Daredevil Born Again: Season Two

"This is your so-called retribution? It means nothing to me!"
What about grace?"

Grace. Retribution. Justice. What do any of those words mean when the system that is meant to dispense them has been corrupted and broken?

This review will contain spoilers for the entire season!

A lot of superhero media is inherently optimistic and even idealistic. While there’s always pushback against it, like in the Injustice stories or even the Synderverse in general, the virtues of hope and justice and the natural goodness of people are the cornerstone of most of the genre.

Sometimes, this is really uplifting. Sometimes, this just comes across as really naive and childish.

Yeah. We go the naive and childish route here. Which is frustrating, especially since there are characters that are articulating more nuanced viewpoints.

Let’s work backwards. Ironically enough, Bullseye is actually the person pushing justice. Or at least justice as defined as equality. It’s not quite “an eye for an eye,” but rather balancing the scales between the good and evil that you’ve done. He killed Foggy. Killing Vanessa would balance that out.

Of course, the world doesn’t work that way, but it was a ton of fun to watch Bullseye happily insist that he was “one of the good guys now.” He also got some of the best scenes all season, particularly the diner fight scene but also basically all of “The Grand Design.”

Again, I still haven’t seen the third season of the Netflix show, so I’m missing out on a lot of context, but I still really enjoyed the confrontation between him and Karen in “Requiem” as well. (I also might just like it when Karen goes a little feral. Maybe.)

It’s very in character for Matt that his offer to Bullseye, his one good deed that he has been searching for, is to save a life rather than to take one. And Bullseye takes him up on it. Sure, he goes back to trying to kill Fisk the very next episode, but he does achieve the justice that he was looking for.

Karen takes the Frank Castle approach: retribution. Sometimes, the system is simply broken and trying to force it to work only results in more people suffering. Sometimes, the only solution is a bullet. It’s a very seductive world view, especially when you’re dealing with someone like Fisk.

They’ve already thrown him in jail, and it didn’t work. Fisk has seemingly unlimited power as mayor. (No, seriously, how can he do even half of the things he does? I’m fairly certain that the mayor can’t set up his own court system to prosecute crimes that carry life sentences.) The police, the media, the judicial system… Fisk controls all of it. How could they ever trust the courts to actually be on their side?

Karen gets scolded by Matt a few times for expressing this, and it did get frustrating. Especially since Karen was lowkey the one doing a lot of the legwork to actually foment the resistance movement against Fisk. She was the one who gave BB the stolen information. She was the one who went to Kristen. She was the one who was actually out in public interacting with people.

And yes, I know. It is significantly easier for her to do that than for Matt. I know. But it was still frustrating how he completely shut down any attempts to talk about it.

Because Matt represents grace. He is Lawful Good. If they just put enough evidence that Fisk is a criminal in front of the authorities, then they will do the right thing and legally stop him. The system may be broken, but it will still work for you if you just try hard enough.

It’s a nice idea. Pretty, even. But it just feels so, so out of touch with reality when compared to Fisk’s actions. Matt is the protagonist, though, so he is ultimately proven right. The system comes through. Mercy is granted in circumstances where it really shouldn’t be.

And the plot low key falls apart because of it. It also, in retrospect, reinforces just how contorted certain plot points were in order to reach a specific end.

Fisk isn’t President. He isn’t even a governor. He is just a mayor. And while the mayor of New York City is powerful, he simply does not have the authority to do even a fraction of what he does. It kind of ruins some of the stakes when the threat that he is most worried about is the New York Governor revoking a charter for his freeport. Especially since it’s something that is super easy for her to do and that she can begin instantly.

The port has nothing to do with his role as mayor. Sure, he can no longer help the federal government smuggle guns and explosives into the country, but so what? And if he’s working with the federal government, then why is he so stressed? Even with Daredevil causing problems, I never understood why the port was the key to everything.

Then there was Fight Night. I really don’t understand the idea of Fisk having a charity boxing match with what seemed to be a legitimate boxer. It wasn’t solely a plan to trap Bullseye, because the whole thing was organized before he resurfaced.

It’s the kind of ridiculous premise that makes for fun TV and pretty scenes while also letting the writers do what they really want: kill Vanessa.

The fatal injury was very strikingly beautiful. Her white dress with a ribbon of red blood was vivid and gorgeous and exactly why you put a character in white to begin with. It was a good death for her too, getting hurt not only because of Fisk’s direct actions but also because she was there as his wife. She was there to be a public figure and support him.

I do wish that there was no pineapple involved, though. I’m not sure how much her pineapple allergy is implied to result in her actual death as opposed to the brain trauma, but there was no reason to introduce that confusion into it. I was already crying because of the strength of acting. Don’t knock me out of those emotions by making me think.

That sums up a lot of how I feel about this season. From a craft level, it was very well done. Everyone brought their A-game as actors. The fight scenes were great. The writing was just far too clumsy and let everything else down. It’s probably best encapsulated by the last episode.

On paper, there’s a lot that I love about the finale. I was glad to be back in the courtroom. Matt comes to life when he’s a lawyer, and it’s just fun to watch. Is it in any way realistic to how a courtroom actually works? No. Obviously not. But I’m willing to suspend my disbelief when it results in great scenes.

Matt revealing his identity as Daredevil and proving it in front of everyone? Great scene with great acting from everyone around, especially Deborah Ann Woll.

I love the idea of Team Daredevil and Team Fisk both being trapped in the courthouse as an angry mob grows outside. It’s a pressure cooker, and a great reason to actually force a confrontation that they can’t walk away from or avoid. The mob also, theoretically, acts as a hostile third party that is a danger to everyone, so it’s not just a stalemate. We have a dynamic situation here.

The execution is where it lost me.

There was no way that Matt would actually kill Fisk. I know that. That just isn’t who he is. I didn’t expect that to happen. But I had expected there to be actual consequences. And no, the argument that depriving Fisk of the city that he loves so much is punishment enough does not fly. Yes, Fisk has lost his city, his power, and his wife, but he is fundamentally free. After everything that he did, even if we exclude the fact that he murdered at least thirty people with his bare hands at the courthouse since you could argue self-defense there, letting him go was not justice.

It was grace, yes, and grace is critical at times, but not in this case. I don’t want to see a politician who abused his office, committed countless crimes, orchestrated horrific abuses under the AVTF, and - again - murdered countless people with his bare hands, make a deal with the government where he is not punished by the law.

It doesn’t help that the political parallels are more than a little blatant. It’s impossible to watch the AVTF grab people off the street with casual brutality, bring them to an undisclosed location where they are locked in literal cages, violate countless civil rights, and actively impede lawyers from talking to their clients without thinking about ICE.

Fisk is easy to view as a Trump figure, but the show muddied things and tried to play to both sides by having that mob, the righteous resistance that Karen, BB, and everyone else has been building all season, mimic and callback to January 6th. I mean, it’s hard to have a politically motivated group, dressed in red, storm a government building in order to prevent a coup and not expect people to make that connection. Especially not if you lean into it by having snippets of people live streaming from their phones and have it look similar to footage from the actual event.

And I don’t really know what to make of it. It’s not coherent, and I’m not sure if the writers are genuinely trying to hit the middle of the road and play to both sides or if there’s a larger commentary that just got lost in translation, but it hit an incredibly discordant note.

There is absolutely room for an exploration of how anger can transform a group and push them to violate the very rules and civil rights that they’re fighting for. That would have worked well with the overall discussion of grace, justice, and retribution. Especially since Karen has had such a heavy role in organizing everything and she is so firmly on the side of retribution.

But that wasn’t explored at all. It was just thrown into the episode, Fisk slaughtered a bunch of them, and then he was still allowed to cut a deal where he gets to sit on a beach all day.

I honestly would have preferred it if he was torn apart by the mob, killed by the citizens of the city that he loved. It would have been more satisfying. It wouldn’t have been justice either, absolutely not, but it would have felt closer to it than what we got. It would have been an actual, meaningful consequence for everything that he’s done over the last two seasons.

It’s a shame, because watching Fisk tear through those people like tissue paper was a lot of fun. The way that they kept cutting back and forth between him and Team Daredevil fighting their way through the hallway was great too. Angela was absolutely vicious in her attacks. I was glad to see her in action, even if it was only briefly.

I am okay with Matt being arrested. He did commit a lot of violent crimes as Daredevil. Even if his targets were criminals, his actions were still illegal. I hope that we get to spend at least a couple of episodes with him navigating prison next season. That has the potential to be a lot of fun. At the very least, I’m sure that we’ll get one good fight scene out of it where people try to kill Matt and he needs to defend himself.

A few things that I had been looking forward to didn’t happen. Frank is mentioned a few times, but he never appears. I know it’s because he was busy filming both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Punisher: One Last Kill, but I did miss him and there were a few times where it felt like he should be there.

I’ll be very curious as to why he completely disappeared and didn’t continue to fight back against the AVTF, especially given that they’re still using his skull symbol as a logo. At least every mention of him helped to feed my Frank/Karen shipper heart. (And if I’ve looked for fanfic about Karen using her one phone call to reach out to Frank and he broke her out of jail, well, that’s between me and my AO3 bookmarks.)

I was also looking forward to Daniel and Sheila’s continued battle for influence within the Fisk administration. Sheila got completely sidelined, though, and might as well have not even existed. Instead, we got a lot of Daniel and Buck, and they ended up being my favorite dynamic all season.

They both genuinely liked each other, even if Daniel was also scared of Buck and what he was capable of. Michael Gandolfini in general did some very strong work as Daniel, especially in “The Hateful Darkness.” I always do love it when a weasley character finds their inner, moral core that prompts them to act with bravery and conviction. I also appreciated that his relationship with BB always hovered in that quasi-platonic grey area.

I’ll miss him next season, and I didn’t expect that when the season began.

Buck in general might be my Most Improved Character for the season. He got to have an actual personality and be more than just a poor man’s James Wesley. There’s a cheekiness to him that was fun, and a degree of empathy that characters like him normally don’t have. It would have been too easy for him to not kill Daniel like it had been originally filmed, and I’m glad that the showrunner Dario Scardapane changed it in post-production so that Buck actually followed through.

His dynamic with Heather was also interesting. What’s a little sexually charged choking between acquaintances? I hope that Buck survives his gunshot wound and is out of prison next season if only so that we can continue to explore that. Because Heather is obviously going to be a big part of Season Three (which, yes, is confirmed for next year. God, I’ve missed yearly releases!)

Outside of her scenes with Buck, Heather didn’t really work for me. She’s understandably deeply traumatized following her encounter with Muse, but she’s eagerly lying on the stand and falsifying psychological reports in order to support Fisk’s agenda. It felt like a very large jump compared to how she was last season.

She also fell into one of the unofficial Billie’s Rules of Television: Never be a therapist in a superhero universe, because you will go crazy and become a supervillain instead.

Which could be fun. I have no feelings either way towards Lady Muse as a comic character, but I am intrigued by how they’re playing with the mask revealing someone’s true face as opposed to hiding it.

I’m also curious to see how they integrate Jessica Jones and Luke Cage into the mix. Yes, they are back! Well, okay, Luke was only there for literally three seconds at the very end, but he and Jessica are together! And they have a daughter! And they’re back at Alias Investigations!

Jessica had a larger role, and I did miss her and her snark. Her dynamic with Matt is just a joy to watch. Krysten Ritter hasn’t missed a step. The fact that her powers occasionally disappear on her wasn’t really utilized at all, but it’s a wrinkle that can be explored more later down the line.

On the other hand, I would be very okay if we never see Mr. Charles again. I usually like Matthew Lillard in stuff, but he completely missed the mark for me here. Despite being introduced in a rather sinister way, he spent the rest of the season as a buffoon. His childish “I can disregard social conventions because I’m just that powerful” shtick never worked because he was continuously shown up by Fisk. I never once bought him as a threat. At all.

I don’t really have a wishlist for Season Three. It’s mostly just hopes that are tied into the greater MCU. Like how I hope that the Punisher special will give a satisfying explanation for why he was gone. Or how I hope that Matt actually stays in prison and isn’t broken out in Brand New Day.

Maybe the best thing that I can say is this: I hope that Danny Rand, because it is inevitable that he will show up too at this point, will get much, much better writing than he did on Netflix.

Random Thoughts

The music throughout the season was so pretty. I loved it whenever it got orchestral during the fight scenes.

The use of color can occasionally be wildly aggressive, but I do smile whenever Bullseye gets bathed in blue or Matt is surrounded by red.

When Daniel and Buck took a drive up state, all I could think about was The Sopranos.

The BB Reports were a fun representation of propaganda.

Favorte Episode: "The Hateful Darkness"

Least Favorite Episode: "Requiem"

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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