Daredevil: Born Again Recap: Blind Justice

Daredevil: Born Again is built on two inevitable regressions: Matt Murdock will always be Daredevil, and Wilson Fisk will always be Kingpin. People can change, and both of these men have — but they’ll still revert to the old way of doing things when the new way doesn’t work, or at least doesn’t feel as good.

Vanessa’s affair presents a sort of test for Fisk in this regard: Can he bear to let Adam get away with this, setting his pride aside and truly learning forgiveness for the first time? “Episode 4” goes deeper on the relationship issues that led to this point: Vanessa was triggered by Fisk’s absence, which reminded her of her father leaving the family to drink and gamble for weeks at a time. She never respected her mother for letting that happen, so finding herself in that position with her own husband was even more unbearable. She turned to Adam, a sensitive artist outside Fisk’s business and crime world.

Fisk claims that he and Adam had a “clarifying dialogue” where he calmly explained how he felt about Vanessa, and both of them tell Heather they don’t know Adam’s current whereabouts. But the end of the episode reveals the truth: Fisk has Adam locked up in a cell, undecided about what to do with him. He talks a big game about forgiveness, but there’s no way he can actually let this guy survive in the long term, can he?

The real question is whether Fisk would ever hurt Vanessa. That was always a line he’d never cross in the original show; Vanessa has been his Kryptonite since season one, but never his enemy. When Heather asks Vanessa after a session if she feels safe in her marriage, she assures her that Fisk would never harm her. We’ve never had reason to believe anything different — but later, she admits that she’s not sure she should feel so safe. The appearance of Adam is a necessary reminder that this is still a dangerous, vindictive man.

Watching Fisk actually conduct business and run the city as mayor still isn’t quite as interesting as it could be; it feels like the show is setting up something big for Red Hook, even going back to Foggy’s death, but at this stage Fisk’s plans for a structural overhaul at the port are still theoretical. We’re seeing that while Fisk hates red tape, he’s willing to listen to Sheila and respect the process sometimes. He also goes against his usual instincts after a fuck-up from his new lackey Daniel, whose friendship with BB Urich leads to a report calling Fisk “Mayor Garbage” and slamming him as a union buster. Rather than keeping quiet like he’s told, Daniel openly admits to his responsibility for the leak, and Fisk admires his loyalty and courage. Of course, he does make it very clear that this cannot happen again.

For the viewing audience, watching Fisk’s team talk about permits isn’t the most thrilling use of time. I was much more entertained watching Matt’s gradual backslide into vigilantism. It’s a believable result of Hector Ayala’s death; this was supposed to be the type of win that proved Matt could get things done by the books, that the criminal justice system could sometimes protect the innocent. How is Matt supposed to face Angela, Hector’s angry and devastated niece who knows all about the dirty cops who killed him?

While processing that failure, Matt is given another case of the week to deal with: Leroy Bradford, charged with petty larceny after stealing caramel corn from a bodega. Everyone knows Bradford did it — there’s surveillance footage and multiple witnesses, not to mention his long rap sheet — but he’s not happy at the idea of doing any jail time, even a relatively lenient ten days. In fact, he won’t take anything less than probation. It’s hard not to get frustrated with Bradford as Matt does, but the episode is using him to make a point: The system is more interested in locking poor people up than actually helping them escape the circumstances that led them to turn to crime in the first place. In this case, more money is spent punishing him than the original cost of the stupid caramel corn!

“Episode 4” is all about reminding Matt of how unfixable this system is, if it wasn’t already clear from Hector’s death last week. After learning from Powell’s regular heartbeat that he actually didn’t kill Hector, Matt tracks down the shell casing with a Punisher logo, leading him to turn to another helpful expert on the failures of the system: Frank Castle himself! It’s great to see Jon Bernthal return to the role without skipping a beat; he so perfectly embodies the Punisher.

During Matt’s visit to Frank’s hideout, he gets all high and mighty like back in season two, suggesting Frank actually uses his powers for good and helps people. But Frank also remembers the Daredevil of season two, and he knows Matt still has that violent side aching to come out. The scene gets heated when Frank mentions Foggy, who still has a powerful hold on Matt’s psyche; he’s the reason Matt quit being Daredevil, but also the likely reason he’ll take up the mantle again. After getting called out for hating himself and his violent nature, Matt hits Frank, immediately proving him right. He knows just as well as Frank that if he doesn’t do anything about Foggy and Hector — if he keeps insisting on operating within the system, experiencing failure after failure even after winning repeatedly in court — he’ll go crazy.

So it’s satisfying to see him return to that rooftop in the middle of the night, picking up those batons again when he can’t sleep. The scene is intercut with Fisk musing about forgiveness to Adam, and the parallel is as clear as it was in the premiere. Matt can’t be Daredevil without attracting the attention of Fisk, and Fisk can’t be Kingpin without attracting the attention of Matt; these are two men who will never be able to truly move on from their alter egos, and those alter egos will always be at odds.

I’m enjoying Born Again well enough now, even if “Episode 4” still isn’t on the level of the first episode. Based on that ending and based on the appearance of a new twisted villain who’s into draining his victims’ blood, the season should start heating up right around now.

Devil in the Details

• “Could it have been a Skrull?” “Nope.”

• Fisk’s pained reactions to not one but two different renditions of “We Built This City” — a bad children’s choir followed by a performance at the Latvian Cultural Center — are a highlight of the episode.

• Matt and Kirsten briefly discuss the firm’s money problems, but there’s not much follow-up to that yet.