Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 6: Excessive Force
With the rather odd distraction that was the fifth episode, "Excessive Force" brings us back to the central storyline that drives this first season of Daredevil: Born Again. The parallels continue as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk are both facing off against the same threat to the city -- a serial killer called Muse, responsible for the Banksky-esque street art that various shots showing New York have made a point to showcase. As the previous episode's gruesome final scene highlights, in true comic-book villain fashion, Muse has been secretly killing people and draining their blood to use for the paint in his artwork. There's a slight question about realism on how, exactly, blood causes the paint to be unwashable, but it does leave a higher sense of urgency for Fisk's reign beyond just disparaging street art. It's a really nice way to highlight that Muse's presence has actually been in the show since the earliest episodes, without having Muse himself eat too much screentime and ruin his mystique.
It is interesting to bring in a character that is so unambiguously disturbed anda far simpler shade of 'pure evil' than Kingpin. Fisk's vision of an orderly rule over New York is threatened by Muse as much as it disgusts a heroic vigilante like Daredevil. Muse's morbid artwork is ratcheted up to another level whe two unfortunate women mistake him for a friendly street artist, and find themselves killed and mutilated.
This gets tied to the Hector Ayala plot from two episode ago, as Hector's niece Angela del Toro skips school, galvanized by her uncle's death, and tries to get the only adult she trusts to do anything to do something about Hector's investigation and legacy. Matt tries to talk Angela down, and this, again, plays onto Matt's unwillingness to don the devil horns. A disgusted Angela storms off, giving a rant about how she thought Matt was different, and that she had hoped that Matt was someone who cared about the little people -- like White Tiger or Daredevil. A later discussion with Matt's ex-police friend Cherry confirms the sheer depravity of Muse's killings, noting that he hasa bodycount of sixty... at the barest minimum.
As Matt struggles to process this information, realizing just how much his absence as Daredevil allowed monsters like Muse to roam around unpunished, poor Wilson Fisk continues to find it difficult to make full usage of his mayoral position. This time, it's not meetings and incompetent underlings, but rather the city's elite. We get an unexpected cameo by Jacques DuQuesne from Hawkeye (who also has a short cameo earlier in the episode's news segment as the vigilante Swordsman). The rich, elite folk, as Vanessa warned Wilson, aren't particularly interested in playing nice with Mayor Fisk. He is just a temporary mayor in their eyes, and what they want isn't to see how they can help the mayor, but to stoke their egos by having the mayor ask, nay, beg them for funds. With how confrontational Jacques and the other rich folk are, it's going to be interesting to see what Wilson's response is going to be.
He's far more motivated in dealing with the Muse situation, however, and Fisk decides to spin this into a power play. With the previously prickly relationship he had with the police chief, Mayor Fisk finally decides to sanction an Anti-Vigilante Task Force... which is essentially made up of all the 'undesirables' who will do whatever it takes. It's a legitimized version of the Valkyries from The Punisher, or like a gorup of Punishers themselves without Frank's moral code and the power that their position as policemen brings. Among them is our favourite asshole cop Powell, who serves as a nice barometer of the kid of people Fisk is recruiting here.
It is an interesting situation, really -- the inspirational speech that Fisk delivers to the violent cop squad is quite inspirational when taken out of context, but knowing what we do about Powell and his ilk, knowing how Fisk also emphasizes how he wants this task force to hunt down 'costumed individuals', and how even the police chief himself seems quite disturbed, is a nice showcase of our new antagonists.
Of course, the final act is a full-on superhero action scene. Angela del Toro, like most plucky young teenagers in a superhero universe, goes off to investigate on her own. She isn't in an episode of The Runaways, however, and instantly gets knocked out and kidnapped by Muse, the silent creep ready to inject poor Angela with his creepy machinery and drain her blood for the paintings. Around the same time, Hector's wife calls Matt for help. Realizing what must have happened, Matt is about to call the police... but with a glorious utterance of "fuck it", ends up going off on his own.
And finally, we have Matt Murdock dressed up in his full Daredevil regalia for the first time since the first episode. At the end of the day, after all of the soul-searching he's been through over the past couple of episodes, it's an innocent, good-hearted person being put in mortal danger that galvanizes the Devil of Hell's Kitchen to rise from his slumber.
As Muse lurks around with that excellently creepy mask of his, we get a badass showcase as Daredevil rappels in with his whip-batons, and we get a fight scene in Muse's creepy serial killer base next to the subway train tracks, all the while an unconscious Angela is being drained of her blood.
While this fight is going on, Daredevil: Born Again gives us another juxtaposition as we cut to another fight. Wilson Fisk confronts the man he has in a prison cell, Adam, and even tosses the poor, abused man an axe to even the odds. After several seasons of sub-par action scenes in other Disney+ projects, we get a rather excellent brutal fight as Daredevil fights Muse, while Kingpin fights Adam -- cutting back and forth with some really good cuts and tense music.
The fight ends exactly how you expect. Adam never stood a chance against Kingpin, who brutalizes him, yells that 'Vanessa is [his]' and chucks him back into the cell. Daredevil manages to overpower Muse (who honestly posed more of a physical threat to Daredevil than I thought) but ends up having to make the choice to rescue the hostage. Daredevil of course saves Angela, but at the cost of letting Muse slink away during the time that Matt takes to remove Angela from the nightmare-deathtrap.
And more importantly, as a nice follow-up to the closing scenes of episode four, this really is the moment where Daredevil and Kingpin is, to borrow the show's title, 'born again'. Matt tried to work within the system and ignore all the injustices, trying to pretend that he could do better as a lawyer instead of a vigilante, and finally has to return to becoming the Daredevil once more. And Mayor Fisk also tried to work within the system, but all the pent-up rage finally explodes and he shows that despite the earlier scene in this episode with the broken suit implying that he's let himself go and be domesticated by choirs and rich people, the Kingpin is still as dangerous as he was before.
Very nice, simple episode, and the introduction of Muse is a nice little bit of grisliness into the show that helps to give us a bit of a mini-arc before the inevitable final confrontation between Daredevil and Kingpin.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Muse is an enemy that menaced Daredevil in the 2016 comic run, with much of the same backstory and modus operandi adapted to this TV show -- a serial killer making artwork out of the blood of his victims. A major difference is that comics!Muse is an Inhuman instead of a human.
- Jack Duquesne, a.k.a. Swordman, returns after last appearing as a supporting character in Hawkeye's first season.
- Heather brings up the times that Matt has represented vigilantes in the past, specifically Punisher in season 2 of Neftlix's Daredevil.
- Johnny Santini, the sanitation worker, is actually one of the hostages in the bank robbery in episode 5.
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