Maxance Vincent
*Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for episode eight of Daredevil: Born Again.*
Out with the old, in with the new.
With the eighth episode of Daredevil: Born Again, titled “Isle of Joy,” we no longer have to rely on previously shot footage under the supervision of showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord, with Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, and David Boyd in the director’s chair. While these episodes weren’t terrible, they certainly didn’t feel like the Daredevil we knew and loved, especially with too-frequent, haphazardly edited action and character arcs that weren’t on the same morally and psychologically active level as the Netflix series.
The evolution Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) undertake as they try to leave their past lives behind, but end up crawling back to them, was the most interesting aspect of episodes two to seven. However, when one watches a fight scene, notably the Muse (Hunter Doohan) fight in episode seven, one realizes that the previous showrunners didn’t understand the character of Daredevil at the level that directors Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, and current showrunner Dario Scardapane do. Even better, the trio also knows exactly why the character portrayed by Cox was so iconic in the original series, as they now prime Matt Murdock on a journey sending him back straight to Hell.
Credit where credit is due, Scardapane does manage to tie up most of the loose ends that the pre-overhaul footage had, notably in paying off the arcs of BB Urich (Genneya Walton), Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini), Commissioner Gallo (Michael Gaston), and further developing Matt’s relationship with Cherry (Clark Johnson), Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) and Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva). First, however, he makes Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) commit the unthinkable by discovering what happened to Adam (Lou Taylor Pucci). In the first episode, Wilson tells her that he learned about Adam. At this point in the show, no one knows who he is, or what his place in the story entails.
At that point, she replied, “Do not kill him,” to which Wilson promises he will not do it, saying, “I’m not that man anymore.” While he is badly injured from their fight in the sixth episode, Wilson kept his promise, and Adam is still alive, locked up in a cage, promising to say nothing if he is freed. While the writing confirms that the two were in on Luca’s (Patrick Murney) hit in the last episode, Vanessa was completely unaware of Adam’s whereabouts, which puts her in a rather precarious position. Wilson is essentially forcing her to do the dirty work herself, and, thinking she has no other choice but to listen to her husband, kills Adam point blank. That’s the weakest narrative thread of the show satisfactorily resolved.
I never really cared about that arc, as it never seemed like it had any importance in the development of the characters, even in the “couples therapy” conversations, up until Vanessa reaches a point of no return and resolves this matter herself. However, it won’t be the only one she will reach in this episode, with the highly anticipated return of Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), now moved at the request of Fisk from solitary confinement to the general population, essentially ensuring that he will get killed in prison, leaving no traces of Foggy Nelson’s (Elden Henson) death behind.
Because of this, Dex reaches out to Matt to help him out, but he does not want to do so in the wake of him killing his best friend. However, after paying a visit to Josie (Susan Varon), who has not reopened her bar since that fateful night, he realizes that Foggy was celebrating his case win early, and someone might have paid Bullseye to silence him. Of course, he immediately suspects Fisk, but Matt is unaware that the Kingpin was away to take care of Maya Lopez during the events of Echo and that Vanessa was running his criminal empire at the time. This ultimately leads him to show up at Rikers Island, where Dex does not tell Matt of his involvement, going so far as to torment him psychologically that he violently lashes out and bangs his head on the table, loosening his teeth, and accidentally setting him up for escape in the process.
As Bullseye is getting stitched out, he pulls a loose tooth from his tongue and uses it as a weapon to kill one of the security guards (I shouted the biggest HELL YEAH!!! in front of my television when that happened) and eliminate the rest with scissors used as throwing knives. In one thirty-second scene, Benson and Moorhead nail the characterization of Bullseye straight from the comics, going so far as to visualize his internal perspective through striking hues of blue that fill the frame each time the camera represents his mind. Small visual choices like these go a long way in imbuing each image with intense meaning, particularly during its climax, where pronounced shadows, color, and aspect ratio changes stimulate our senses and make us think broader than what’s being directly shown.
Stuff like this is usually outlawed in the listless, by-committee “image”-making of Marvel’s visual development (contrast the color schemes of this episode with how unimaginatively dull Deadpool & Wolverine or Captain America: Brave New World looks), preferring synthetic frames over something with a modicum of personality. See how far it gets you when you let your filmmakers cook and be in control of the visual language – the images have significance and authorship. As challenging as joining the project after a massive creative overhaul may be, Benson & Moorhead prove they are more than up to the task in revitalizing the visual style of Daredevil in a way that feels far removed from the Netflix series, while remembering that its photography was always full of symbolism, either direct or indirect.
To date, Benson & Moorhead are the only ones actively playing with light, form, and colors, whilst the show’s other directors shot the episodes in a relatively standard but unimaginative light. There needs to be some comic expressivity in its images, though in small doses. Otherwise, it would detract from the story at hand. That’s why they only use these shifts in form to represent a pivotal turn in the story, notably after a drawn-out Black Tie ball, where all the narrative threads from the pre-overhaul coalesce compellingly and ensure Scardapane will not be beholden to them for episodes nine and beyond.
In that almost thirty-minute-long sequence, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton) is unmasked by Fisk as the Swordsman and blackmails him into financing part of his Red Hook revitalization project, or else he will turn him over to the Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Speaking of Gallo, he now fully sees the extent of corruption within Fisk’s Task Force, as Officer Powell (Hamish Allan-Hadley) abuses his power and goes beyond “the book,” defying the orders of his superior since he no longer reports to him. This puts Gallo in a rather uncomfortable position until he meets BB, who tells him she is very much interested in talking to him for a potential article.
It’s there that we realize that she is much smarter than her initial introduction posited her as, because she is fully aware of Fisk being the perpetrator of her uncle’s murder in the original Netflix series. She has a plan to take him down, which is why she’s being friendly with Daniel, who has recently been promoted to Deputy Mayor of Communications, to the disapproval of Sheila (Zabryna Guevara). That will probably be explored further in the second season, but it’s great to see a character with such agency and a meticulously developed plan that will hopefully come to fruition as Fisk’s power grows much darker than his superficial promise to keep New York safe by any means necessary.
Of course, Fisk and BB aren’t the only ones with a plan. After Matt learns that Wilson and Vanessa were Heather’s patients, he doesn’t know if he should attend Fisk’s party until it gives him the opportunity to get close to the mayor in an attempt to confront him about hiring Dex for Foggy’s death. It turns out he didn’t hire him at all, but it was Vanessa who enacted the plan as a way for Matt to give up the mantle of Daredevil and leave them alone. Parallely, when Wilson is about to tell Heather of Matt’s true identity, Bullseye shows up at the party (a callback to the wedding scene in Daredevil Season 3) and attempts to kill the Kingpin point blank.
However, and most surprisingly, Matt takes a bullet for him and collapses on the floor, with the last image of the episode turning red, thus sending him straight to Hell. I’ll admit I didn’t expect him to take a bullet for his worst enemy, but this is what he has to do to get answers on Foggy, which is something he didn’t think would recur a year after his passing. Could it mean they’re about to do what I think they will do in the finale? There’s only one way to find out…
The eighth episode of Daredevil: Born Again is now available to stream on Disney+.
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