Luke Cage is back in Harlem after finishing his prison sentence, ready to try to help the people of his neighborhood better their lives. Jessica Jones is not exactly functional several months after dealing with the evil Kilgrave, but has taken the case of a wayward architect. Matt Murdock is throwing himself into his legal work and trying to rebuild a life without the red suit and vigilantism of "the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," Daredevil. And the Immortal Iron Fist Danny Rand, spurred by the last words of a dying man, has tracked the agents of the Hand to New York City. None of the four are keen on working together, and at least a couple of them aren't into the idea of fighting the Hand at all. But they will, because right now they are the only defense New York City has with any hope of stopping the Hand's destructive plans.
One knock against all of the single-hero shows was that the seasons were too long at 13 episodes apiece, stuffed with filler that slowed or even derailed their stories. Defenders clocks in at a breezy eight episodes, a good change that helps it quite a bit. It still needs a significant trim, but what's annoying filler over eight shows would have been deadly to 13. It carries some of the individual shows' flaws forward as well -- Finn Jones as Danny Rand seems to have taken acting lessons from Mark Hamill (and several scenes recall those of Hamill's most famous role) in that he can do breezy action and bravado pretty well but his "intense" manner is really just grating. Élodie Yung as Elektra still can't sell her character swerves from dark to light, and way too much of the narrative hangs on what Danny and Elektra do and don't do and why. Neither of them really lets us know those things; they're not bad but nowhere near good enough to overcome the holes the script leaves them.
Kristyn Ritter as Jessica, Charlie Cox as Matt and Mike Colter as Luke all handle their material better. Ritter is still written as a slightly less warped version of Eliza Dushku's Buffy character Faith and Colter isn't given enough to do, but they work out better. A lot of the time spent sitting around the police station listening to New York cops saying "You need to tell me what's going on" should have been spent letting Jessica and Matt play off their mutual perceptive abilities or letting Luke explore how his paternal character might influence the orphaned and privileged billionaire Danny. Colleen Wing, Danny's partner and a legitimately badass fighter in her own right, is relegated to the sidekick pen for too much of the second half of the series. Sigourney Weaver as Alexandria is chilling as the main driver of the Hand and its leader, but her front and center role through the first two thirds of the episodes fizzles out in the last two.
The Defenders' visuals may be the thing that saves the series from being the train wreck the script and cast weaknesses steer it towards. Cinematographers Matthew Lloyd and Jim McMillan's creative use of color helps bridge a lot of narrative gaps, and 4th episode director Phil Abraham and 5th episode director Uta Briesewitz offer clinics on how to make the most use of the tools that the script and the cast give you, also playing a lot with color, visuals, and scenes without dialog.
Whether the Marvel-Netflix project brings a second Defenders team-up to light is yet to be seen; next up is Jon Bernthal's The Punisher series and then each of the Defenders' primaries has their own season of shows on tap. But this season should show the company that fewer episodes can certainly be better. And maybe future crew can learn from the way Lloyd, McMillan, Abraham and Briesewitz take seriously the visual dimension of the comic book medium as a way of communicating story, and be able to use it to amplify a strong script instead of salvage a mediocre one.
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