‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Episodes Five and Six Recap: “With Interest/Excessive Force”

*Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for episodes five and six of Daredevil: Born Again*

I now understand why Marvel decided to release episodes five and six of Daredevil: Born Again at the same time. Not that they communicate with each other or begin a massive story arc. It’s because one of them is far below everything that came before, while the other is the show’s best episode yet. They wanted the discussion to move on from that middling episode five, which tonally feels like it belonged in a different show (and it did, as it was shot pre-creative overhaul), relatively quickly. Even if showrunner Dario Scardapane has, so far, been doing a great job in stitching together what was previously shot by past showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord and making each “story of the week” feel like proper episodic television, which feels like a first for Marvel Studios, episode five of Daredevil: Born Again feels like it doesn’t belong with any of the moving pieces the show developed so far, with large connections to the MCU being its only significant point of interest.

That connection involves Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) going to the bank to take out a loan to expand his law firm with Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James). At the desk, he is served by none other than Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur), father of Kamala Khan, also known as Ms. Marvel. To be fair, this connection works and likely sets up a future team-up between Daredevil and Iman Vellani’s Kamala. Whether or not it will be in Born Again (it may be too violent for the character to pop up, but who knows!) remains to be seen. However, Yusuf’s dinner invitation definitely positions a future scene where the two will interact, eventually leading up to a payoff of sorts in another season or title entirely.

The beauty about Daredevil is how malleable of a character he is – Cox recently appeared in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which is so far removed from the gritty realism of Born Again and is a cartoon. Of course, one can’t forget his return to the suit in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. He’s one of the few characters who can undoubtedly work with the lighter tone of several MCU titles and return to his hyperviolent series with little to no issues. Maybe that’s what this filler episode served to demonstrate: a primer for more MCU veterans to pop up in the series naturally and for fans to expect more surprises beyond the Netflix characters since Marvel Studios now has a brand-new array of people for the character to interact within the universe, which wasn’t allowed for the Netflix series, beyond vague references to events that occurred in the movies.

After this long interaction with the two characters, who team up to foil a group of bank robbers wanting to break into the vault to steal a precious diamond, it becomes unsurprising that, in the next episode, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton) pops up, and even gets a deeper Swordsman tease than in Hawkeye. It does make greater sense for this character to appear in Daredevil than Yusuf Khan, but the possibilities of the MCU are now limitless. Even then, the fifth episode is a bit of a mixed bag. The impact of the bank robbery has little to do with what previous episodes were building towards, and it feels so at odds with the tone that Scardapane introduced in the first episode. Yes, it’s fun to see Murdock team up with a totally unexpected character (and even fool one of the criminals with his best imitation of an Irish accent, the episode’s funniest moment), but did we genuinely need it in the grand scheme of the series? Not really.

It feels more in line with a special presentation than an active episode of television, even a filler. There’s good filler and bad filler; this is, unfortunately, a case of the latter, even if it brings Matt closer to the Daredevil mantle than ever before. He could’ve walked away and let the police handle the robbery, but he chose to put himself in harm’s way to save as many innocent people as possible. Each robber wearing the colors of the Infinity Stones as their mask was a nice touch, which obviously leads to Murdock wearing the red one to beat the living crap out of the criminals. There’s still some fight left in him, and this signifier tells us that he will absolutely (finally) return to the suit in the next episode. 

For a while, Matt believed in legal “justice” more than his own and let the system exact justice to criminals. However, a small pocket of police officers are now in the hands of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), leading him to create the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, where they will report directly to the Mayor and use repressive methods to get rid of masked figures within New York without bodycam. During the sixth episode, Matt does not know of this yet but is informed by Cherry (Clark Johnson) that a serial killer is on the loose and has so far murdered over 60 victims that they know of and is drawing murals on the streets with their blood. That’s right, it’s none other than Muse, and for a while, Matt heeds Cherry’s advice to “sit this one out” and let the police do their jobs.

But how has that worked out for them? They weren’t able to realize that Muse has been painting art with blood – the sanitation department found out when they could not remove the drawings from the walls. That is why, when Angela del Toro (Camila Rodriguez) takes matters into her own hands and decides to investigate what her uncle Hector (Kamar de los Reyes) has been up to, Matt feels more and more compelled to return and do what’s right. Angela doesn’t have Hector’s powers (yet) and gets kidnapped by Muse fairly quickly. The “artist” slowly draws her blood to use for his murals, which prompts Matt into action for the first time since Foggy Nelson’s (Elden Henson) death. 

When Matt receives information that Angela has gone missing, he first calls the police to report the abduction. Even if his catholic guilt inches him closer to sin and to return to the streets as Daredevil, he feels reluctant in even stepping out of the shadows again, with Foggy’s shadow still hitting him like a ton of a thousand bricks. But after he contemplates for a second, Matt says, “Fuck it,” and suits up again. No questions asked. Nothing to lose anymore. Fuck it. For those patiently waiting for the Devil’s return, one had to understand that Matt would not going to magically suit up again in the wake of such a soul-crushing loss and managed to keep away from the mantel for so long. There must be an emotional anchor for him to finally say that “fuck it” and decide to take down Muse through other means than the legal way, after everything he has done. 

That’s why, when he does find the villain and duke out, it’s so much more impactful than having him simply suit up in the third or fourth episode, “just because”. We saw him inch closer to the world of vigilantism again, just like Fisk is slowly crawlingf back to the world of criminality. That’s also why episode director David Boyd parallels cut to Daredevil vs. Muse to Fisk vs. Adam (Lou Taylor Pucci), whom he offers a chance for freedom if he successfully defeats Wilson, giving him an axe to help him out. Obviously, we know that it’s a futile effort, and Fisk absolutely pummels Adam to near-death, ensuring he’ll never get out of his cage and that Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) will always be his to keep.

As for Murdock, time will tell how this will impact him psychologically, but his ultimate confrontation with Fisk is definitely not going to be for the faint of heart…

The fifth and sixth episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now available to stream on Disney+.