Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 8: Isle of Joy
Oh yeah! After the two-parter focusing on the reactions of Daredevil and Kingpin towards Muse, "Isle of Joy" kicks off perhaps one of the most intense hours in this series.
We start off with another one of the 'Matt and Fisk's life parallel each other' sequences, with this time being an argument with their loved ones about keeping secrets. Matt and Heather get into a massive argument as Heather gets an invitation from the Mayor. Already angry at Matt for keeping secrets from her, and also more than a little bit shaken after being taken hostage by Muse, Heather gets into a spat with Matt about how evil all vigilantes are -- a conclusion that isn't too far-fetched considering what she's been through. Ultimately Matt can't really communicate why he's so frustrated at Heather's views on Daredevil, and why he distrusts Mayor Wilson Fisk so much. Meanwhile, Matt gets really riled up by the Kingpin keeping tabs on him so much that he knows that Heather is living with him... something that Matt thinks is because Kingpin is out to get him. Which isn't unreasonable for both Daredevil and the omniscient audience, but not to Heather.
Meanwhile, Kingpin finally decides to be honest to Vanessa about one thing -- Adam. Wilson brings Vanessa to Adam in his creepy torture basement, finally being honest to what he did with Vanessa's ex-lover. After a brief moment of horror, Vanessa just pulls out a handgun, executes Adam, and this ends up being the most twisted version of therapy for our two villains.
There is something to be said about how we're in the home stretch and I don't quite have a huge amount of attachment towards a lot of the cast members introduced in this show. Kirsten, BB Urich, Fisk's mayoral team and especially Cherry have really failed to live up to my expectations and grow out their shells as the tropes and roles they were introduced under. Heather gets a fair bit more thanks to the sheer amount of screentime, but I really do wish that they made her a bit less of an accessory to Matt and the Fisks. But no one gets hit by this harder than Adam, who truly just feels like a plot device. I wonder if there was something that was lost during the reshootings, but I really did want to learn more about Vanessa and Adam's affair. Perhaps the point was that it didn't matter, and the idea of a betrayal was what the Fisks needed to sort out, but while the performances from our stars are great, it does still feel a bit off, like I missed an episode or something.
With that done, though, Matt goes through more shakeups in his worldviews as Fisk continues to get the credit for capturing Muse -- not just in public but in private -- but he's also saddled with complete and utter assholes as clients, and it's really hard for him to think that the law system is just. Which, in real life, it really isn't. One thing that sends him teetering over the edge is that Benjamin "Bullseye" Poindexter is moved to gen-pop, an alleged 'death sentence' for him. Matt was initially glad about it... but then Bullseye asks to meet Matt, wanting Matt to represent his best friend's killer.
There's also a neat scene with Defenders recurring character Josie the bartender, as she and Matt reminisce about better times that are gone... leading to Matt realizing certain things about the first episode that are nice foreshadowing for this one. That Foggy knew he was going to win -- based on both his behaviour and words. And Bullseye attacking Josie's bar wasn't a random crime, or even an attack on Matt's friends and family (the intuitive theories are that Kingpin hired Bullseye; Bullseye was hunting Karen; or that Bullseye found out Daredevil's secret identity between seasons) but was actually there specifically for Foggy. That someone ordered the hit on Foggy Nelson, and Matt, in his utter grief, never really bothered or had the energy to confront that piece of information.
That meeting in the prison is quite tense and amazingly done, with Bullseye playing on Matt's "good guy lawyer" side, viewing him (perhaps not unfairly) as the pushover that will sabotage himself just to save a villain. And Matt is that -- as we see both in this episode and the next -- but not without good cause. And the fact that Bullseye was directly responsible for snuffing out Foggy's life? Even with the tantalizing promise that Bullseye will reveal 'more information', Matt lets his emotions get to him, bashes Bullseye's head onto the prison room desk, and walks out with the claim that the unstable madman did it himself.
This outburst ends up actually giving Bullseye the means to free himself, as one of his teeth is knocked loose, and we get a creepy scene of him killing his way out of the prison to get vengeance against his ex-employers that put him into gen pop to silence him.
This ultimately leads to the climax of this scene -- Fisk's huge party. With no one realizing that Bullseye is loose, the party gives us a nice little buildup of all the other minor characters. Daniel Blake still thinks that he's managed a quid pro quo working relationship with BB Urich (whose whole defining characteristic is that she hates being silenced), only for BB to go around making allies with Commissioner Gallo. Gallo also gets horrified by the brutal actions of the Task Force, seeing a random reporter get his hand shoved into boiling oil by everyone's favourite psycho cop, Powell.
Heather continues to pout, and has a brief conversation with Vanessa... until Matt actually shows up in the party. Matt has a lot more on his mind than his bland relationship and attention problems, though as his super-senses allow him to overhear the discussion as Fisk begins to pull off his badass Kingpin deal with the elites that disrespected him before. There is something cathartic in seeing the less-notable rich assholes being bullied, but when Jack Duquesne -- a.k.a. the vigilante Swordsman -- gets to be Kingpin's next target, the audience gets someone we theoretically care more about. Duquesne has admittedly been lacking a lot of focus in both Hawkeye and especially Born Again... I really do wonder if that Yusuf Khan episode, as much as I loved it, would've been much better served as a Swordsman guest star episode?
But anyway, as Heather and Matt argue about their relationship -- a sequence that would've perhaps been exciting in any other circumstance -- Matt is far more concerned about confronting Fisk. A combination of realizing Wilson is up to his Kingpin shenanigans, his recent confrontation with Bullseye, and him getting into conflict with everyone else in his life has left Matt vulnerable and it really does feel like he's going to throw hands with Wilson... until at the last critical moment, he realizes that he got the wrong Fisk -- it is Vanessa, not Wilson, that ordered the hit on Foggy.
(Which, by the way, makes sense based on the timing -- Wilson would be busy doing the things he did in Echo and Hawkeye; Wilson passed Matt's lie-detector sense in episode 1; and Vanessa is shown in the past couple of episodes to be as ruthless as Wilson).
This leads to the classy, fun conclusion of the episode as we get into a whole dance sequence, as Matt Murdock cuts in the dance between the Fisks. We really don't know what Matt, Wilson or Vanessa would do, and that's without throwing in Bullseye into the mix, who gets ready for a sniper shot. And as Bullseye opens fire, Matt realizes what's going on, jumps in the way of Bullseye's shot and takes the blow meant for Wilson Fisk. As Matt's red blood splatters over Wilson's white suit, this adds a whole other layer of complexity between the two men's relationship, as well as to Matt/Daredevil's views on what really counts as 'justice'.
Again, there have been some things -- mostly regarding secondary characters and the lack of buildup -- in Daredevil: Born Again that didn't work perfectly for me. But for some of them, particularly handling Matt, Wilson, Vanessa and even Bullseye? Great stuff as we barrel to the conclusion of the first season of Daredevil: Born Again.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- This is not the first time Matt had to go into a prison to meet one of his nemeses near the end of a season; he did the same thing with Kingpin in season two of Daredevil -- though the difference is that this time, it's Matt that's losing control of his emotions instead of the villain.
- BB's uncle Ben Urich was killed by Kingpin in Daredevil season 1, and we get the revelation that BB knew about this buried case all season long.
- Bullseye in the comics does have a tooth hole, and him using a loose tooth as a projectile to escape from prison is based on a similar scene from Bullseye: Greatest Hits.
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