Daredevil S03E07 Review: Kingpin's Secret Staircase

Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 7: Aftermath

I had... had sort of left Daredevil untouched for a while. First there was the fact that my laptop was broken, and then the rush to catch up with the CW shows before Elseworlds, and then... I dunno. I guess Daredevil is kind of a bit of a 'heavy' show that's always consistently great, but doesn't necessarily make for the most fun hour to unwind. It's just so tense to watch it!

Anyway, this episode mostly deals with, well, the aftermath of the impostor Daredevil's attack on the New York Bulletin. Daredevil ends up being blamed, and we get a scene of him being absolutely angry and pissed early on in the episode, getting a raw argument with Sister Maggie... but also conceding that he's never going to let other superheroes take the fight to Wilson Fisk, as this is his own personal fight.

Meanwhile, and while I kind of understand where Nadeem is coming from... he continues to act like an ass throughout this episode. It's hard to know what to feel about Nadeem and I genuinely applaud the writing team for making him this complex. On one hand, Nadeem is being a gigantic douchebag to Karen and the others. On the other hand... the man is clearly frustrated and doesn't really have a reason to trust Karen or Foggy, so it's not just "the fool doesn't want to accept he got played" explanation. It still doesn't make him any less of an ass, though.

That scene with Karen walking pass the table full of cell phones in evidence bags, all of which are ringing from their loved ones, is a particularly powerful scene that really ends up being a gut punch as to the cost of this war. Also great is the conversation between the absolutely angry Ellison, who is angry that Karen is keeping information about the Daredevil from him.

Meanwhile, we get the revelation that Kingpin, in-between lying straight to Agent Nadeem's face and bitching about how his rabbit-in-a-snowstorm painting isn't back yet, apparently does have everything under his thumb, having installed a secret staircase in his closet that allows him to monitor everything, explaining how he was able to engineer the prison breakout earlier in the season. It does admittedly mean that some of the scenes seen earlier this season is working off of fake angst, though.

The big plotline of this episode involves Matt talking to Melvin "Gladiator" Potter, the man who's behind the creation of the Daredevil suit. Apparently he's in love with his parole officer, which is the leverage Kingpin has on him. Melvin offers to make Matt a new suit, and, in a decision that I genuinely rolled my eyes on, Matt refuses to take it. Melvin and Matt then get into a big of a fight, with Melvin being threatened to basically set Matt up with the Daredevil suit... except, y'know, Matt gets arrested.

And while Melvin does try to team up with Matt, he ends up just leaving Melvin to be arrested by the FBI, regardless of the potential threat that Kingpin has not just towards Melvin (who, while guilty, is also clearly a simpleton and under heavy pressure) and his girlfriend. Sure, the show ends up rewarding Daredevil a small reward of Fisk not giving two shits about Melvin, but that could've really gone pretty horribly for them. Do love the neat graying morality that Daredevil is employing with his increasing anti-social tendencies, and I do love the usage of Hallucination Kingpin to condemn Matt for this decision.

Meanwhile, we get a brief bit of Fisk fooling Nadeem while sleeping on his bed, and, as Kingpin notes, he did deliver what he had promised to deliver, while the FBI restoring the small mansion-apartment was part of their deal. We also get a brief scene of Karen calling his father who basically tells her to fuck off... which presumably plays into the whole Karen's mystery background subplot, but I can't really say I'm particularly invested in this bit. It's a particularly well-acted scene by Deborah Ann Woll, though.

And after the Nadeem focus, we get this scene where his family celebrates his promotion, his wife calls him out on keeping secrets... and the real Daredevil finally meets up with Nadeem in his basement, revealing some parts of what he knows about Fisk and the impostor Daredevil to him, and the information he learned earlier from Melvin Potter -- that the impostor Daredevil is a member of the FBI.

Overall, a pretty well-crafted episode. I do really like Wilson Fisk and Karen Page's smaller storylines in this episode, as well as Matt's descent into the morally ambiguous 'betrayal' of poor Melvin Potter (you really can make an argument either way on Melvin's guilt). It's not the most spectacular hour of Daredevil ever, but it's a fun episode nonetheless.