Were you chanting "Hallway fight! Hallway fight!"
while watching the newest episode of "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law?"
The penultimate episode of "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" finally delivered the dose of Daredevil many
Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have long been hungering for. Charlie Cox finally returns as
the devil of Hell's Kitchen, who leaves the gritty streets of Manhattan behind to defend a new client
on the sunny shores of California. It's the first opportunity fans get to spend some actual time
with the character following his extremely brief cameo in "Spider-Man: No Way Home."
Cox slips easily back into the role of Matthew Murdock, lawyer by day and crime-buster by night.
Though he features a new costume design with gold accents and seems to have loosened up a little,
personality-wise, this is unmistakably the Daredevil fans fell in love with
back when he first appeared in his own Netflix show, down to the theme song.
"I'm Daredevil!"
And it's a good thing, too. Netflix's "Daredevil" set itself apart from the get-go;
it wasn't going to be like other superhero media where physical damage is immaterial,
where our hero can fall from a roof or take a roundhouse kick to the jaw without breaking
a sweat. Instead, "Daredevil" allowed its protagonist to take damage, making Matt feel
more vulnerable and human. Another pleasant surprise resulting from that choice is that
the fight scenes felt more intense. Sustaining injuries meant that Matt often struggled visibly
toward the end of a fight, limping and straining to keep himself upright as he battled his foes.
Now, with his Disney+ debut,
"She-Hulk" paid homage to the most memorable fight scene from Daredevil's Netflix series.
While "She-Hulk" Episode 8 doesn't address how much of the Netflix "Daredevil" series
remains canonical within the MCU, it does pay homage to that show's signature hallway fight
scenes. Though not nearly as brutal as the original scene it references,
it does make sense that an MCU show would stray
from that level of darkness and brutality. And besides, he's got She-Hulk as a backup.
Jen and Matt are forced to team up in order to stop a minor villain, Leapfrog,
who kidnaps their tailor, Luke Jacobson. They track Leapfrog to his not-so-secret lair,
where he has the seamster hostage. Jen wants to bust inside She-Hulk style, but Matt insists on
stealth. He enters the building to find a hallway full of goons… or maybe henchmen?
"Goons and henchmen are two completely different animals."
Daredevil easily picks off the first few men, but then backup arrives. However,
before they can attack, She-Hulk busts in through the ceiling,
crushing them. Speaking to Marvel, "She-Hulk" writer Jessica Gao said,
"It was just natural for this show, being so meta,
that we would acknowledge and tease the classic Daredevil hallway fight. But then,
of course, we would have to undercut it with our girl, She-Hulk."
The original hallway fight "She-Hulk" is referencing was a crucial aspect of
the "Daredevil" Netflix series. As the first of the "Defenders" shows to land on Netflix,
no one knew quite what to expect when its first season dropped in 2015. However,
the series quickly won the praise of critics and fans,
boasting a 99% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, One review from IndieWire noted,
"All of [the fight scenes] stack up as some of the
best-realized fight scenes I've seen in a television context."
The pièce de résistance among the fight scenes on "Daredevil" comes with the
hallway battle in Episode 2, and it's a visceral thrill. With his super hearing,
Daredevil hears a kidnapped child locked in a basement and decides to rescue him.
We don't actually see Matt take out the first roomful of goons, as the camera pans across to
an adjacent hallway. That door breaks open and Daredevil stumbles through, swarmed by thugs.
The entire action scene is shot in one, continuous take,
the camera's refusal to cut away heightening the brutality of the fight. By the time Matt
takes out the last of the child traffickers, he can barely pick himself off the floor.
Unlike the hallway fights on Netflix's "Daredevil," Matt suffers no injuries
during the "She-Hulk'' fight. Maybe that means that ol' Hornhead has gotten a bit better at
pacing himself for long fights, or maybe the MCU version of Daredevil is just that much better.