Daredevil: Born Again S01E07 Review: Death of the Artist

Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 7: Art for Art's Sake

It does seem like we're picking up on the pacing with Daredevil: Born Again, as "Art for Art's Sake" picks up immediately where we left off with the Muse storyline from the previous episode. We start off with some wrap-up from the previous episode, like showing Angela being ferried to the hospital, while the Anti-Vigilante Task Force tries their best to investigate Muse's secret lair. 

While Matt (and the audience) are riding that adrenaline high after having Daredevil get an unambiguous victory, his morning moment with Heather Glenn ends up souring as Matt tries to handwave his injuries with "I fell down". Regardless of whether Heather has figured out Matt's double life or not, it's clear to the psychologist that Matt is bullshitting her and is hiding trauma. Later on, Cherry also gets on Matt's case for suiting up as Daredevil and beating up Muse, though I'm not quite as clear since Cherry has been sending Matt a lot of mixed signals on whether he approves of Matt's extracurricular activities. 

Meanwhile, Fisk learns about the potential return of Daredevil, and this troubles him a lot. Fisk confides to Buck Cashman about how Daredevil brought down an empire he's been building for years during their past encounter, and frames it in such a way that makes it sound like Daredevil's working out of the law and depriving a lot of honest workers of jobs. With us knowing that Cashman's probably in on the whole 'Fisk is an ex-criminal' thing, it's a bit weird to show this scene, other than perhaps to show us that Fisk genuinely believes these delusions? 

In any case, Fisk wants to make it his Anti-Vigilante Task Force's victory. When Detective Angie Kim shows up with evidence and data about Muse's real identity of Bastian Cooper -- a troubled rich kid who murdered his taekwondo teacher and disappeared -- Fisk orders the information to be classified and turned over to his Task Force. Daredevil does his own investigation, honing in on a group of sketches that Muse was apparently obsessing about... and realizes from touching the paintings that it resembles Heather Glenn. 

And we get perhaps one of the tensest scenes in the show, as mild-mannered Bastian Cooper show up at Dr. Heather Glenn's office, and starts talking about how he's such a big fan... until Heather realizes that Bastian is way more disturbed than your run-of-the-mill patient. For a character that's been silent throughout the majority of his screentime and relies mostly on his creepy mask, the build-up to Muse changing gears from talking about how his parents forced him to be someone he didn't want to be... when he wanted to be an artist, and Heather's horrified realization, are all done very well. Muse ends up very explosively attacking Heather, planning to use the doctor who inspired him to find his 'true self' as his magnum opus.

As a terrified Heather is being cut apart by Muse, Heather insults Muse's hiding of his identity behind a mask, causing Muse to lash out at her -- and buying time for Daredevil to come in and give us a badass fight scene. Again, it's quite tense and brutal, including a sequence where Matt straight-up shoots his batons through Muse. Ultimately, in an unexpected conclusion, it is Heather, in panic, who grabs onto a handgun and shoots Muse dead. 

Daredevil stabilizes Heather before leaving the scene before Kingpin's Task Force shows up. Despite Daredevil's influence, Kingpin demands that the Task Force take the credit for thwarting Muse, taking advantage of the confused situation and lack of witnesses to shape the narrative as he wishes. Honestly, a very typical action that many real-life politicians do, yeah? 

With the Muse threat over, and Fisk spinning it into a victory for him, we get a couple of short scenes. First is Matt comforting Heather, and Heather letting it slip that within all the confusion, she realizes that Daredevil called her by name. 

But we also have a bunch of other storylines going on the Fisk front. The less-interesting one is Daniel Blake confronting a very unapologetic BB Urich, and essentialy threatening her into reporting Fisk's version of events. BB Urich has been a rather underutilized character that does less than I thought she would when she first appeared in the show, and it's kind of telegraphed a bit that she's going to eventually turn the media against Fisk, yeah?

Speaking of Fisk's empire, there is a B-plot running through this episode of one of the Five Families, Luca, trying to talk to Vanessa Fisk and essentially asking for permission and/or help to take out the Kingpin. At the end of the episode, Vanessa appears to give Luca the location of where Kingpin will be alone... but it leads to a fun Godfather-style reverse ambush as Buck kills Luca the moment he arrives in the restaurant, while Wilson nonchalantly asks for food to take-away to Vanessa. The implication (wihch is confirmed by the next episode) is that it's all a trap done by the Fisks together, and Vanessa's discontentment with Wilson isn't enough to make her betray him. Yet. Maybe. 

Overall, though, the Muse stuff has been really thrilling. I do have to be honest and say that a lot of the new side characters really haven't been doing it for me -- BB, Daniel, Cherry, Heather, Kirsten -- are nowhere as interesting as the main players, nowhere to the degree that I was invested in the supporting cast of the Netflix seasons. But as we rocket into the final two episodes, enough has been set up to get me excited to see what the finale is going to be. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Muse's identity was never revealed in the comics, while this show's version of Muse is called Bastian Cooper, and we saw him as one of Heather's fans in the second episode.
• Eagle-eyed viewers also note that Heather wrote Muse's real name as 'Bastian Sledge' in her notepad. It implies that Bastian is related to two of the billionaires Fisk met with last episode, Arthur and Artemis Sledge.
• Upon learning that Daredevil is suspected to be back, Kingpin mentions that Daredevil dismantled his business a decade ago -- something that happened throughout the events of Daredevil's first season.