Charlie Cox Addresses The Evolution Of Daredevil And Elektra’s Relationship

In Marvel’s The Defenders, it is Daredevil who struggles with the most considerable inner conflict as the team rallies to fight a common enemy despite his true awareness of the situation at hand.

Spoilers for The Defenders follow!

In taking on The Hand, Matt Murdock was forced to face his former friend and lover Elektra despite her death. Her death, however, was seemingly permanent, as the revival of Elektra’s body appeared not to come with the revival of the person Matt once knew. Aware of this, Matt struggled to fight his former love.

“My feeling is that [Matt] was deluded in that area,” Daredevil actor Charlie Cox said. “It was clear to everyone else — even Stick — that whoever she may have been in the past, and whatever kind of person she may have been, she’s not just had a change of character, she’s been brought back from the dead and turned into something different. She’s almost no longer human. The first time she walks into the room, Matt can’t even identify her heartbeat as a human’s heartbeat. He refers to her as ‘something else.’”

Regardless of whether Elektra’s body survived the Season One finale of The Defenders, it appears the woman Matt knew will remain gone.

“When Matt figures out that whoever this was is in the vessel of Elektra, he’s so drawn to the prospect of it being her, not just because he loved her, but also because it would have relieved a tremendous amount of guilt and shame over what happened to her,” Cox said. “He allows himself to believe. He deludes himself into believing she can somehow be refound, or he can get through to her, and the Elektra he knew and loved would be there again. For me, that becomes more and more ridiculous as the episodes carry on, but it’s insight into the head space he’s in. It’s weird, because she does begin to remember things. She does begin to remember him. That, of course, adds to the confusion.”

“The way I like to think about the Matt and Elektra relationship is it’s the superhero version of the very toxic love relationship you have in your 20s, where you’re on-again off-again for two years, and you never quite get over that person,” Cox continued. “Part of you is always with that one great true love you had, even though it was always doomed and it was never going to work. This is the superhero version of that.”

The Defenders is now available to stream on Netflix.

(via THR)