if she even kept their phone numbers...
** There are no official plans for a second season of ''The Defenders'', although it's possible one will happen. The big issue is that the production on all four solo shows would have to be put on hold. They managed to film ''The Defenders'' and ''The Punisher'' at the same time, but that's because only a few actors were appearing in both, specifically, Deborah Ann Woll and Rob Morgan. Every other show had to go on hold, such as ''Jessica Jones'' season 2 and ''Daredevil'' season 3. Of course, technically, ''The Defenders'' was actually ''Daredevil'' Season 2.5, because it's got the same showrunners that worked on ''Daredevil'' season 2 and Matt's arc is more or less the conclusion of the Elektra[=/=]Hand arc of that season. But, no other solo show could be filmed at the same time as ''The Defenders'' because the actors would be too busy.
[[/folder]]

** The irony is, in ''Luke Cage'' season 2, she breaks up with Luke for the same reasons that she broke up with Matt, and this is after he gets aggressive and nearly kills Cockroach.

** Danny is probably more experienced, given he has been training for years, learned to master his chi and was the best student in K'un-L'un (and given the flashbacks, saying his life wasn't on the line during sparring matches is probably not true). But Matt's body armor, enhanced senses and high pain threshold makes him a better vigilante, but that's not martial arts. That's just him winning by endurance alone, like how his father was never knocked out in the ring but was still a rather mediocre boxer. Matt struggles against guys like Rance, Healy, and Fisk, and would have died in his first face-off with Nobu. Whereas Danny went to a Hand kumite and defeated them all with his bare hands, even if they used poison and dirty tricks. Looking at their hallway fights, unless throwing a TV counts as experienced martial art moves, Danny and Davos fleeing the Hand compound was done way more skillfully while Matt just powers through with determination.
*** For those of you who believe Danny has been training longer, you forget that Matt is several years older than him and has been training since he was ten years old. And since he was trained by Stick, we can assume he learned more than boxing. And you forget that he didn't start with body armor. In ''Daredevil'' season 1 and in ''Daredevil'' season 3, he's wearing thick black long-johns which provide him with no protection whatsoever. And while he may endure a lot of pain, there's so much more to it than that. Throughout season one, we see Matt constantly improving his skills, repeating certain moves with more finesse. His style is more brutal than Danny's but no less effective. And Battlin' Jack wasn't a ''mediocre boxer'' by a longshot, since he won against Creel by a knockout, something no one else could do. And while Matt struggled with Rance, Healy, and Fisk, those men were all ''formidable'' combatants in their own right, Fisk himself also having immense strength and durability to add to his already decent boxing and wresting moves. And Nobu was Murakami's second-in command, not to mention he had his ''kyoketsu-shoge'', which gave him a major advantage. In the meantime, Danny struggled against singular members of the Hand, like King who was only a big and strong guard (not like Fisk), the Veznikov Brothers, Zhou Cheng and so on. And while Danny and Davos' escape from the Hand was impressive, you neglect to factor in that Danny had backup. Matt on the other hand was alone. And the fact is, throwing a microwave (not a TV), while not martial arts, is actually a good idea, considering those men were armed. The Hand generally didn't go for knives and guns, plus they were all young men and women, skilled no doubt but still inexperienced and physically weaker. The Russians and the Dogs of Hell were all hardened criminals and they did not go down without a fight. Danny's fight against the Hatchet Men who tried to snatch Joy would be a better comparison, but even then, there were only seven of them while Matt had to fight eight Russians in the first hallway fight while also recuperating from a bad stab wound, and FIFTEEN to TWENTY Dogs of Hell in the second, all of them armed with machetes, some with guns, while recovering from a concussion and being chained by Frank to a chimney for hours. And he had a gun taped to one hand, and a chain on his other.

** If that's how you see it, you are wrong. Just saying. Matt may not have trained for long with Stick, but those two years were no less intense than what Danny went through. Plus, even during his college years, he could match Elektra, and the season 1 finale established that he trained in his free time (Foggy knew Matt regularly traveled to Fogwell's, but said nothing because he thought it was due to Matt's sentimental attachments to the place, which was just half the truth). Matt's father was not mediocre, far from it. The only reason Jack had a losing record was because he ''accepted'' the bribes from Roscoe Sweeney to throw some of his fights (he did it more than once.) He also, as I said before, defeated Carl Creel, who was notorious for cheating and would later become the Absorbing Man. And you're excuse that Creel was caught off guard by Jack not following the plan? That may have given him two or three punches at best, and then it would become clear that he was not quitting. And I'm sorry if you don't believe that an EliteMook of the Hand is not up to snuff with Wilson Fisk, but take a look the facts: Fisk has unnatural strength for a human, overpowered Anatoly with sheer brute force, shrugged off Owlsley's attempt to tase him, and took a great deal of hits from Matt's billy club before going down. Plus, he knows how to use his size, acting as a bull or a linebacker and he also had the same protective garments that make up Matt's suit. There's just no comparison.

** The fate of Matt's apartment is ultimately revealed at the start of ''Daredevil'' season 3: Karen, refusing to believe Matt is dead in the absence of a body, is paying his rent and keeping the place clean so it's waiting for him for when he comes back. Although it's a bit of a stretch to believe that Karen can pay for the rent of two apartments on her ''Bulletin'' salary, it seems like narrative-wise the writers did this on the belief that Karen took Frank's advice from the diner conversation of "Hold on with both hands and don't let go" to heart.

** There's a few reasons the spider-guy wouldn't be involved. In-universe, the Hand worked via street crime, not blowing up buildings with laser weapons. And the heroes who got drawn in came because they just naturally ended up there due to the cases they got involved in. Out-of-universe, there's two issues: first off, Spidey wouldn't fit in tone-wise. In ''Homecoming'', he was made to be funny and laughable, which would make him impossible for Matt or Jessica to tolerate. Furthermore, he'd be too overpowered for the show. He's possibly the strongest street level hero in the MCU, and he's ''definitely'' the fastest. But he's totally unwilling to throw a punch. He's been in two movies thus far and has thrown zero punches in either one of them, and The Hand are an enemy that cannot be bought, convinced, or detained. The Hand has to be met with force, and Spidey is too good natured a kid to even punch Adrian Toomes, so he would ''definitely'' hold back against the Hand. He also doesn't have any bullet resistance like Jessica and Luke have, or martial arts training like Matt and Danny have, so he wouldn't stand up well at all. Plus, he'd be completely out of his depth fighting a mystical ninja cult. I highly doubt Matt, Jessica or Luke would allow a 15 year old to participate in the war, although Stick would be all for it, given their attitudes towards Danny, who's only about ten to twelve years older than Peter.

Why were the Defenders under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar? The whole point of the Accords was to force metahumans into either retiring from super-heroics/vigilantism or working for the government.

** Matt does not know when to give up. Catholics at their core believe all life is sacred and that allow an innocent person to die is tantamount to killing them yourself, which is interesting when you think about his later efforts in ''Daredevil'' season 3 to get Ray Nadeem and his family out from under Fisk's control. Matt still believes Elektra can be “saved”. He hopes he can be the one to do it. Add his father’s influence and Matt will fight till the end, a la Emmerson. The problem is, Elektra wants Matt all to herself. Exemplified with her and whatever they called the elixir of life. She wants to it to be them against the world. It's not healthy. It’s a romance that's doomed to end in tragedy like Romeo and Juliet. It is also Matt’s choice, he does not want her to die alone, so he is also an active participant throughout ''Daredevil'' season 2 and ''The Defenders''.\\

** It's also very possible that Matt's disappearance is easy to bury because he has a very small inner circle to begin with. Clients can be fed some bullshit, while the landlord issue can be solved by just having Danny buy the building. Given the NYPD's eagerness to cover up their part in what happened, they were probably going to accept a half-baked story about Matt's "disappearance" as fact. However, even with the NYPD being eager to keep the public from learning about the Midland Circle incident, they still know that a bunch of dangerous vigilantes just blew up a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The view of the NYPD and the district attorney's office toward superheroes has been steadily skewing negative throughout the Netflix shows preceding ''The Defenders'' thanks in part to the propaganda put out by Fisk, Reyes, Mariah, Senator Ori and others like them, so if there was any chance that Jessica, Luke, and Danny were involved in Matt’s mysterious disappearance post-”kidnapping”, that seems like something the NYPD would want to dig into, given that with her line-of-duty injuries, Misty may no longer be able to defend Luke to her superiors. This wasn't addressed in ''Daredevil'' Season 3, given the immediate issues with Fisk. And if this was to have some impact on the follow-up shows, Detective Costa would've brought it up at some point in ''Jessica Jones'' Season 2 as well, but it didn't. Meanwhile, ''Luke Cage'' season 2 establishes that the NYPD's way of covering up the mess was also to give Misty a Purple Heart award (which we know that some cops, like Thomas Ridenhour and Nandi Tyler, are not exactly happy about).

Why were the Defenders under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar? The whole point of the Accords was to force metahumans to either retire from super-heroics/vigilantism or work for the government.

[[folder:Sokovian Accords]]]

** Going off what's shown from the flashback in the first episode of ''Daredevil'' season 3, Karen seems to be upset that Matt lied to her again. Maybe she could read it as evidence that he'd been doing Daredevil stuff behind her back prior to the Hand returning (counting the looters he beat up after the earthquake). That said, the way it's written does make Karen come off like she's being unreasonable and a little silly. Read the room, Karen. Matt's here saying the Hand is back, the Hand who kidnapped you, so you're possibly in danger, you should go with Matt and ream him out after he's gotten you to safety. Granted, what we later learn of Karen in ''Daredevil'' season 3 does give some justification for her behavior and reasons behind why she said some things, but ''The Defenders'' was written before all that. So Karen comes off more like she's another normie superhero's girlfriend who doesn't understand her boyfriend's issues. Plus, at that juncture, without the context of ''Daredevil'' season 3, it almost comes off like Karen made Matt give up Daredevil to have a chance at fixing their relationship.

** To play it out any other way would risk losing the full emotional impact. For the other Defenders, Matt is making that choice because he's that kind of guy, and because this is Elektra we're talking about. If there’s anyone that makes this choice foolishly personal, it’s Elektra. And putting aside that strategically, he probably is everyone’s best shot at talking her down and not getting killed immediately. He's not giving up on her, even though realistically, once Elektra killed Stick right in front of him, that should have told Matt that she was never going to be the person he kept trying to convince her to be. Obviously, if Matt had common sense, he'd have abandoned her to die, but like Foggy said in season 1 of ''Daredevil'', "You don't necessarily show the best judgement when beautiful women are involved, Matt." Matt tends to throw away common sense and act on pure emotion and instinct when matters concerning her happen (of course, this isn't an exclusively Elektra related thing; staying behind with Elektra to die is up there with paying a visit to Fisk in prison).

** That, and Karen's got this very mysterious past with a lot of sketchy stuff, a lot of which made her think no one would find her credible when going up against Fisk.

** It does seem like Daredevil's real identity is something they should know, especially considering how much time Madame Gao has spent around Matt, and how astute she's shown herself during interactions with the other Fingers as well during interactions with other associates/enemies like Fisk, Harold, and Danny. It's possible a few of the Fingers did know, but just pretended they didn’t because they didn’t want anyone else to have that information, kinda like Fisk handled this in the comics[[note]]When Fisk found out Matt's identity, he kept his knowledge of this a secret from even his closest henchmen because he felt the info was too valuable[[/note]]. But if the Fingers were all in the dark on this (as the show seems to imply), and assuming Gao did survive, it would be enough information for her to figure it out, considering how easily the Hand had earlier pieced together Daredevil's association with Brett Mahoney. The question is whether or not Gao would care enough to do so. She has shown an interest in Daredevil in the past, and she could certainly use that knowledge to blackmail Matt and/or win back favor with Fisk, but it's more likely she'll just move on to greener pastures, depending on her future goals. Especially given that from what little is known about the tone/content of ''Daredevil'' Season 3, that show is likely moving away from the Hand's mystical stuff, and Fisk is more likely getting his information from another source.

** Karen is trying to protect Matt from Daredevil. Her reaction to Matt being Daredevil is actually quite different from Foggy's because unlike Foggy, Karen has a darker side, and she's like Matt in every way with one big exception: Karen has crossed that no-killing line that Matt refuses to cross when she killed James Wesley, and possibly had crossed it even earlier. It's where she fears things are going to go: that one day Matt will finally snap and kill someone. That's why Foggy's issues with Daredevil are different from Karen's issues. Foggy doesn't think Matt is capable of murder, but Karen knows from her experience with Wesley, and possibly her past as well if her "Do you really think this is the first time I've shot someone?" remark prior to emptying the gun into Wesley means anything, that ''anyone'' is capable of murder. So Karen doesn't want Matt to be Daredevil, and she's speaking from a place of experience, not ignorance. She wants Matt to be better than her, a murderer. It's not about her love life. It's about trying to save his soul, the thing that makes him Matt Murdock. She puts Matt on a pedestal because she knows Matt's a genuinely good man: he took her in for a few nights when Fisk had her framed for murder, he believed her innocence when not even Foggy did, and as Daredevil he's saved her life twice. She expects Matt to be better than her, and based on what she's seeing, Matt's slipping and making big mistakes (first in mentioning that bad guys who did business with Fisk might be aware of Matt's identity, and then Matt getting essentially arrested alongside Luke and Jessica following Stick's death), and she doesn't want to see Matt land hard on his ass because the fall could kill him. Not to mention the risk to his professional career. Because like Foggy said, if Matt ever gets investigated, he and Foggy get disbarred and Wilson Fisk walks free. That's not something Karen wants to see happen, especially when she's afraid of Fisk learning that she killed Wesley.

** Matt does not know when to give up. Catholics at their core believe all life is sacred and that allow an innocent person to die is tantamount to killing them yourself, which is interesting when you think about Matt's efforts in ''Daredevil'' season 3 to get Ray Nadeem and his family out from under Fisk's control. Matt still believes Elektra can be “saved”. He hopes he can be the one to do it. Add his father’s influence and Matt will fight till the end, a la Emmerson. The problem is, Elektra wants Matt all to herself. Exemplified with her and whatever they called the elixir of life. She wants to it to be them against the world. It's not healthy. It’s a romance that's doomed to end in tragedy like Romeo and Juliet. It is also Matt’s choice, he does not want her to die alone, so he is also an active participant throughout ''Daredevil'' season 2 and ''The Defenders''.\\

At the same time, Matt is also pretty impulsive. He does not think about Foggy or Karen who are waiting for him back at the precinct. He wants to stay with Elektra so he does. In a weird way Foggy, and to a lesser extent Karen, may be partially responsible for Elektra and Matt becoming so close in ''Daredevil'' season 2. Foggy trying to get Matt to give up being Daredevil, and even the the thought of Karen knowing he is Daredevil, just pushes him into Elektra’s arms, because he thinks the only people he can truly be himself with are Elektra and Stick. They know all about him, and accept him. Foggy, because he scared for Matt’s wellbeing, tries to get him to stop. But Matt does not want to stop. And obviously Karen doesn’t know what her presence is doing, so Matt is completely projecting his fear of rejection upon her. He wants to cordon her off from that part of his life, because he thinks he is trying to protect her, but he is really trying to protect himself (as Karen points out in ''Daredevil'' season 3 while they're hiding from Dex in the crypt). One of Matt’s most interesting flaws is that he likes to project his own feelings onto people, to protect himself from any possible rejection.

** It's also very possible that Matt's disappearance is easy to bury because he has a very small inner circle to begin with. Clients can be fed some bullshit, while the landlord issue can be solved by just having Danny buy the building. Given the NYPD's eagerness to cover up their part in what happened, they were probably going to accept a half-baked story about Matt's "disappearance" as fact. However, even with the NYPD being eager to keep the public from learning about the Midland Circle incident, they still know that a bunch of dangerous vigilantes just blew up a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The view of the NYPD and the district attorney's office toward superheroes has been steadily skewing negative throughout the Netflix shows preceding ''The Defenders'' thanks in part to the propaganda put out by Fisk, Reyes, Mariah, Senator Ori and others like them, so if there was any chance that Jessica, Luke, and Danny were involved in Matt’s mysterious disappearance post-”kidnapping”, that seems like something the NYPD would want to dig into, given that with her line-of-duty injuries, Misty may no longer be able to defend Luke to her superiors. It’s likely this won't be addressed in ''Daredevil'' Season 3, because if they were going to delve into that story, Detective Costa would've brought it up at some point in ''Jessica Jones'' Season 2 as well, but it didn't. Meanwhile, ''Luke Cage'' season 2 establishes that the NYPD's way of covering up the mess was also to give Misty a Purple Heart award (which we know that some cops, like Thomas Ridenhour and Nandi Tyler, are not exactly happy about).

*** While it would have been nice to see the reveal scene in detail, it was never going to happen in ''Defenders'', as much as Matt and Karen both deserved and needed that scene. ''The Defenders'' really was just not the place to show it, and the showrunner probably didn’t want to step on anyone's toes by doing so, especially since there probably was not a good way they could've incorporated the reveal scene without bogging down the start of ''The Defenders''. Another possible reason is that the writers may have felt that since they dedicated an entire episode of ''Daredevil'' season 1 to Foggy's reaction, it would've been repetitive to have another reveal scene that would basically be a rehash of "Nelson v. Murdock" just with Karen instead of Foggy, and much of which would just be spent repeating information the audience knows. But alas, not only do Matt and Karen never get that scene (instead having it happen off-screen), we can only assume that Matt and Karen actually had relatively little contact since then which means that Karen has not even had the benefit of getting used to Matt’s powers that Foggy got in between seasons one and two[[note]]understandable, since Nelson & Murdock has just broken up, and Karen, being busy with her new job and trying to deal with the sting, probably doesn't have much free time to spend with Matt[[/note]]. This is suggested by a minor throwaway moment in "The H Word" when Matt and Karen are at the diner. Notice that Karen looks really uncomfortable when the waitress explains the layout of Matt’s plate setting, which seems to suggest that she feels really iffy about the level of pretense Matt has to go through (understandable), and whatever conversation they may have had about what he can and cannot do may not even have been particularly in-depth. Foggy, on the contrary, seems to have perfectly adjusted to the knowledge of Matt’s heightened senses by the start of ''Daredevil'' season 2, but that's because they were still working together as Nelson & Murdock. It's likely that we'll get flashbacks of the rest of the conversation in ''Daredevil'' season 3, because it's a ''Daredevil'' related plot-point as far as character growth is concerned. It may not happen but considering we’re getting explorations of Karen’s past, a flashback of her reaction to Matt's identity being revealed wouldn't be inappropriate.

** Priscilla Ridley's absence is explained in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 as being because she was promoted to Deputy Chief and moved down to One Police Plaza. She doesn't come back up to the 29th until after Thomas Ridenhour is killed. Thomas Ridenhour, meanwhile, is established in the first episode of ''Luke Cage'' season 2 to have been transferred up to the 29th after Strieber got reassigned to another precinct (Strieber had replaced Betty Audrey after she got ousted in the fallout from Scarfe's death). As for Nandi and Bailey, they were probably offscreen handling the crime scenes left by the fights that the heroes were having with the Hand (it was the police who found Matt, Jessica and Luke at the theatre)

** [[spoiler:At the start of ''Daredevil'' season 3, we see that Karen has been maintaining Matt's apartment in his absence. That includes paying rent and making sure the place is clean for when Matt comes back.]]

*** Even if the Hand had access to Judas bullets, they wouldn't actually be effective against Luke at all. It's revealed in ''Luke Cage'' season 2 that Luke's skin was actually extra strengthened by the acid bath in Dr. Burstein's barn, as Luke finds out after Arturo Rey's failed attempt to use a Judas round on him. Not to mention, ''Luke Cage'' season 2 also reveals that it's become a federal crime to be in possession of weaponry made from alien metals salvaged from the Incident, which would make Judas bullets much pricier on the black market, even for an organization the size of the Hand. Really, the Hand had no counter-measures to Luke that would prove effective. The only reason Elektra was able to defeat Luke during her kidnapping of Danny was because, much like in Luke's fight with Bushmaster on the High Bridge, he'd been drugged.

** [[spoiler:At the start of ''Daredevil'' season 3, we see that Karen has been maintaining Matt's apartment in his absence.]]

** The irony is, in ''Luke Cage'' season 2, she breaks up with Luke for the same reasons that she broke up with Matt.

** It's possible that Matt ''was'' going to tell Danny and Luke about Elektra after Jessica bailed on them. Danny tries to ask Matt about the last time he got involved with the Hand, but Stick speaks up before Matt can answer. Danny's question was addressed to Matt, and if Stick hadn't interrupted, Matt probably would've said something along the lines of, "Uh, well...first I ever knew of the Hand was that they did business with Wilson Fisk, until I took him down. And then a couple months ago, I assisted another one of Stick's students in a crusade she was carrying out against the Hand a few months back. It didn't end well for us. They...they killed her. And now the Hand has revived her and is using her for their dirty work. Her name is Elektra. She was the woman with the swords."

** Matt's reluctance to cooperate with Misty has to do with the fact that that he knows what happened when he decided to bring Brett Mahoney into his investigation of the Hand during ''Daredevil'' season 2: the events that led to Elektra getting killed started with the Hand kidnapping Karen and a bunch of other Daredevil survivors after they found out about Brett and threatened his mother to make him give up NYPD files.
** Let's say that Luke tells Misty what is going on, and she believes him. AndThenWhat Will it be the "four Defenders plus a complete ESU squadron against The Hand?" Or, better yet, just an ESU team facing off against the Hand? Not going to happen. The ESU teams would be CannonFodder for the Hand, or at least the heroes would consider them to be that. There's also the part that their plan is to sneak into Midland Circle and blow it up. No good cop would ever agree with such a plan, because it's just plain and old-fashioned terrorism. Not even bad cops would, because EvenEvilHasStandards. But let's say that, somehow, the heroes convinced the NYPD that this is the best way to solve the crisis, and that helping them would be worth going through all the Internal Affairs shit that would ensue. If so, say goodbye to stealth the moment an ESU team got sent in. Misty alone is just one cop, with no special powers and no experience with The Hand, so having just her joining the team would be having TheLoad. That in part is what led to her losing her arm when fighting Bakuto.