10 Easter Eggs You Might Have Missed In The Defenders

2) Star Wars Allusions

For the big climactic scene in episode 8, the writers and director were clearly trying to capture the epic scale of something like Star Wars but on a Netflix-sized budget. To do so, they employed a couple of references to Return of the Jedi, the finale to the original trilogy.

First of all, Murakami falls to his death down the elevator shaft into the pit below. This heavily recalls the Emperor’s fate in that movie. Most of all, though, Matt’s big speech to Elektra about sensing the good in her underneath all the darkness really recalls Luke talking about Vader to Obi-Wan Kenobi. The same situation was then repeated in The Force Awakens, when Leia feels that there’s still good in her son Ben, now Kylo Ren.

In each of these cases, the search for redemption leads to death – namely, Vader’s, Han Solo’s and then (kind of) Daredevil’s. Though, obviously, death is flexible in the Marvel universe…