Daredevil S03E09 Review: Truth

Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 9: Revelations

It's been a while since I watched episode 8 of Daredevil's third season. Is it weird that I take so long between episodes of a season meant to be watched in a single batch? Whoops, I guess. I really just like watching things at my own pace, and Daredevil episodes tend to be pretty... "heavy", so to speak, that I tend to not jump into the next episode and let it sink in. Bit of a shame, though, now that we know that whatever happens, this is the final season of every Marvel show on Netflix. I don't think there's any word on whether the cast or IP's will transfer to another streaming platform, but at least we did get some quality shows out of it. 

This episode is a lot quieter, spread across Matt reacting towards a huge revelation, while the episode itself throws another big revelation at us. We get Matt going around trying to wrap things around the revelation that Sister Maggie is Matt's mother, and while I'm genuinely confused just what this adds to the show when I watched episode 8, it helps to throw in another huge wrench into Matt as the few things that are relatively stable in his life crumbles down since it means Father Lantom has lied to him all this time, while Maggie's been keeping it a secret even when Matt needed her the most. 

The backstory is... interesting, but not particularly surprising, and we get to see how young Jack and young Maggie ended up meeting and starting up their tryst, and we also learn from Maggie later that she now realize that her abandoning of Baby Matt was due to post-partum depression. We get a pretty interesting scene of Matt talking to a vision of Jack Murdock, and, in one of the best arguments against Jack Murdock, Matt points out how Jack is an idiot who "chose his ego over a lifetime with his son". And, yeah, Jack shows how inflexible that pride and code of his is, but it also did turn his kid into an orphan, a decision that's way worse than what Maggie did to Matt. Meanwhile, this whole internal conflict has made Matt to resolve that he doesn't want to let people suffer because of some bullshit code, and that he'll kill Fisk in their next encounter. We also get another brief confrontation with Ghost!Fisk in Matt's mind as he trains, where Fisk continues his mocking of Matt and how he's just trying to prove that he's better than his dad, only for Ghost!Fisk to get beaten up by Matt. A couple of very powerful scenes, I feel. 

Meanwhile, the B-cast gets... gets some things to do. Karen is intent on running away, but ends up talking to Sister Maggie instead while trying to tip off Daredevil that Kingpin knows about his secret identity. Maggie takes this opportunity to help build up her side of the story in that whole "I'm his mom and I am ashamed I kept it a secret" deal. Really felt like the way this particular plot point is introduced feels somewhat shoehorned in inelegantly, but the payoff is definitely pretty good.

Foggy, on the other hand, is pretty successful, with his campaign speech (bad ending notwithstanding) apparently being super popular, but he also finds out that his brother and parents are basically hostages held by Wilson Fisk, who, via Red Lion Bank and Felix Manning, basically did an intricate plan of fucking up Foggy's family, and then offering an illegal way out in order to get some dirt on them. 

The majority of the episode focuses on Nadeem, and it's at this point where he actually feels essential and not just a tangential, two-dimensional character. It's... it's about time, honestly, since we're four episodes before the end. We get the revelation that Nadeem's superior officer Hattley is actually working for Fisk, who shoots some other dude during Nadeem's talk and frames Nadeem for it, basically blackmailing Nadeem into working for Fisk. 

And it turns out that the conspiracy within the FBI is far deeper than we realize, with Hattley and an entire room of conspirators working for the Kingpin. Which... which is a plot twist that makes the somewhat ridiculous resources Fisk has had access to, as well as how freely he can enter that secret room, actually far more sensible than previously implied. It's a pretty awesome scene, and Nadeem's reactions as everything crumbles around him and he's basically gang-pressed into becoming one of Kingpin's minions is pretty well done, including how Dex is just freely wandering in his house. 

Hattley also reveals to Nadeem that, like Foggy, Kingpin's apparently been planning everything from a while back, apparently being the one behind Nadeem's sister-in-law's health bills being super-expensive, and driving Nadeem desperate for a promotion that he would be easily fooled into basically taking Fisk's case. Hattley's warning to Nadeem that she "used to have two children" is pretty damn chilling, too, really selling just how far Fisk is willing to go to collect his pawns. 

And, well, the final sequence is pretty neat as Kingpin's FBI minions start arresting random criminal bosses (between Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Daredevil, I'm genuinely confused just how many of these disposable minor crime bosses rule in New York -- although Rosaline Carbone showing up is a nice continuity touch) and showing that Kingpin can apparently just waltz out of his hotel prison freely. Kingpin basically wants 20% (later 25% after some now-dead punk mouths off) of the profits of what everyone is making. Also, he gets Nadeem to basically bring Daredevil into a trap. 

I'm not 100% sure what that scene with Matt meeting the random computer lady was supposed to be, but he finds out that Kingpin is sending a team to murder Karen, while at the same time Kingpin and Bullseye-devil is plannig to confront Matt. Overall, it's an episode with a fair amount of heavy revelations, and one that's pretty solid, if not super exciting.