For how long can a protagonist and an antagonist circle around each other before their spiraling conflict appears less like the steps to a final showdown and more like a dance without an end? When costumed do-gooder Daredevil (Charlie Cox) first met the villainous Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio, giving the best bad-guy performance in the MCU) in the first season of Netflix’s Daredevil ten years ago it seemed like viewers wouldn’t have to wait long to see who would be the victor, and who the vanquished. Now it seems like the foes are more likely to be defeated by old age than by each other.
Daredevil and Kingpin’s first encounter was explosive yet not rushed; Matt Murdock was a blind defense attorney protecting the innocent denizens of New York City by legal means during the day, then at night abandoning the law to dispense vigilante justice under the alias “the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.” At the start, Murdock didn’t have a costume or a long-term plan to be a superhero—his crimefighter guise sprang more from a compulsion for violence. Meanwhile, the Kingpin, born Wilson Fisk, also ignored the law when no one was looking, though his motives lacked even a veneer of decency and his compulsions were far more psychopathic. Season one ended with Murdock finally donning the red, horned costume familiar to comic fans and becoming Daredevil, and putting the Kingpin in prison (via legal means).
(Spoiler’s ahead…)
A lot has happened to the matched opponents since then: Daredevil took on a ninja cult, joined a team of other superheroes, and made appearances in the film Spider-Man: Far from Home and the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. Kingpin popped up in the series Hawkeye, where he was shot in the face by his criminal protege Echo (Alaqua Cox), then reappeared in Echo’s series hoping to make amends, then got run out of town.
But before Daredevil’s and Kingpin’s encounters with Avengers and Avenger-adjacent heroes, the two men had once again tried to destroy each other in the impressive Daredevil season 3, a lively adventure that saw Kingpin learning that Matt Murdock was the real name of his foe, then Daredevil meeting his mom for the first time, and finally the Kingpin setting loose the assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), a man so deadly he might as well be made of plutonium and fentanyl. The players confronted each other during, of all things, Kingpin’s marriage to Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), an elegant art dealer with a ruthless streak that matched her hubby’s. Viewers need to keep all of these events in the forefront of their memories, because the ongoing television series maintains its continuity and builds on earlier incidents with a consistency that would impress any of the writers who worked on the comics.
Now we arrive at season 4, aka Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+. In a turn that I would have once considered wildly improbable, convicted criminal and foe of police Wilson Fisk has become New York’s mayor, vowing to crack down on the crime wave he was once a part of, and in which he still continues to participate. Just as Fisk has remade himself, Matt is also seeking to be a new man, giving up his sideline as a costumed vigilante and focusing on helping New Yorkers one court case at a time. Taking a break from campaigning, Fisk meets up with his old chum Murdock, the guy he was trying to kill, and who sought to kill him, a few years previously. Both men are remarkably gracious and amiable with each other, leaving me to wonder if they experienced the same three brutal seasons of Daredevil from 2015 to 2018 that I had witnessed. Yes, these two men were once willing to plow through a whole city and numerous underlings to wrap their hands around each other’s throats, but they’ve both decided to shrug it all off and let bygones be bygones.
Matt doesn’t intend to be Daredevil ever again, a decision we know he’ll rethink when, on the night of Fisk’s election victory, we see him pause on the street where he is suddenly bathed in a red light. For his part, Fisk insists that he’s done being a gangster, though his wife has only just begun her life as a mob boss. New York has returned to its 80s levels of street crime and squalor, and the city now openly debates how it feels about masked vigilantes dishing out justice with their fists. Characters in the show mention a few of these freelance crimefighters: Daredevil, the White Tiger, “a man in a spider outfit,” and the Punisher, skipping over Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and Kate Bishop/Gen-Z Hawkeye, but maybe Marvel will reward the fanboys with some cameos in upcoming episodes.
It doesn’t take long to see that New York’s problems are more than a busload of costumed heroes could hope to fix. In addition to the corrupt mayor, there’s a serial killer who creates graffiti murals with human blood, and a cadre of violent cops who tattoo themselves with the Punisher’s insignia, apparently out of admiration for the vigilante though they seem to lack the Punisher’s determination to eradicate crime. Cops who adore the Punisher and adopt his iconography are in fact a real-world phenomena, and it’s surprising to see Disney finally addressing this problematic trend. As far as the Punisher himself, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), is concerned, both in the comics and in Born Again, such cops are a joke—“bullshit fanboys.” And presumably, that’s all they really are here. The implication is that certain cops are taking a cue from all the vigilantes and delivering justice without bothering whether it’s legal, but if that is the case, why don’t they venerate Daredevil as much as Punisher? And Spider-Man, for that matter, and even Swordsman (Tony Dalton) who returns from his appearance in Hawkeye)?
While Matt struggles with his decision to hang up the costume, he romances a beautiful therapist (Margarita Levieva), defends the White Tiger (a terrific Kamar de los Reyes) in court from the corrupt cops, foils a bank heist, tracks down the serial killer, and eventually finds himself at a Black and White Ball fundraiser thrown by Wilson and Vanessa Fisk. The criminal couple’s machinations come into focus for Matt on the dance floor (something about setting up Red Hook as a port free from any government oversight or regulation, and hence as an important/export site for any number of illicit things), and the season heads to its climax, with the city plunging into darkness, and Kingpin’s underlings picking sides in his duplicitous schemes. Frank Castle steps back in the ring and delivers his brand of retribution to the cops that wear his symbol. The end result feels like a return to an earlier point in the Netflix series: Matt commits to being a costumed crime fighter, Fisk makes life worse for New Yorkers and is likely to get away with it, and New York hangs in the balance. Daredevil has decided that being a vigilante is necessary at least sometimes, but not going as far as the Punisher, who kills anyone that gets in his way. That’s all well and good, but he’s been there before–why did he ever doubt this?
The Kingpin hasn’t really evolved either, aside from getting a little more skillful at hiding his murderous impulses. Contributing the the sense of series deja vu, Each time Kingpin has taken a loss in his war on the law and his red-clad nemesis, he has come back with more power and legitimacy, and the logical end of his cyclical battle with Daredevil is his ultimate victory, which would be a terrible end to this particular story (though it was a shockingly satisfying end to the Penguin miniseries).
Throughout its run, Daredevil has done a great job of getting us to care for peripheral characters before their lives are suddenly and violently ended, making Matt’s repeated quests to avenge innocent deaths all the more emotional and urgent. The series has also never resolved its hero’s ambivalence about the police and the courts dispensing justice, when self-proclaimed crimefighters can do a more effective job. Daredevil: Born Again returns to these familiar elements, with Matt once again wondering if he could serve New York better as a lawyer or a super-hero, and Fisk dreading the notion that the worst parts of himself are, in fact, the only parts of himself. It would have been exciting to see something new with this series, especially since the comic-book Daredevil has a million colorful enemies, but if we’ve returned yet again to Daredevil and Kingpin barreling towards each other on a several-episodes-long collision course, at least we get great performances, top-tier direction, fight choreography by the master Philip Silvera, and a comic book conflict played out in a city that feels real.
