Daredevil: Timeline and Legal Details

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I can tell I'm falling deep into a fandom when I feel the need to build precise timelines for a universe in my mind. For Daredevil, my priority is definitely figuring out how long Matt and Foggy have known each other, and what they were doing pre-series. The awesome ladies at @redringsideseats were kind enough to answer my newbie questions

Comments

[roguedemon]

Hey -- I've been obsessed with DD for a while now. You're right, a lot of the details are fudged or don't make sense in the real world. Also, the timelines conflict between season 1 and season 2. In season two, it is clearly stated that Matt met Elektra ten years ago, in college. Given that in S1 Matt and Foggy really seem like they met as freshmen in college (maybe sophomores, but some comics canon says freshmen) I have chosen to go that route. Columbia doesn't have dorms like that for law students -- it looks like a frosh dorm to me. Who takes Punjabi as a lark in law school, or any graduate program? I also can't imagine Foggy showing up to law school with that facial hair. Also, given the ten years timeline, they would have had to be in college when Matt met Elektra (comics canon says it was freshmen year), because there's a lot of years unaccounted for if they met in 1L -- four of them, in fact.

The fact is that DD is very frustrating when it comes to legal writing -- especially S2 -- because it really looks like the writers prepped by reading the comics and spending a few minutes on google and then calling it a day. I think first year associates is about right. I think the writers just assumed that since many careers have one year internships, lawyers do as well. And it's so easy to find that detail!

I think that canon has always been that Matt was a brilliant young lawyer that chose to start his own firm and do good, and he brought Foggy along with him. I've read the comics through Waid's run -- the current run sucks.

The thing with shows based on comics is that you end up suspending your disbelief because the comics just handwave so many details. But the show was incredibly sloppy with the conflicting timelines -- I think it had something to do with the changing showrunners, but it's still just needlessly careless. I also think the problem is that there are conflicting comic canons with regard to when Matt and Foggy met, and I'll bet the writers just read one canon version for each season and called it a day. Comics can be so frustrating that way!

So, it's great that you're into DD and the Defenders now!