After weathering twelve unbroken episodes of abject misery, the time has come for Matthew Murdock to finally get his big showdown. The stakes couldn’t possibly get any higher, not just because it seems that Daredevil’s most hated enemy has been on a devastating winning streak, but because there’s a very good chance that this could be the last ever episode of the best series that ever emerged from the Marvel/Netflix union. If, in fact, this truly is the end, then A New Napkin can’t just be a good episode, no, to do justice to what the show has achieved, the final showdown between Daredevil and Kingpin (not to mention a proto-Bullseye wildcard) has to reach operatic heights, where good men have to be tested, bad men have to be humbled and maybe the odd Faustian pact can slip through the cracks. Due to the nature of subjective law, the perfect Daredevil episode cannot exist; but if it did, it might look a little something like this…
While it may seem that every attempt to halt the rise of Wison Fisk has met with disaster, the tragic Agent Nadeem actually had one last card to play before Benjamin Pointdexter fired a bullet into his brain. Minutes before his execution, he had managed to record another confession as an official dying declaration (which is totally admissible as evidence) and get it to his wife who manages to get it to Foggy Nelson. Unable to believe their luck, Foggy and Karen start the ball rolling to take one last shot at the Kingpin, but are unable to get Matthew Murdock into the deal as their recent failures has switched him fully back into murderous vigilante mode.
Meanwhile, Murdock has caught up with Fisk’s fixer, Manning, who reveals some promising dirt on the Wilson/Poindexter union that Matt can use against them. You remember Julie, right, the woman Dex was stalking because he wanted her to become his moral guidance when his mental state was starting to unravel? Well, she didn’t just leave – Kingpin had her killed to keep Dex’s sanity on that rocky, pliable road where he would willingly put on a Daredevil suit and slaughter anyone Wilson pointed him at.
While all this costumed skulduggery is occurring behind his back, Fisk is preparing to wed his lady love, Vanessa, in a glittering ceremony for all to see, but while he’s wining and dining and preparing for his first dance as a married man, he is blissfully unaware that a couple of vengeful gatecrashers are about to attend his party.
With two very different Daredevils out for his blood, Fisk has to stand and fight and before you know it we’re in the midst of a fatal three way battle where this trifecta of angry maniacs all truly despise one another. But in the chaos of roundhouses, clubbing blows and lethal projectiles, can Murdock manage to avoid killing Kingpin once and for all in order to save his soul and, in turn, his entire city?
So, here we are. At potentially the end of all things.
While I’ve kept the pretense up that, while watching this season back in 2018, we had absolutely no clue whether we would ever seen this incarnation again (the no-show of the Defenders during the climax of Avengers: Endgame pretty much spelt out how the MCU viewed its gritter, distant Netflix cousin), I actually write this at a time where an MCU-set revival if Daredevil is barely a month away. However, after the original watch of this episode occurred during less certain times, long before both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk popped up in such MCU titles as Spider-Man: No Way Home, Hawkeye, Echo and She-Hulk, there was a distinct need to have this show finish on a high in order to send it out in the manner it truly deserved. Well, I genuinely believe that with A New Napkin, that’s exactly what we got as the episode did a fine job wrapping everything up while sticking solidly to the themes and plots the season built up. OK, back to present tense.
While Foggy and Karen certainly get their moments as they weaponize the emotional video message sent by Naddem before his death, the episode is primarily focused on getting the three, physical heavyweights of the story on a collision course which not only finishes off their plot arcs, but also gives us some vague ties to the future, if the future is ever going to happen. While there is an argument to be made that Matt’s return to the light is a little simple and that his split second decision to refrain from killing his enemy immediately puts him back on the straight and narrow, that’s kind of what the entire show has been about. Matt’s been worried that his friends have been a weakness ever since Stick brought it up back in season 1, but after they’ve proved their mettle this season and managed to actually get the smoking gun needed to bring Fisk down. Still, pounding the living shit out Kingpin understandably still is high on his list of priorities, if only to get his own pound of flesh for everything this season has put him through.
Usually I would whine and complain that Matt didn’t step into his more famous costume once and stuck to the black threads for the entire duration as I’m something of a supersuit completist, but the continuing image of Daredevil having regress his image to fit his outlook and then brawling with Poindexter’s murderous doppelganger proved to be quite the striking metaphor as it mirrors his internal struggle his abandonment of his earlier virtues results in the tarnishing of his legend.
Meanwhile, Fisk and Poindexter are locked on their personal paths with both of them showing love in the fucked-up ways that their monstrous personas will only allow. Wilson plans to celebrate his ultimate victory by marrying Vanessa in full view of everyone he’s subjugated and manipulated in the palatial hotel that was once his supposed prison. However, while mistakenly believing he’s finally untouchable, he isn’t aware that Daredevil’s turned Poindexter against him with a measured disease of the truth – e.g. Julie’s death. Yes, we never got a moment where, in an act of defiance, Dex sprayed his Daredevil suit blue, took off the horns with an angle grinder and scratched a bullseye symbol in the helmet (it would’ve taken two minutes, guys), the fully crazed ex-fed is the most Bullseye he’s ever been. Whether driving Julie’s frozen corpse to Fisk’s wedding as a date or gleefully hurling shards of glass and forks in his enemies, he proves to be a fitting wildcard for the final fight.
And what a final fight it is. Complicated and frenetic, there’s a lot of moving parts (loving Matt desperately trying to save Vanessa from Dex’s numerous projectiles), bit it ends just right. Not just with a powerful bellow of “I! BEAT! YOU!” from a triumphant Matt that’ll raise the goose bumps and no mistake, but there’s one, final deal to be made in order to secure the safety of his own identity and that lives of those in his orbit. It’s a nice touch that even in bloodied and battered, the two combatants can still agree to terms almost like… well, lawyers.
As we leave Fisk incarcerated and Poindexter paralysed (but not for long, thanks to one final sting), all that’s left to do is close the book on Daredevil with Matt, Foggy and Karen pledging to go into business once again with all their previous rifts healed. Will it last? Only the superhero streaming God’s can tell; but after surely cementing itself as one of the greatest comic book TV shows of all time, it’s fitting that we give the devil his due.
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