Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again episode 8!
This week’s Daredevil: Born Again is easily the most intense and exciting of the first season. Seeds planted back in the premiere finally sprout in the penultimate episode, and now it’s time for Matt Murdock to do some reaping. More than anything, this chapter brilliantly demonstrates why the hero/villain dynamic between Daredevil and Kingpin is one of the best comic books have to offer.
Murdock crashing Mayor Fisk’s party is one of the boldest moves I’ve seen Marvel take in some time – not since Agatha Harkness revealed herself to Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision have I been on pins and needles like I was during this sequence. Fisk continues to amass power in front of our very eyes as a vengeful Murdock circles like a shark, waiting to make his move. I almost jumped out of my chair when Murdock cut in on Fisk and Vanessa’s dance, sweeping her away and confronting her for arranging the hit on Foggy Nelson. The rivalry between Murdock and Fisk has been building up all season while they’ve kept tabs on each other from afar, which makes it tortuously tense finally having them in the same room together.
Putting Bullseye back in play is like giving the show a big injection of adrenaline straight to the heart. Between Murdock’s brutal interrogation of Bullseye, Bullseye’s ridiculous-yet-awesome tooth-spitting escape, and Bullseye’s infiltration of the gala, this episode treats us to one great scene after another. Forcing Murdock to contend with the immediate danger of Bullseye while trying to stop the much larger threat of Fisk’s plan is, simply put, peak Daredevil.
Throughout the season, the whole subplot involving Vanessa’s affair with Adam hasn’t exactly been the most compelling. At least this episode brings it to its inevitable, bloody end. If we had gotten to know Adam better throughout the season or learned more about what happened between him and Vanessa, I might have cared about his fate. Perhaps the whole storyline is less about Adam and more about the rift he created between our villainous husband and wife. Now that the Fisks have reconciled, they are stronger than ever and make for quite the formidable power couple. At the black-and-white gala, it’s rather sinister for Vanessa to make her grand entrance wearing a blood-red gown.
Everything comes to a chaotic conclusion when Murdock does the unthinkable and takes a bullet for Fisk. Now I’ve seen everything! It adds a weighty new dimension to their already complex dynamic, considering how Fisk now owes his life to his archnemesis. The way this show plays Murdock and Fisk’s public-facing personas against each other is absolutely fantastic, and now we’ve reached the point where all of the different aspects of their lives have become twisted together into a tightly bound knot. It’s got me eagerly anticipating the season finale to see how it all shakes out.
Other Thoughts
- I find it extremely bizarre that Murdock didn’t look deeper into Bullseye’s motivation for murdering Foggy until now. It makes total sense, however, when you consider how the first episode and episodes eight and nine are reportedly from the new creative team that overhauled the entire show. Better late than never, I suppose.
