Elektra Natchios – Bitch Flicks

Elektra Natchios (‘Daredevil’) Is the Most Underrated Character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes. … This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Elodie Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

When Daredevil’s first season debuted in the spring of 2015, comic book fans were basking in a nerdy afterglow. Not only were they given Marvel Studios’ first piece of R-rated entertainment, fans and casual viewers alike were captivated by Vincent D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Kingpin, now considered to be Marvel’s greatest villain since Loki.

The hype train for Daredevil gained even more passengers when the fan favorite character Frank Castle aka The Punisher was confirmed to appear in the show’s second season. Expectations were met; actor Jon Bernthal’s portrayal was loved so much that he now has his own spin-off set for 2017.

The character that I feel fans forgot to love though? Elektra Natchios.

Elektra makes her first appearance at the end of episode four in season two. Since purring her first line, “Hello, Matthew,” audience reactions have been divisive on the character. Some found her a breath of fresh air in this mainly white male-dominated show; some found Elektra’s plot problematic, particularly the series’ depiction of race, women of color, and Asian stereotypes; others found her a reduction of The Punisher’s screen time, responsible for a storyline that many viewers found muddling and worse, un-noteworthy. Not only do I strongly disagree with the latter, I believe that she is needed not only in the show, but also in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general.

Elektra exists within a show titled Daredevil, so a lot of her story is unfortunately tied to his and we are meant to perceive her the way stringent Matthew Murdock, the titular character, does. Elektra and Matthew are old flames and after the end of their relationship ten years prior (when Elektra’s idea of a fun date turned out to be Matthew’s from hell), the pair reunite to take down the Yakuza in Hell’s Kitchen. Matthew says that if they team up, Elektra must abide by his no killing rule. She reluctantly agrees. A few episodes later, she of course breaks it (unfortunately for a teenage ninja) and the pair call it quits again. However, Elektra isn’t the one who has to ultimately transform for Matthew; Matthew ultimately has to accept Elektra. Most importantly, this implies the audience is meant to accept her too.

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes.

In one of my favorite scenes, Elektra is leaving New York after her second breakup with Matthew with a new booty call in tow (until he tries to assassinate her). Not only does she then win a fight to the death, she wins her signature weapons (sai), and wastes no time in tracking down the man who placed the hit on her. This moment is reminiscent of practically any male lead in any superhero movie ever, yet is happening to an Asian woman instead. It shows us that her story doesn’t end after hers and Matthew’s does, it merely evolves.

Similarly to anti-heroes, Elektra’s sexuality is treated with respect. In her flashback with Matthew, she is shown to be dominant and a tad kinky in the bedroom. Coincidentally, after Elektra returns into Matthew’s life, he’s just started a rather quixotic relationship with the sweet-natured, sexually tamer Karen Page. Elektra’s sexuality could easily have been used as a way to slut shame her or mark her as inferior, yet she remains unscathed. The problems that Elektra faces are many but her sex life is not one of them. There easily could have been a scene where Elektra uses her sexuality to turn Matthew away from Karen but their most intimate moments this season involve hand-holding and touching each other’s scars (whatever floats their boats).

This leads to another thing I love about Elektra’s character: her motivations are not influenced by and do not rely on a history of sexual violence. The topic is even part of her comic book lore, yet the TV series still chose to omit it. As noted by pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency when she reviewed Jessica Jones:

“Just like Veronica Mars and many other “strong female characters,” Jessica Jones’ rough edges, the aspects of her character that fuel her internal conflicts and make her tough, badass, and emotionally wary, originate in her history as a survivor of rape and psychological abuse. Of course, we need stories about survivors, models of women (and men) who do the heroic work of putting one foot in front of the other and trying to heal after suffering traumatic experiences. But too often, a history of abuse is used as part of a female hero’s origin story, part of what gives them their strength.”

Elektra Natchios’ story runs parallel with The Punisher’s plotline. If audiences don’t question the fact that he doesn’t have sexual trauma to motivate his story, why should they question hers?

Furthermore, Elektra’s anti-heroine status adds more diversity to the female characters of Marvel. You wouldn’t place her in the same ranks as ‘Black’ Mariah Dillard and Whitney Frost, but she’s not up to the heroics of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Misty Knight, or Agent Carter either. Elektra may kill for kicks in one scene, but in the next she contemplates suicide after discovering that she is the lethal weapon the Black Sky to protect innocent lives lost. She’s flawed, seriously so, but deep down, she ultimately strives towards the greater good.

However, this complexity isn’t solely attributed to the showrunners and writers but also to the actress playing Elektra, Elodie Yung. In a promotional interview for the show’s second season, Yung states that:

“The writers told me that they see her as a sociopath… I didn’t want to reduce her to a sociopath because I don’t think she is. I tried to combine the sociopath that they wanted with her essence from the comics and a bit of myself in her to try and get her a bit more human.’”

This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g9CjhcNEWk

In some ways I found Elektra Natchios’ character more of an accomplishment than The Punisher’s, as I feel she breaks stereotypes while he conforms to them. The Punisher is a hyper-masculine, ex-military soldier on a bloody rampage for those responsible for the death of his family. His daughter seems to be at the center of his grief though, as he divulges the most about her when he breaks down to Daredevil in his graveyard monologue; his “penny and dime” catch phrase is a line from her favorite book. The Punisher’s emotional core relies on the common trope of fridging, using a woman’s death to fuel a male character’s motivation, whereas I feel Elektra breaks free of any tropes thrown her way.

I feel like I’m in the minority who feel this way though (hence this “unpopular” think piece). Thousands view Elektra’s scenes on YouTube, whereas hundreds of thousands view The Punisher’s scenes. Critic Bob Chipman at Screen Rant, wrote an article titled “How Marvel’s Daredevil Got Elektra Wrong.” He states:

“Miller/Marvel’s Elektra’s life may be a long list of unfortunate decisions, but at least they’re hers – born of her own agency and comprising her own identity. In fact, that’s the core of the tragedy on Daredevil’s end: His tortured, self-flagellating moral code can’t rationalize away the evil things Elektra does because there’s nothing external to blame. She is what she is because she’s chosen to be so. As reimagined for Netflix, just about all of that is gone.”

Although his points are reasonable and well explained, I have to disagree. Yes, Elektra from the Netflix series has many things placed upon her instead of her seeking them, but it’s how she reacts to those things that I find the most intriguing. If she were to follow Miller’s comics storyline faithfully, her death would occur to propel Matthew’s storyline. However, in the show, she dies because she chooses to die for something. When she is dying in Matthew’s arms, her dialogue isn’t, “I died for you, Matthew,” or some other tripe, instead she says, “I now know what it feels to be good.” The attention remains on Elektra.

Her choice wasn’t all for naught either. Yes, she was resurrected, so her decision to sacrifice herself was taken away. But the reason she died was to save Matthew’s life; that wasn’t taken away. For once, a female character can have her cake and eat it too: she gets what she wants, which is to save Matthew’s life, yet she doesn’t have to suffer the long-term consequences for it.

Granted, Chipman is correct in that the last two episodes prove the most troubling for her agency. After it is revealed that Elektra is the Black Sky, the men around her see her as an object to be controlled. Stick, the man who raised Elektra for most of her childhood, throws out lines like, “I tried to housebreak her,” and tries to have her killed when she breaks their alliance. Villain Nobu calls Elektra “it” and says that she “belongs” to The Hand. However, I feel credit is due to how she reacts to this objectification. In her final conversation with Stick, she tells him to stick it that “this is my life” and ignores his advice. She snarls at Nobu, “Call me ‘it’ again and I’ll cut you in half.” When Nobu states that she belongs to The Hand, she fights Nobu and The Hand. No matter what situation is placed upon her, her voice will always be heard.

Even though Elektra’s thrill for killing could be the cause of her being the Black Sky, it hasn’t been confirmed and more importantly, shouldn’t be. Elektra states that they could just want to lock her away “and do terrible things in my name,” using her as an excuse for The Hand’s actions rather than a literal weapon. We need more flawed women, female characters who have committed terrible acts but aren’t necessarily terrible people. Also, we have an abundance male characters that unnecessarily kill and their motives are rarely critiqued. As dire as it sounds, killing on-screen shouldn’t be a boys club. If it’s solely Elektra’s murderous nature that causes audience indifference to her character, why are so many male anti-heroes beloved for the exact same thing? Han Solo kills his enemies without a second thought and fans love him for it. In the “who shot first argument,” what are the fans most overwhelming answer? Han Solo is getting a prequel trilogy on his youth. Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead used racist language and called a grieving mother a “stupid bitch” (more than once) yet his character is a fan favorite.

As Elektra is confirmed as a series regular for The Defenders, the Avengers-esque team up with more blood, sex, and cursing featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, we should all be excited to see how her character evolves. Daredevil season two was an exciting set up for one of the most underrated characters to be introduced to the MCU. Everyone should be excited too. In the words of Matt Murdock, “What if this isn’t the end? What if it’s just the beginning?”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Elektra in Daredevil: Violence, White Masculinity, and Asian Stereotypes

Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Daredevil and His Damsels in Distress

Sophie Hall is from London. She is a barista trying to perfect her latte art by day and perfect her writing by night. You can follow her on Twitter @sophiesuzhall.

‘Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency. … This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places…

This is a guest post written by Elyssa Feder. | Spoilers ahead.

In season two of Daredevil, Elektra Natchios, international assassin and part-time debutante, is one of a pair of foils the show introduces to contrast with the series’ hero, Matt Murdock. While season one saw Matt wrestling with if he should kill Wilson Fisk, season two puts Matt among two antiheroes who have chosen the other side of the ethical line Matt won’t cross — Elektra, and Frank Castle, aka The Punisher. While Frank is given a detailed backstory, Elektra’s motivations are suspiciously obscured. The show then reveals that she is “The Black Sky,” a weapon that a shadow organization called The Hand has been searching for for centuries. Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency.

This should leave a sour taste. I watched season two of Daredevil in around two days and then I watched it again, mostly because I have a terrible memory and usually need to watch shows twice to retain what happened. But going back and watching with the knowledge that Elektra is a weapon, that that is a designation handed to her by men, that she doesn’t get to choose any of it, and that it serves to explain her characterization while Frank Castle gets all the internal motivation he seeks — that’s very troubling to me.

There are a lot of moments to make your skin crawl about this, but the one that kicked off my concerns about this is all the way in 2×12, “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.”

Here, Stick, the mentor to little Elektra (and little Matt, as the latter will later learn), explains there is some violent force inside Elektra, one she will have to learn to control. Though I’m not in principle opposed to women having innate power, there’s something off-putting about the way Elektra’s power is described here, and in other parts of the episode. Stick suggests that Elektra and her power are unwieldy, something dangerous and unnatural. And this line comes directly after Elektra almost kills someone — and she ultimately does kill him, later in the episode, an act Elektra explains she did “just to prove she could.” What a sociopathic little girl, we are left to believe.

But the show makes a pretty bad case that Elektra’s a sociopath, which might have let them off the hook for laziness. She’s reticent to leave Stick, her adoptive father figure, and her love for Matthew is genuine. Rather, the show reveals that Elektra is the Black Sky, a strange and mysterious weapon we still haven’t had fully explained. Rather than a real woman with choices, she’s an object. Her violence is, as Stick suggests, deeply a part of her — not because she chooses it but because, at least as most of the men of Daredevil would like to suggest, she’s not really a person. She’s just a shell for something sinister.

There are some fairly grotesque examples of this objectification. Nobu, one of the leaders of “The Hand” repeatedly refers to Elektra as “it.” Nobu is part of a cult that worships the Black Sky, so while one might think he’d be nicer to Elektra, the woman is just a shell, the container of the weapon. Stick, when tied up in Matt’s apartment says, “The Black Sky cannot be controlled, manipulated, or transported.” (Stick seems to have done quite a bit of controlling, manipulating, and transporting of Elektra over the last 3ish decades of her life, but I digress.) There’s a moment after Nobu reveals her identity where you can see the trauma and self-loathing Stick brought to her play out, and she seems to entertain this destiny, even for a moment.

To be fair to Elektra’s internal world, I think we can chalk this up to the trauma of her father figure trying to kill her. Furthermore, Elektra is raised by an older white man who taught her that she was out of control for unknown reasons, her violence is given no rationality, and then it’s ultimately revealed she’s violent because surprise! She’s not a person; she’s a weapon. Destiny and a bunch of guys who worship her said so. But they don’t really worship her. They worship some sort of weird mystical weapon they think is inside her. They see her as an “it.” And, at least for a moment, Elektra thinks, “Makes sense.” After all, was she not raised to believe she was a monster? A thing without reason? A creature out of control?

This sort of burden of destiny — and the irrational, innate violence that goes along with it — is something her natural season-long foils, Matt and Frank, are spared. Though I have my own struggles with the writing of Matt’s motivation (a subject not for this post), one cannot doubt that he is hyper-rational about them, with probably too much thinking and self-flagellation for my taste. Frank is given enumerative motive and rationality in the form of his murdered family, and a personal champion Karen Page who makes sure those motives and rationales come to light.

I should be clear here, when I say rationality I don’t mean, “Frank Castle makes good choices.” What I mean is that there is an internal logic to them; he is a Rational Actor. It is this rationality that allows Karen to argue he wouldn’t target the DA’s family; it goes against Frank’s internal code. I know why Frank Castle does everything he does, in a way I don’t with Elektra because it’s never offered. And there’s a reason this matters too, in the basic vein of “women are people,” and the fact that their choices are circumscribed or erased in all sorts of media is not only a common trope, but a disturbing one. We all know women in the real world make choices, good and bad, moral and immoral, that are grounded in experience. Elektra, the show suggests, makes choices because she can’t help it. Elektra kills people because she was born a weapon. Not much of a choice.

Though there moments where Elektra makes choices in this series, particularly ones that reject her “destiny” and the violence it sparks in her, that unseemly destiny thing has a tendency to intervene. One example is in 2×08, “Guilty as Sin”:

Matthew: Where’s Stick?
Elektra: I made my choice. He didn’t like it. I want to be with you. The only person in this world who believes I’m good.

Then, around three minutes later, Matthew gets attacked by a young member of The Hand and, after beating him single-handedly, Elektra still kills him in this bloody homage to “crazy” lady slasher films.

This line is the most unhinged Elektra is all season by my estimation, not three minutes after she decided to hang up her evil sword and pick up her noble one. Guess that uncontrollable violence got in the way again. She and Matt call it quits for a few episodes, until they’re mostly back together in 2×12, after she decides against joining up with The Hand.

It is in the finale that Elektra makes her last choices, at least for now. When Stick says her decision to fight The Hand is a mistake she says, “Maybe. But it’ll be my mistake, because this is my life.” This is the clearest pronouncement of her own choices and agency Elektra makes all season. It is a choice she makes not because she wants Matt to see her as Good ( I should note the paternalism and white savior complex in this dynamic are important to explore), nor a choice she makes because she’s the Black Sky. It wouldn’t be good characterization or good writing for her to suddenly become a white hat, but she chooses to fight a war because she wants to fight it, because there is something personal and at stake for her in its victory, and because she seeks to reject the destiny the men around her have told her is fated.

This is, of course, for naught. She and Matt fight The Hand on a roof, during which she declares they will kill him “over her dead body,” just to heavily foreshadow what was obviously going to happen. And then, in the latest case of unseemly lady deaths, she runs into a sword to save Matt, taking The Hand’s precious weapon out of the equation. It seems Elektra can only have agency over her destiny by throwing herself on a sword.

These are the few choices Elektra is allowed in Daredevil that contradict her destiny to be a weapon instead of a woman. The final chain of events — choices that are truly Elektra’s and no one else’s, and ones she makes to reject her destiny — leads to her death. The show even has the audacity to suggest her death, one of her few (and problematic, obviously) choices, will be rendered useless in the face of that destiny. Season two ends with Elektra in a coffin designed by The Hand for “the rising.” We are safe to assume Elektra, or something in Elektra’s skin, will return.

This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places, each of which could merit their own post, but I’ll give a few examples. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the premise of the show is that Buffy wanted to be a normal girl and no longer can be, because a few millennia ago, a bunch of men forced superpowers into a girl, and now Buffy doesn’t get any choice in the matter. On the spinoff series Angel, though Cordelia is initially given a series of painful visions without her consent, the show suggests in the episode “Birthday” that Cordelia is destined to have the visions. In making the choice to accept some mystical intervention into her life, she sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to her death (also in the interest of saving the man she loves). In Battlestar Galactica, Kara Thrace is given the destiny of leading humanity to Earth and nearly loses her mind because of it, only to disappear and die (again) once that mission is completed; Laura Roslin’s similar destiny is inextricably linked with her illness and death.

On the other hand, when men are given great destinies, from Harry Potter to Buffy and Angel and beyond, their choices are not sublimated in the face of that agency. Rather, those choices are portrayed as steps along a greater path. Their agency remains intact, and their deaths are rare. Yet, we see patterns where women’s destinies cut off their choices, or where the choices they make in the face of destiny leads to their deaths. (I will note that Dawn Summers, also in Buffy, faces a similar ‘you’re a mystical creation’ scenario as Elektra, but is allowed to retain and enhance her agency throughout the rest of the show.)

It is also worth noting that Elektra’s death appears amongst a series of disturbing choices to kill off women this spring. A few weeks ago, The 100’s decision to kill Lexa, a lesbian character, sparked deep outrage in the fandom, as well as critiques from the broader media as part of a larger pattern of killing off LGBT women on television. This past week on Sleepy Hollow, the show decided to kill of lead Abbie Mills, played by Nicole Beharie. Sleepy Hollow has faced critiques for a few seasons for the continued sidelining of Beharie’s character, a Black female lead on a major network, in favor of white characters on the show. The show’s decision to not only kill off Abbie, but to construct her death as in the service of white lead Ichabod Crane (played by Tom Mison) and his destiny (one they were supposed to share, but seems to have been summarily robbed from Abbie in the service of his), has been roundly criticized, with fans of the show creating a hashtag to cancel the show entirely (which, agreed). Elektra, a woman of color (played by Elodie Yung) who the show forces to sacrifice herself to save a white man, is part of this larger disturbing pattern.

Conveniently for Daredevil, they, unlike many of these shows, have the opportunity to fix the problem they created. When Elektra does return, the writers have a choice as to who they bring back. She can be a thoughtless monster, a weapon known as the Black Sky with no consciousness, and which Matt will inevitably have to either kill or save with his love (dramatic eyeroll). Or she can be Elektra, a woman who tells the men who both put her in the grave and raised her from it to go to hell, and take destiny with them. It would be this Elektra who could be given the opportunity to make the choices she wants, to have an inner world explained by more than “she’s a weapon.” A real, live, breathing woman.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Daredevil’ and His Damsels in Distress

Elyssa Feder has a BA in Women’s Studies and International Affairs from George Washington University, where one day she decided to write a paper about women in the military (on scifi television) and it was all downhill from there. By day, she is a political person doing political things; by night, she can be found lecturing friends and coworkers about television. She also does this by day, if anyone lets her.