Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 1: Heaven's Half Hour
I am absolutely happy we're back. The MCU hasn't been particularly interesting to me with the exception of the little fan-favourite pleaser that is the Deadpool & Wolverine movie, and I'm quite happy to have this one.
(As a note, while we're covering Daredevil: Born Again, episode reviews for What If and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will be pushed back to the following months.)
Unlike many of MCU's recent material, Daredevil: Born Again doesn't try -- at all -- to even give you the barest of recaps. Which is a surprising move and I'm not sure if it's going to cause newer viewers who jump straight into this first episode to lose interest or not. But, well, we start off with our power trio from the main series -- Matt Murdock, Karen Page and Foggy Nelson -- celebrating at Josie's. It's just really nice to see these actors and characters again, and the bar scene is a really nice sequence to essentially set up our heroes and introduce new characters to us. We've got another lawyer, Kirsten McDuffie. We've got the retiring policeman, Cherry. And the television talks about another new vigilante, the White Tiger. Pretty fun stuff, and one that almost lulls you into thinking that this first episode is going to be a slower burn as one of Foggy's clients seem to be stalked by thugs.
Daredevil suits up -- and what a wonderful sequence to see him zipping around with his bo-staff grapple things -- and it really does feel like it's going to be a simple re-introduction with Daredevil being victorious and beating some no-name thugs.
Except it isn't. That whole thing turns out to be a distraction, and the true target of it seems to be Foggy. In a franchise where death is either meaningless or extremely foreshadowed, Foggy gets shot in the gut almost anti-climactically, almost cruelly. The killer is the main antagonist of the final (or rather, previous) season of Daredevil, Bullseye... who then proceeded to shoot even more people.
Daredevil races back, and we get a whole fight between the two of them -- one of those famous Netflix-MCU-popularized 'oner' shots as Daredevil and Bullseye clash and trade blows while the camera follows them up the building that Josie is in. But the fight scene feels hollow in a purposeful way. We get some flourishes like Daredevil slashing his baton against his bracers, or Bullseye's improbable ricocheting skills, but the focus of this scene is in things on the periphery of it. Bullseye's rampage explicitly targets people around him. Guests and patrons of Josie's bar (who are likely to be more of Matt's friends) or that one random guy who's just trying to get back to his apartment.
All the while, Foggy is dying with a hole in his chest, while Karen is crying over him. Not too long ago they were just joking and making fun of Foggy's lack of game. All the while, the show makes it excruciatingly clear that Daredevil, with his superhuman senses, can hear Karen crying, can hear Foggy's heart stop pumping.
And Foggy dies.
I would be pissed, if it wasn't actually done well. I'm not a huge fan of the "kill off a supporting character for drama/shock value" trope, but I felt like this was done quite well to set off the events of Daredevil: Born Again. And with how the scene is shot, with how the story was built up, Daredevil grabs Bullseye... and despite his code, despite his decisive victory over Bullseye, despite the already brutal rapid-fire punches... Daredevil decides to pick Bullseye up and toss him over the side of the building. He gets back up, because that's what superpowered people do, but Matt was fully intending to murder Bullseye in grief.
And he just sits there, letting his mask drop. The retiring cop Cherry shows up and gets surprised at the identity reveal, and Matt doesn't even care. He's broken. The opening credits roll.
What an opening, huh? Again, while I hope we do stay away from some of the more self-indulgent gore that the Netflix shows sometimes do, this is a great opening to Daredevil: Born Again. A nice tonal showcase of what this show is going to be both to new and returning audiences alike, and... honestly, it was quite a surprising gut-punch to kill Foggy off. I'm still not 100% the biggest fan of it, in principle, but the shock value was certainly there and the execution was done well.
We cut to "one year later", where we get a couple of nice parallel scenes of both Kingpin and Daredevil dressing themselves up. Or rather, Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock. We check in with Fisk first, who has recovered from his stint as a villain in Hawkeye and Echo. Vanessa Fisk has been running the Kingpin's crime empire in his absence, presiding over the 'Five Families', while Wilson makes clear his plan to 'do good for the city' as mayor.
Matt, meanwhile, has started off a new law firm with Kirsten McDuffie, trying his best to live a semblance of a normal life. The past does come back to haunt him, though, during the trial of Benjamin "Bullseye" Poindexter. Charlie Cox gives an amazing performance as Matt gives a closing statement against Bullseye, about how justice will never be served and his friend will forevermore be dead, and all that. Really powerful lines. And I also love just how broken and out of sorts Matt is when he hears with his Daredevil powers that Karen has shown up. Poindexter gets incarcerated for life in prison, and while Karen and Matt are on speaking terms, Karen is brusque -- their breakup was not handled well by either of them, and Karen seems quite disappointed that Matt has truly given up Daredevil for good, if that piece of horn is anything to go by.
But just as Matt's life is about to go back to normal, he hears over the radio that Wilson Fisk publicly declares his candidacy for mayorhood... and his platform is to clear New York of all vigilantes. We get introduced to his campaign team, which are mostly just straight-laced people with an obvious focus on Daniel Blake, who's young and gung-ho and quite happy to push Wilson's more unconventional ideas as a platform. It also shows a bit of Wilson's growth -- or at least, restraint -- as he doesn't actually go and try to intimidate or bash people's heads in for disagreeing with him.
As usual, the live-action makes great use of having Matt Murdock walk down the streets and listen to all the different opinions of people. And it's divided, but there are more supporters than Matt would like. I don't really care to make any commentary about actual American politics, but in-universe, it is quite interesting to see people questioning Fisk's conviction as a felon, and their desire to have some change, any kind of change, and thinking that someone like Wilson Fisk can do it.
Speaking of Matt trying to live a normal life, he gets set up for a date by Kirsten with a therapist, Dr. Heather Glenn, for a date. It's... it's a nice little distraction, honestly, and while I tend to dislike new shoehorned love interests, I felt like this was done well, with Heather being a nice little 'muggle' character in the supporting cast for Matt to bounce off of.
Matt tries his best to investigate Wilson Fisk, sending Cherry (who now works as P.I.) to investigate Wilson Fisk, but everything Fisk did to make this campaign work has been completely legitimate. And I think it would be too easy for Matt if Fisk was actually founding his mayoral campaign with a sinister, ulterior motive. We don't actually see much of Fisk's campaigning, but what little we see is a charismatic man ruthlessly crushing his opposition with debate. Vincent D'Onofrio himself is, as I keep mentioning in these reviews, an imposing presence, and he sells these scenes.
And in perhaps one of the best scenes in this episode, Matt walks up and meets with Wilson Fisk. They have a breakfast in a diner -- two enemies who know each other inside and out. And it's amazingly acted, with the two men being cautious of each other, but also seemingly being open-minded. I also like the brief moments where Wilson's inner rage seems to bubble up -- while he's good at regulating himself against a worthy opponent like Matt (when he brings up Echo, for example) a flash of the old skull-bashing Fisk shows up when a random Fisk-supporter interrupts their super-serious conversation. But he doesn't follow through with it.
Fisk notes that he's kept his word and that he had nothing to do with the Bullseye or Foggy thing. And that he is simply trying to give New York a better future. Matt, meanwhile, tells Fisk that he stopped being Daredevil because he 'lost that privilege' when he crossed the line by fully intending to kill Bullseye. The two leave each other with an understanding -- "step out of line, and I'll stop you". It's subdued, it's very well-acted, and my rather scattershot recap is not doing it any favours, but it's really awesome -- with Wilson promising to rid the city of all vigilantes and Matt promising to hold Fisk to not using this as a criminal platform.
Ultimately, the episode ends, of course, with Wilson Fisk being successfully elected as mayor -- something that stuns Matt and essentially brings his date with Glenn Heather to a screeching halt. And I really like the closing shots as Matt and Fisk look up at each other -- Fisk looming down from the side of a rooftop, while Matt, doused in red light, looks up at him. Mayor Kingpin is a thing, and boom, what a start to the season.
There are also a bunch of other stuff I didn't mention -- Fisk apparently knows of Vanessa having a lover (which, considering Wilson's possessive nature, we'll see how that works); Ben Urich's niece BB Urich going around being a reporter, and whatever is going on with the guy that Foggy stashed in his apartment that fateful night. The 'crime noir' world is back. The Kingpin is back. Daredevil is back. And I'm all for it!
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Born Again is the title of a 1986 Daredevil comic run written by Frank Miller, which explored what makes Matt Murdock who he is when everything is seemingly taken away from him. It is widely considered to be one of the most definitive Daredevil and 'down-to-earth vigilante superhero' stories.
- White Tiger, a.k.a. Hector Ayala, was one of the main characters of Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu. He was a student who happened upon a mystical tiger amulet from an organization called the Sons of the Tiger, which caused him to gain superhuman capabilities. He would fight against many of New York's seedy underbelly alongside other New York based vigilantes.
- In addition to the events of the first three Daredevil shows being recognized in one way or another, Foggy mentions his tenure at Hogarth & Associates (in Jessica Jones), the Tracksuits' show up in Vanessa's little mafia gathering (Kingpin's connection to them established in Hawkeye), and the discussion between Matt and Fisk has them discuss Fisk's dynamic with Echo in the final episode of Hawkeye and the Echo TV series.
- Since the conclusion of the Netflix series, Daredevil made a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home; a one-episode guest appearance in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and a cameo appearance in a flashback sequence of Echo. Kingpin has featured as the surprise final villain in Hawkeye, and as the primary antagonist of Echo.
- While never specifically referred to as 'Bullseye' still, our first establishing shot of him has the crosshair of his sniper rifle (which is his comic-book costume's logo) emphasized by the camera. He also uses a paperclip to nail a fly to the wall, which is a reference to the 2003 Daredevil movie.
- This is not the first time, even in MCU continuity, that Daredevil has seen a close friend killed on the rooftop, with the same thing happening to Elektra in season 2 of Daredevil.
- Bullseye's middle name is 'Leonard', which is a reference to one of Bullseye's fake aliases in the comics, Leonard McClain.
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