Jennifer Garner’s Elektra movie is one of Marvel’s biggest failures

Fans coming out of Deadpool & Wolverine are arguably the most hyped about the film’s numerous cameos, including the star of one of Marvel’s biggest bombs, Elektra. 

There are a ton of surprising cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine, from smaller gags like Chris Evans’ return as the Human Torch to the more important returning characters from previous films, like X-23. 

But one of the biggest surprises is the return of Jennifer Garner as Elektra, a character who many fans had likely forgotten about in today’s overabundance of Marvel movies. 

Elektra has been one of Marvel’s more popular and important characters over the years, but that success sadly never translated into film. Fortunately, Deadpool & Wolverine gave her something the Fox films never did: reverence. 

2005’s Elektra was Marvel’s biggest box office flop

Garner debuted as Elektra in 2003’s Daredevil, a film that is caught in an odd place in comic book history. Blade and X-Men had already set the tone, but outside of the nu-metal soundtrack and larger-than-life fight choreography, a lot of the formula at the time hadn’t been nailed down. 

Daredevil desperately wanted to be cool, gritty, and realistic while still paying its dues to the comics. There are a ton of nods to the comics, mostly in the form of characters named after artists and writers. But the biggest is the death of Elektra herself, a direct homage to the character’s death at the hands of Bullseye in the comics. 

Daredevil was a mixed bag critically, but it made enough money to warrant expanding the franchise. Fortunately, it had built in some sequel bait, with Elektra heavily implied to still be alive despite being very visibly impaled by her own sai. 

The solo Elektra film sees her revived by Stick (played by Terence Stamp) and moves her story ahead a few years so she can now be a lethal assassin with vague precognitive powers. When she chooses not to go through with an assassination, she finds herself instead protecting her targets from The Hand. 

By practically every metric, Elektra is a notorious flop. This was 2005; Daredevil was in the rear-view, Spider-Man 2 and X2 had reinvigorated the comic-going audience, and we were only a few months away from Nolan’s Batman debut. Elektra just couldn’t generate much buzz with fans, and no amount of one-dimensional assassins named after comic book characters was going to change that. 

Reviews were overall negative, with the film currently sitting at an 11% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. It also failed to break even at the box office, only making $57 million on a budget between $43 and $65 million. For comparison’s sake, those are numbers similar to 2005’s dismal attempt at a DOOM film. Even the atrocious Blade Trinity, which was released less than a month earlier, fared better, grossing $132 million on a budget of $65 million.

Perhaps most damning, though: the film couldn’t even capture the coveted MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss. A “kiss of death” scene between Garner and Natassia Malthe lost out that year, though to be fair, it was to Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling’s legendary kiss in The Notebook. 

Deadpool & Wolverine redeemed Elektra

And so we wind up where we so often do: with the former star of a now massive comic book property returning for one last go. We’ve seen this with everything from Michael Keaton’s Batman to Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man. 

Garner’s return as Elektra in Deadpool & Wolverine feels different, though. Her cameo drops her into The Void alongside Dafne Keen’s X-23, Wesley Snipes’ Blade, and Channing Tatum as Gambit. Like other characters, we don’t know how she got here, and it doesn’t matter. All that’s relevant is she’s part of a resistance against Cassandra Nova. 

There’s an unusual reverence placed on her appearance, a tongue-in-cheek bit of fun to her cameo that comes off as surprising. The film doesn’t give her a lot to do, but she does get some cool moments in the spotlight. It doesn’t treat Elektra herself as a joke; it arguably takes her more seriously than either Blade or Gambit in the same scene. 

It feels like the kind of redemption that a character like Blade would have warranted. While neither Daredevil nor Elektra have aged terribly well, fans seem fond of Garner’s portrayal of the character, and it’s easy to forget just how popular an actor she was at the time. The Elektra cameo is a small piece of the Deadpool & Wolverine pie, but it is definitely one of the most memorable for just how seriously it finally takes both its character and its actor. 

What’s next for Elektra? 

We don’t really know where or when Elektra will turn up next. The most recent live-action iteration of the character appeared in Daredevil Season 2 and The Defenders, portrayed by French actress Elodie Yung. Though Daredevil will be gracing our screens again in Born Again, Yung’s Elektra is believed to have died during The Defenders, and she hasn’t been announced for a return. 

Fortunately, Elektra is a bigger deal than ever in Daredevil comics right now. She took on the role of Daredevil while Matt Murdock did a stint in prison, donning a costume that one could argue is even better than the original’s. She’s kept the Daredevil title ever since and even recently got her own series that sees her clash with Marvel’s newest Punisher.

As for Garner, it feels unlikely that we’ll see her return as this character, though Elektra not dying means anything is on the table. But if this is to be the last hurrah for Elektra, she at least got the ending Elektra deserved, going down fighting to save Deadpool’s world – even if that world was only nine people she had never met. 

If you’re looking for more Deadpool & Wolverine, don’t worry. We’ve got a breakdown of every Deadpool & Wolverine Easter egg, guides to all of the Deadpool variants and Wolverine variants, and our ranking of every MCU movie.