Not to keep knocking lumps out of season 2 (I actually really liked vast majority of it), but it’s biggest flaw was that is just couldn’t juggle the multiple syorylines of both the Punisher and Elektra without throwing off the storylines of both Foggy and Karen, making them mostly onlookers despite being part of the OG trio that started the series. While Matt was having the code he lives by pressure tested by Frank Castle and having his head turned by his ninja ex-girlfriend, the other two building blocks of the entire show didn’t really have anything of intrest to add aside from the odd moment here and there.
However, it really does seem that season 3 has learnt a lesson from it and seeing as we’ve got a wealth of players to focus on this time round that chiefly make up of Matt, Karen, Foggy, Fisk and Poindexter, the writers are making sure that everyone has to remain vital to the story in markedly different ways. If we needed further proof of this – Upstairs/Downstairs works on multiple levels.
After the massacre at the New York Bulletin, Benjamin Poindexter returns home in order to try and piece together his fractured psyche and goes right back to the recordings of his childhood therapy sessions as a source of guidance. However, with so much blood on his hands, he’s taken aback when Agent Nadeem reveals that he has a chance of legally going after his FBI employers after his unfair dismissal and as a result feels the only way he can get his mental issues back under control is to get back in touch with Julie, the woman he’d been stalking. She, of course, is highly hesitant, but after Dex explains that his obsession doesn’t come from a sexual place, but a desire to find another moral compass to help him get his mind right. However, Nadeem’s earlier kindness is disguising the fact that he and Daredevil are on to him and have forged a shaky alliance to prove it that goes as far as the two men breaking into Poindexter’s apartment to look for clues.
Both men come away convinced – especially after he tries to snipe them with ricocheted pistol shots – but Nadeem insists thst tbey lack the proof they need to get an arrest.
This, coupled with Julie’s later rejection by text, sends Poindexter back into the arms of Wilson Fisk, but Fisk has got a few issues of his own to sort out. You see, in an act of defiance, Karen has used her press credentials to gain access to Fisk’s penthouse/prison in order to get face to face with the Kingpin to enrage him enough to attack her, thus screwing up the deal he has with the FBI. It gets pretty fucking raw too as they both dig for weak spots and mental wounds to get one over on the other with such things being dredged as Fisk’s mother being brought up along with the murders of both Ben Ulrich and Fisk’s father. However, while Karen scores a legitimate Bullseye worthy of Dex himself when she confessed to Fisk that it was she who murdered his best friend, Wesley, Wilson manages to get final confirmation that Matt Murdock is in fact Daredevil.
And as for Matt? He’s got some personal issues of his own as he’s just overheard Sister Maggie admit to being his mother…
While it’s quick to write off supporting characters in superhero properties as mere distractions to the costumed stuff, the whole reason they were conceived in the first place is to play off the main hero to help them become a more rounded character. To sideline a Foggy Nelson, a Commissioner Gordon or a Jimmy Olsen is to remove a fundamental piece from the hero’s identity and that’s something this season has really managed to get behind. For a start, the whole Foggy Nelson going for DA thing has snowballed into him taking a stand at a benefit dinner to publicly challenge the current District Attorney on his hands-off approach to Wilson Fisk in the hopes that Karen will report on it. However, this segues into what is Deborah Ann Woll’s finest ever moment in the show since it began in 2015 as Karen instead gains an audience with Wilson Fisk and launches into a battle of words that’s so spiteful, I’m surprised no one dropped in a yo’ mamma joke to really push things over the top. If anyone truly deserves to tear strips off the Kingpin, I guess it really does end up being Karen, especially after multiple kidnaps and murder attempts that she’s had to endure, but despite often having a thankless role on the superhero show due to it saddling her with victim card, watching her go toe to toe with Fisk is not only cathartic, the hits each they score on each other are truly seismic ones indeed. Yes, Karen fucks up thanks to an ever so slight misjudgement of body language giving away that Matt’s Daredevil, but I’d much rather this version than the comics one that saw her become an addict and a porn actress and sell Daredevil’s identity for a shot of smack. However, she recovers from this grevious error by unloading upon Wilson that she pumped seven bullets into his beloved Wesley and the tension builds until it really feels that this skinny reporter and this hulking crime boss are playing an exhilaratingly dangerous game of chicken that positively crackles.
Also benefitting hugely from a bout of post-slaughter character development is Dex who, after wiping out an entire building-full of journalists is admirably trying to get himself out of control despite the creepily absurd sight of him hoovering his trashed apartment clean while still in his Daredevil suit. While I would argue that the character of Bullseye that I know would never try to save himself by getting help for his mental problems, Poindexter isn’t Bullseye yet and it genuinely feels like the dude’s soul is teetering in the balance as he returns to Julie in order to beg for guidance and actually gets it. However, after her unexplained disappearance (which can’t be good considering Fisk knows of her), we find Dex once again being taken into Fisk’s confidence which probably means someone new is about to be lined up in “Daredevil’s” sights.
And what of the OG Daredevil himself? Well, his awkward team-up with Agent Nadeem is actually quite fun as their frequent clashes about what the law will actually allow adds a sort of mismatched buddy-cop tinge to their brief union and it means another run-in with Poindexter’s lethal flinging abilities. However, the big news here is that Sister Maggie’s secret is now out and Matt now knows that she’s actually his long lost mother and although this is common knowledge to more learned Daredevil fans, Charlie Cox sells the realisation like a depth charge to his soul.
Whether this means we’re about to get bogged down in a whole bunch of family flashbacks I don’t know (Karen’s started contacting her estranged folks too last episode, remember?), but at this point I fully trust the writers to carry us through with a minimum of fuss. God knows they’ve been doing right by us this season by making sure that all the major players aren’t benched by a lack of things to do.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
One comment