All tied up - how will our hero get out of this one?

Just under 12 months later the same energy that pulsated across the screen last season is back with the titular champion speeding across the rooftops of a gritty Hell’s Kitchen, facing off criminals, both the petty and the take-over-the-world variety.

The series’ first season was a departure for the wizards at Marvel with its Marvel Cinematic Universe having never traversed anything as dark as the world it set up with Daredevil. The risk paid off with its ambitious project featuring a flawed hero set against a compromised city full of the corrupt and the downtrodden.

With its stellar first season and the very excellent Jessica Jones (Marvel and Netflix’s second instalment in the overall Defenders series) that followed, the bar for Daredevil season two was set stratospherically high. One, which fans will be pleased to hear, it clears.

Daredevil and his alter ego Matt Murdock’s hood is still plagued with crime, despite the takedown of last season’s big bad, Wilson Fisk and his cabal of villains. If anything, Fisk’s demise has left a vacuum in the criminal underworld that the more enterprising crooks are desperate to fill.

Yep. Catholic guilt.

To that end, season two introduces two iconic Daredevil associates: Punisher and Elektra.

The former has been taking out bad guys with such brutality and precision that his work was initially mistaken for that of a paramilitary unit roaming the streets, rather than just one man fuelled by vengeance and a desperately bleak view of humanity.

Early on in the season, a showdown between Daredevil and Punisher is exactly the kind of conversation the show needs to address the greyness of vigilantism — even if it was a little on the nose and didn’t necessarily settle anything. It’s glaringly clear that the two characters are, to borrow an old adage, two sides of the same coin.

Except Punisher believes he’s more effective. As he expounds to Daredevil while he has our hero chained on a rooftop: “You hit them and they get back up. When I hit them, they stay down. This world needs men that are willing to make the hard call. The people I kill need killing. You act like it’s a playground.

“I think you’re half-measure. That you’re one bad day away from being me.” There’s no doubt that Punisher is infused with rage and a sad, personal history that drives him and his need to do damage under the guise of balancing the universe. But his actions also reflect, to a degree and perhaps unfavourably, Daredevil and his masked methods.

Expect sparks from Elektra (get it?)

But it’s Elektra, kickarse fighter and Daredevil’s sometime-lover, who propels the main story for the season. She slides back into his life, asking for help taking on a crew of devil-worshipping mystical ninjas, The Hand, that’s, well, up to no good. Featured significantly in the Daredevil comics, The Hand is a formidable adversary for our superhero and is also the enemy of The Chaste, a group headed by Daredevil’s mentor, The Stick. Yeah, it’s a lot of “Thes”.

Deciding to centre on The Hand and the occult this season also paves the way for the wider MCU and feature film Doctor Strange, which will deal with mysticism in a more comprehensive way, to be released later this year.

Those who were burnt by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s versions of Daredevil and Elektra from the mid-noughties can rest assured that the Netflix pairing isn’t as trainwrecked as the last attempt — the chemistry sparkles and the relationship benefits from cracking writing, something that was seriously lacking from the earlier movies.

Guided by new showrunners, Doug Petrie (also from the Joss Whedon school of writing and producing, like last season’s Steven S. DeKnight) and Marco Ramirez, the second season is first-rate TV. It’s the perfect balance between intrigue, conflict, screen violence, strong characters and a tinge of Catholic guilt and redemption. And, it’s very, very binge-worthy, even if you end up regreting it later.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

Daredevil season two will be available on Netflix on Friday March 17 at 6pm AEDT.