Marvel is no stranger to powerhouse collaborations — look at next month’s Avengers: Age of Ultron — but its most promising, game-changing partnership this year has nothing to do with Iron Man and Captain America. Instead, it kicks off tomorrow, when its new TV series, Marvel’s Daredevil, debuts on Netflix. As I wrote at Quartz,

Bringing together Marvel and Netflix, Marvel’s Daredevil, which debuts its thrilling 13-episode first season on Netflix April 10, ushers in an Avengers-level teaming up of Hollywood titans. In the past few years, no two companies have changed the entertainment landscape as much as Marvel (now every studio is pursuing its own version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and Netflix (which between pioneering binge-watching and creating groundbreaking shows like Orange is the New Black, has knocked every other network on its heels). Now they are at it again, devising an exciting new path for the crowded TV superhero genre.

And the series — the first of five Marvel/Netflix shows that will culminate in Marvel’s The Defenders, an Avengers-like teamup of its “street-level heroes” — is fantastic:

Unlike the other TV superhero series, Daredevil is aimed at grownups—or, at least, not the kids who watch much of Netflix’s other superhero fare. Karen Paige (Deborah Ann Woll from True Blood), the firm’s first client turned secretary, notes that after the violent events of the first episode, “I don’t see the city anymore. All I see are its dark corners.” And that is where Daredevil lives: the show employs a very dark palette (after all, Murdock doesn’t need lights). While Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter are glitzy and glossy, this one is gritty and grimy. An early episode features a brutal, gruesome decapitation; not something you’d find on any broadcast TV show.

But where Daredevil—which erases all memories of the mediocre 2003 film with Ben Affleck—really shines is in its inventive action sequences, particularly an ingeniously executed, prolonged fight sequence late in the second episode. It feels real, and brutal. You can see superheroes fighting back guys all over TV, but nowhere else does it feel this visceral.

Marvel and Netflix still have a long road ahead, but they couldn’t have asked for a better start to their partnership than Daredevil. Don’t miss the series when it debuts tomorrow!

Inside Netflix and Marvel’s titanic team up on Daredevil

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At The Daily Beast, I check back in on The Blacklist, which aired its fall finale last night. I wrote last spring that James Spader was single-handedly keeping the show together with his virtuoso turn as Raymond “Red” Reddington, and the NBC drama should wipe the slate clean of his costars and reboot with a group more worthy of sharing the screen with Spader.

Amazingly, the show did almost exactly that in the offseason, but the problems still exist. As I wrote at The Daily Beast,

So why does Season 2—which just had its fall finale Monday night—feel like such a disappointment so far? Because in focusing on all those necessary fixes, producers lost sight of the show’s raison d’être: Spader. Two steps forward, two steps back.

The Blacklist’s Frustrating Fall: Keen’s a Keeper, but Red Regresses

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Last night’s leak of the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer was bad news for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which was supposed to debut the trailer during next Tuesday’s episode.  As I wrote at Quartz:

The leak eliminated what might have been Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last, best hope to win back at least part of its initial audience. Because once viewers check out of a show—as they did during the show’s rocky first season—they rarely return to give it a second chance.

Marvel finally gave in and…

The ‘Avengers 2’ trailer was supposed to save ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Oops.

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Back in May, I wrote about how Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD had finally found its way. As the show prepares to kick off Season 2, I spoke with its two showrunners, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen for this Daily Beast interview about balancing secrecy and spoilers, what they learned from Season 1’s rocky start and which Marvel Universe characters will (and won’t) be making appearances this season. After having her hands tied for much of last season, being forced to keep quiet about, and then react to, the big reveal from Captain America: The Winter Solider, Tancharoen talks about the freedom of Season 2:

Well, we have a very clear big bad. We have Hydra. It’s very nice and liberating to say “Hydra” and have it out in the open! Last season was definitely challenging, because we were not allowed to mention them or allude to a mole of any kind. So now, coming into Season 2, we exist in a new paradigm. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are viewed as one and the same.  So we’re putting our characters through a different sort of journey, where they still want to be out there and helping the world and the people through this world, but they have to do it from the shadows.

They also discuss the possible return of Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Joss Whedon’s level in involvement in the show and — something of particular interest to me — if they will can finally take the periods out of SHIELD (which is something that I’ve already done on this site).

The Leaner, Meaner Season 2 of ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

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