Season 3 of Marvel’s “Daredevil” on Netflix returns to the basics in the best way possible. Gone is Matt Murdock’s fancy suit, gone are his superhero friends, and back is the welcome return of Vincent D’Onofrio‘s menacing Wilson Fisk. This means no crossovers, no superpowers, and much higher stakes. Factoring into these decisions was a creative change in the form of a new showrunner for the Devil Of Hells Kitchen’s third season. Marvel appointed former “Arrow” and “The Man in the High Castle” producer and writer Erik Oleson as the shows new creative head, and it paid dividends.
I had a chance to speak with Oleson about all things Season 3 including his vision’s comic arc inspirations, conceiving and executing fight sequences, how his spy background factored into the season’s narrative, Bullseye, his thoughts on “Iron Fist” getting the axe, and much more.
“The Defenders” events hinted at Matt Murdock’s next arc. When you took over as showrunner for the third season of “Daredevil,” was it more your idea to tap the comics’ ‘Born Again’ storyline or Marvel?
The events of “The Defenders” put Matt in a certain place and there were certainly hints at the end of the [limited series, such as] the mention of Sister Maggie, among other things. When I sat with Jeph Loeb, I had very specific ideas, but Marvel also had [thoughts] they presented as options to me. They wanted to give me the creative freedom to tell the story that I wanted to tell, but they knew, that Vincent D’Onofrio was interested in coming back. They knew that they had the ability to draw from some of their favorite comic runs and mine, ‘Born Again,’ a few others, so Bullseye [became an option] this season. They don’t tell showrunners what to go write, but they give you a lot options and ideas and then let you go do what you think is best.
I wanted to treat Season 3 of this show as if it were the Erik Oleson run of the comic books, like Frank Miller had his run of the comics and [Brian Michael] Bendis, [Jeph] Loeb and Kevin Smith. All of whom honored what came before and yet put on their own stamp. I wanted to honor what Drew Goddard and Steve DeKnight had done in Season one, and what Marco [Ramirez] and Doug [Petrie] did in Season two, but tell a story very much that was my personal tone and the things that interested me and the storytelling technique that I think makes for the best TV. And Marvel gave me their blessing.
I wanted to refocus on the core characters of “Daredevil.” I wanted to tell a layered, emotionally honest character drama that had a crime and conspiracy thriller [element] all baked into it. But I wanted to take the show in the direction of the premium prestige drama, where every character was treated as the protagonist of their own storyline and given their due. My favorite shows of all time like “Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” and shows that, really get inside the characters’ heads— you are bonded to them.
It was bold to drop the suit, forget the superhero crossover and go back to basics. What factored into this decision?
Marvel included the crossover option, but I felt like it would have been a distraction from the story and the deep emotional bonds that we were forming with our core “Daredevil” characters. Crossovers work when they enrich your story and don’t distract and that was the guiding principle. Marvel gave me the keys to the Ferrari, let me use the mothership of all Marvel television shows to say something about the world that we’re all living in today.
And that aim was?
To show to explore the idea of fear and the idea that our fears enslave us. In real life [many of us] are behaving in ways that are contradictory to our better natures because we’re afraid and because there are villains in the world that play on our fears to turn us against one another and to speak to our inner demons instead of our better angels. It’s really about the prescription for how to defeat tyrants who use fear to divide us against one another. [We’re exploring] defeating a narcissistic tyrant is the power of the free press, the power of the law, and the power of collective action with your friends and family, love and faith.
So, the idea of Jessica Jones or Luke Cage showing up all of a sudden would’ve upset the balance. Your villains should be more powerful than your hero in basic story structure. Fisk and Bullseye, together, outgun Matt Murdock and Daredevil. There’s no question that they have more resources, more power, and ability than Matt does. That creates the correct dynamic you want for a good story. When a bunch of superheroes show up who could just walk into the penthouse of Fisk and tear his limbs apart, suddenly, that balance is out whack.
Let’s discuss the hallway fight in episode 4 involving the single shot. Is this fight scene a prerequisite for the show, now?
The stunts department is always looking to outdo themselves, as are the writers and producers of the show. The hallway fight in Season One was so epic, and really set the bar for action on not just “Daredevil,” but on all streaming shows pretty much across the entire entertainment industry. It had a major effect. And Season Two of “Daredevil” paid homage to it with a fight with a biker gang in a stairwell. But Season 3, we weren’t quite sure how we were going to do that or whether we were going to do that.
Then, the director of episode 4, Alex Garcia Lopez, and the stunts department and the writer of the episode who was on set, Lewaa Nasserdeen, came back to me with this crazy idea of doing this gigantic prison escape set piece as a one-shot, that we ever thought it was going to be possible to do it.
But what Charlie Cox and I agreed on is this sequence, as far as action, is the greatest achievement of either of our careers. What the stunts department, in conjunction with Charlie and his stunt double, and the entire crew managed to pull off in that sequence is unbelievable.
Any one crew member who stuck their head around the corner at the wrong moment would have ruined it. And it was an eleven-and-a-half-minute sequence involving dozens of stuntmen and hundreds of crew people, all working in complete synchronicity in order to pull it off.
In post-production, there’s a section of the shot that moves through a dark hallway. And we could’ve hidden a cut in there. And I wanted to make sure that critics and audiences saw that we never cut the camera, so, I went in and I lightened it so that the audience will be able to see that we never actually cut the camera. It is truly a one-shot that moves through a dramatic scene, into an action sequence, [and back and forth again]. If this thing doesn’t get the stunts department nominated for an Emmy, I don’t know what will.
 reemerges a broken man, putting into question his future as both vigilante Daredevil and lawyer Matthew Murdock){kind=link}