It makes me mad how much better it is than anything released within the past five years. Even the worst parts of it, Electra talking, are better than anything recent just because she is smoking hot.
Karen is an actually good female character with flaws and growth. Catholicism is depicted positively. No faggots in your face, no shoehorned lectures about race.
If you haven't seen it yet I highly recommend it, but pirate because despite making this show netflix doesn't deserve any money.
I was disappointed in 3 when I first watched it on release just because it was scaled back compared to city-threatening ancient ninja cult from s2. But on re-watch I see it is actually a really good political thriller that is blended with a street-level super-hero story.
It wasn't orange-man-bad at all even if trailers might have tried to edit to look like it.
I also skipped season 3 but enjoyed the first two a good deal. I'm probably going to give it a watch.
I also wonder if your feelings on season 3 being better the second time around, have to do with how bad much of the superhero stuff has been lately. I've noticed just personally that I tend to think higher of things that I thought were average at the time, just due to how monumentally bad everything coming out now is.
When you are starving everything tastes better. But also the re-watch let me appreciate the brutal fight scenes and how well-written Kingpin's plan to get "back in the game" was. Also Karen's backstory was properly tragic.