Daredevil S03E12 Review: Ace Attorney

Marvel's Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 12: One Last Shot

A pretty fun penultimate episode for Daredevil's third season. A very valid complaint that I have for this season that I haven't had the chance to address in my reviews of the previous episodes is how much Vanessa Marianna ends up shaping the Kingpin's decisions and motivations... but at the same time, how little she shows up in this season. Honestly, it got to a point where I was wondering if they couldn't actually get the actress to reprise her role or something. But she shows up this episode, finally reunited with Fisk... and I was kind of dreading that she basically ends up being a plot device character, sort of there just to be Fisk's motivation.

Thankfully, the funk that Vanessa is in for a good chunk of the episode wasn't because she's intimidated by the return to criminal life or anything, but because she isn't actually fully let into the finer workings of Fisk's operations. It's a far more interesting direction to take Vanessa in, especially when the show's trying to sell us this idea of Fisk and Vanessa as this perfect, if utterly flawed, pair. It's not the most well-told of stories since it sort of tries to do way too much character development in half an episode, but the scenes we get are powerfully acted. Especially the last set of scenes, where Vanessa notes that she isn't just another art piece to be collected and admired, she wants to live in it. Fisk ends up letting her sit in the chair and orders his men to speak plainly in front of her, and Vanessa ends up giving the idea -- and the order -- to eliminate Nadeem entirely.

Meanwhile, Bullseye is feeling pretty jealous and neglected, especially when Fisk clearly doesn't want to discuss any of this shit in front of him, and basically pulls a "you have disappointed me" segment. And considering just how much Dex has built Fisk up to be his personal compass and the almost god-like being he has to please, this ends up with him apparently going off-screen and murdering that poor old lady to get back the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting, something that Dex does on his own incentive to get back into Fisk -- and now Vanessa's -- good graces. Vanessa is smart enough to realize the bloodstains on the frame of the painting, and Fisk isn't particularly pleased that Dex killed someone he spared. 

Speaking of the Kingpin's henchman, this episode features a surprisingly grateful Kingpin dealing with Felix Manning. Felix, clearly scared shitless that Kingpin will pull the same "punch his minions to death" bit that he did last episode, informs Fisk of their continued failures to eliminate Daredevil... but in gratitude for Felix protecting Vanessa when he couldn't, Fisk allows Felix to keep the job.

That's all the Kingpin part of the episode, which was... handled reasonably well. Meanwhile, the body of the episode actually has significant focus on Daredevil, Karen, Foggy and Nadeem, who hides out in officer Mahoney's house. We get some genuinely well-deserved talking down of Nadeem from his wife. Sure, Seema might not be anything but a one-dimensional morality check for Nadeem, but she's actually acted fairly well, especially that line about how she was terrified shitless in the bathtub waiting for the gunmen to come.

With Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys At Law(tm) back on track, though, Foggy basically uses his election post as a bargaining chip to get the current DA, Blake Tower, to listen to Ray Nadeem's testimony. This is actually a pretty clever bit by Foggy since Fisk is putting pressure on his family to force him to drop out anyway, and while I haven't been the most invested in Foggy's part of the story, this part is reasonably well-crafted.

Meanwhile, Nadeem continues to be told how shit his decisions are, this time by Matt, who shouts at him in their makeshift base. Partially in preparation to how Nadeem's going to answer to Blake Tower's questions, but partly because... Nadeem kinda deserves it. After some guilt-slinging, Nadeem finally realizes that everything happened because he "took the damn bait" and wanted to be responsible for the FBI catch of the year, never realizing that he was being strung all along and not really caring when Foggy or Karen told him about Fisk's plans.

The conversation with Tower also goes in a surprisingly realistic way, because while Tower is happy to arrange some hearing or whatever to take down Fisk with Nadeem's testimony, we get the fact that Tower refuses to give Nadeem full immunity. Something that, by the way, Nadeem doesn't deserve, and thank god that the show actually agrees with this. As much as Foggy and Matt tries to argue against Tower, Nadeem acknowledges that, yes, he has to serve time for his crimes. It came from the best intentions, and he was trying to protect his family, but at the end of the day, Nadeem did basically stand aside while Fisk's monsters did their work. It's a pretty neat scene, honestly, and I think the final deal ended up being Nadeem being jailed for five years.

Meanwhile, as all of this goes on and Matt and Foggy are having good vibes at maybe reforming their lawyer firm, Karen goes through the Luke Cage disguise kit and uses a hoodie to basically make herself invisible from the public, hunting down Ellison and basically arranging a press conference to reveal Nadeem's confession and Poindexter's role as a Daredevil impostor.

We then get a pretty fun action scene! Matt brings Nadeem to the courthouse through a decoy van, but it quickly comes under fire. I'm not sure how Matt's no-kill rule applies when he instructs where Nadeem has to shoot with his super-senses, but I guess it's sorta-implied that Matt is getting Nadeem to shoot them non-lethally? There's some really impressive and fun action scenes of Daredevil using his senses to basically tell where the incoming gunmen are, and when they have to move and when they have to stop. Doing this in a civilian suit, and alternating between pretending to be a confused blind man and whacking people with his walking stick is a pretty fun set of sequences.

Ultimately, the duo make it to the courthouse, meet up with Foggy, Mahoney and Karen... but after the trial or hearing or whatever, Matt gets the chilling realization that the jury has been threatened by Fisk's people, who knows all of the addresses and names of the jury members. Because that's how the Kingpin rolls. And it's at this point where all their plan falls apart. Karen and Nadeem are both quickly discredited, and Foggy's speeches about how the "system will work" honestly ends up feeling pretty damn unrealistic. Hell, it's been pretty unrealistic since the get-go considering how, y'know, Kingpin has been able to control so much ever since he was thrown in jail, I was never really convinced that this was anything but a bad plan.

And after that little cutaway to the Vanessa/Kingpin scene, we get Nadeem punching Foggy in the face, returning to his house and seemingly record a last message to his son... before Poindexter is sent to eliminate Nadeem. We get a nice little last scene between these two former co-workers and friends, and it's a badass little act of defiance as Nadeem refuses to be herded into his house by Dex. That last conversation is bittersweet as Nadeem ends up getting shot in the head. It's a pretty tragic end, made even worse by the fact that Nadeem's efforts seem to have gone to waste in this episode. I've admittedly not been the biggest fan of Nadeem until maybe these last two episodes, but that's definitely a pretty great way for the Agent Nadeem storyline to be resolved. Overall, while far from perfect, and while the show never really sold me that Foggy's pretty naive plan was ever going to work... it's still a pretty great sequence of events, I feel.