'Daredevil' star Charlie Cox explains the deadly power of the show's new character Elektra
(Patrick Harbron/Netflix)
Charlie Cox thinks many viewers will relate to his character Matt Murdock/Daredevil's tempestuous relationship with the Netflix series' second-season addition Elektra (Elodie Yung).
The Marvel character appears on the series just as Matt believes he has wrapped up his dealings with the complicated vigilante Punisher (Jon Bernthal). Matt has a minute to breathe before he arrives home to find Elektra waiting inside his apartment. Their tense back-and-forth signals that there is a lot of intense history between the superheroes.
"Elektra represents the girlfriend — or the boyfriend — that we've all had at some point in the journey and hopefully that you have learned to move on from," Cox explained to Business Insider.
"She's the most exciting, the most dangerous," he continued. "She brings that side of you that you didn't know existed, and then you blink and she's gone and you never see her again, and you're devastated and your life's over and you don't know what happened to you and it was a whole whirlwind."
In the Marvel Comics world, (Patrick Harbron/Netflix)
Elektra and Daredevil dated while in college. And like Punisher, she has a thirst for justice but differs in the way she gets it. An athletic woman, Elektra is adept at martial arts and the use of knives and swords.
"I wanted to keep the coldness," Yung, 35, said during the winter Television Critics Association press tour of what she took from the comics. "Elektra is kind of a sociopath. This world is a game for her. It’s like a chess game, and what motivates her is what she wants. She’ll use anything she needs to use to get to her goal, and if she needs to kill people, she would."
The Netflix series revisits the couple's early relationship in flashbacks to college. It also brings Matt back to the memories of his late father and face-to-face with the man who murdered him.
Elektra may just be the deadliest opposition Matt has had to face on the series. Unlike season one's Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Punisher, Elektra has an emotional hold on the masked hero.
"I know a lot of men who can identify with that kind of relationship that Elektra presents to Matt," Cox, 33, told us. "It's wonderful and terrible all at the same time. It's life-giving and life-destroying simultaneously."
Watch the "Daredevil" trailer featuring Elektra below:
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