Daredevil S01E08 Review: Wilson Fisk - The Origin

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 8: Shadows in the Glass

Holy shit, this is easily my favourite episode of the season. No questions asked. One thing that nearly all reviewers hold in unanimous regard is how Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Kingpin was absolutely spot-on... and I have waxed lyrical on this show's version of Kingpin before. But this episode? This episode definitely takes the cake. It gives us insight into both Kingpin's origin as well as his daily life, and I absolutely love this episode to bits. 

And the opening, and the repetition of Kingpin's daily routine, which is waking from his nightmare, cooking an omelette, choosing his clothes (most prominently daddy's cufflinks) and all that, all the while Fisk sees only a reflection of himself as a broken boy in the mirror. And then with Vanessa in his life, how much the addition of the woman really... fixes him. Helps him to move on from his nightmares, from his dronelike dependency on routine... it really is wonderfully subtle yet apparent at the same time. Things like not having the nightmare is evident, but subtle changes like changing the shade of his clothes, and finally moving on from his cufflinks and taking a bold move to indirectly crush the hopes of the good guys to expose him...

Fisk's little backstory with his egomaniac and abusive father really works well, and I do love how despite having grown into an adult man and the leader of a criminal organization, Wilson Fisk is still as human as any of us, haunted by the scars he has as a kid. It really manages to humanize Wilson Fisk more than... nearly any other villain in the MCU. And the backstory is pretty brutal, too. We're introduced to Bill Fisk, who is a bit of an egomaniac who wants to run for mayor, and is obsessed with respect and having his son not grow up being weak. It goes from bad to worse as Bill loses his election, and later beats up some older kid that bullies young Wilson Fisk -- though I suspect the main reason isn't to make Wilson Fisk strong, but rather to lash out at someone who dared mock his name. And having Wilson keep beating the kid up just to show dominance will definitely break the boy.

It all comes to a head when Bill beats up his wife for daring to speak back against him, causing Wilson to, well, take the earlier lessons to heart and, well, he ends up killing his father with a hammer. I do appreciate how it's not as graphic as it could've been, and the focus of the camera is on Wilson's almost haunted face as he repeats his father's words "keep kicking him keep kicking him" while, well, bashing his father's head in with a hammer as blood splatters on him.

Another subtle tie-in is how before Fisk commits the murder, his father forces him to stare at a wall and think about the man he wants to be -- and the wall's texture happens to be the exact same one as the Rabbits-in-a-Snowstorm painting he bought during his debut. Good stuff that shows how still chained by the past Wilson Fisk is.

All this is juxtaposed with the present day Fisk, where he tries to reason with the likes of Gao and Leland about the recent strings of failure, and the conversation with Gao is handled superbly as Gao plays the 'unforgiving mentor' role to Fisk. The two clearly respect each other and I do like the dynamic between the two, with Gao being deceptively awesome as she just strolls up to Fisk's secret house and easily deducing that Fisk actually does know Chinese and Japanese. Though as someone who can speak Chinese, Wilson Fisk's Chinese pronunciation leaves quite a fair bit to be desired. It's honestly not too bad, though, since the actor still manages to deliver the sentiment of the scene perfectly.

A powerful scene is Fisk and Wesley talking to poor Detective Hoffman, telling him to get rid of the loose end Blake, who apparently survived the sniper wound... and the absolutely tearjerker-y scene as Hoffman tries to bargain, telling Fisk that he's been friends with Blake for close to thirty years. And as Fisk makes it clear that Blake is going to die one way or another, and asking Hoffman how much money each of his years of friendship is worth... Hoffman's shakiness as he enters Blake's room and injects the poison into his blood... there's also a nice little twist as Matt arrives a moment too late and Hoffman manages to spin it to the vigilante being the one that killed Blake. Bye Blake, you will be missed. Not really.

Fisk's interactions with the other members of his cadre really work well too. Wesley's loyalty and his status as Fisk's only real friend is emphasized even more in this episode, where we see Fisk actually open up to Wesley several times... though there's also the fact that Wesley was actually surprised to know that Fisk does know Chinese and Japanese, meaning that Fisk may not have told Wesley the whole truth and is still judging his friend's work? It's cool. We also have Leland Owlsey being the snarky voice of doubt, playing off against Gao and Wesley pretty well. The scene where Owlsey gets his bulletproof suit being made by Melvin Potter (more on him later) is another one that's a blast to watch.

And I usually think that superhero romances in TV shows are handled badly or at least unsatisfactorily because we always get some stupid unnecessary drama thrown in to 'spice things up', but Fisk and Vanessa here really get things going without being overtly too cliche or blatant, with the simple confession of past sins from Fisk and Vanessa accepting it, and the episode showing how much Vanessa's presence helps Fisk out... it really is a beautiful scene.

All while the good Fisk stuff is going on, our heroes investigating Wilson Fisk (now including Matt, who's brought in on the loop) kind of... try to drag Wilson Fisk into the public eye with a Ben Urich article. A bunch of talky scenes that are not bad in any definition of the word, but wholly unnecessary.

There's the absolutely great ending, though, where Ben finally decides to bite the bullet and write that Wilson Fisk article, only to see the TV where Wilson Fisk openly declares his identity in a press conference and declares his intention to rebuild Hell's Kitchen, meaning that Ben is one step too late from 'exposing' Wilson Fisk, since he's now not "this dude no one knows about" but rather "this rich dude who's actively helping people", and it's fairly harder to make the public believe that the latter is, well, a villainous kingpin. There's also a nice little parallel between Matt rage-throwing his laptop at the end of the episode and Kingpin rage-flipping the tea table earlier in the episode.

Let's talk about Melvin Potter a bit, the dude who made Owsley's bulletproof suit. He's been mentioned before in an earlier episode, and will continue to make sporadic appearances through this season. Melvin Potter's also called the Gladiator in the comics, a villain-turned-ally for Daredevil, who supplies costumes to both superheroes and supervillains. There's even a poster with the word "Gladiator" on it in this show. We also get a mention of Leland having a son, 'Lee', in this show. Will he make an appearance at a later day? Maybe Lee Owlsey will become this show's version of the Owl instead of his older father. That would really be cool. As awesome as Leland Owsley's snarky deadpan moneyman portrayal is, that's at the cost of an established Daredevil villain and I'd rather not have that.

It's the Kingpin: Origins episode, and it's nearly perfect. I'm not as well-versed in Marvel Comics lore as I wish I am, but as far as I know (and am told by people who actually are) it's as perfect as you can get to Kingpin's origin and I do love this episode. Villain-centric episodes have always appealed to me, and this manages to humanize Wilson Fisk a lot while still portraying him as a threat and undoubtedly a villain.