They say that God gives his toughest battles to his strongest servants, and if that’s true, then Daredevil must be one tough son of a bitch. But just as I could be talking about the character of Matthew Murdock who weathered unimaginable storms throughout his three seasons of groundbreaking television on Netflix (not to mention eight episodes of The Defenders too), I could also be referring to the incredibly laboured journey that has finally seen him officially signed up as a fully vetted member of the MCU.
Let’s be honest, by the end there, the Netflix universe and the MCU where blatently going in their own directions despite claiming to be one big universe, but after years of fan outcry, numerous cameos for both Matt and the Kingpin dotted throughout phases 4 and 5 and an amusing dalliance with She-Hulk which split audiences like the Red Sea, we’ve finally got that long awaited “fourth” season courtesy of Disney+.
Has it been worth the wait, or has the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had his horns blunted by the House of Mouse? Take care, spoilers await, citizens.
When we last cast our radar sense over the partnership of Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock and Karen Paige, they were planning to finally put all that previous business of vigilantes, killers and Kingpins far behind them and start their storefront law practice anew and we rejoin them as the trio indulge in their favorite pastime of getting irrevocably hammered in Josie’s Bar. However, their revelry is soon disturbed when the weapon flinging lunatic, Benjamin Poindexter, drops in for a catch up as he continues to live out his paranoid fantasies of being some vigilante assassin and embarks on a frenzied massacre that claims the life of a loved one and only stops when Murdock, in the superhero guise of Daredevil, hurls Bullseye’s deranged ass off a roof.
We zip forward a year to take stock of what has occured since that traumatic event to find that Matt has been Daredevil-free ever since crossing that line and emotions are running especially high as it’s the day of Poindexter’s sentencing as the seemingly unkillable motherfucker survived his fall and is looking at a life sentence behind bars. Still, Murdock has been unavoidably scarred by his experiences and while he’s started up a new practice and hasn’t been in contact with Karen until he runs into her at the courthouse.
However, while Matt has been going through the wringer and has renounced his costumed ways, former Kingpin of crime has seemingly seen the light and has been vying to become the mayor of New York City. While his victory at the polls is all but assured, Murdock decides to have a chat with his old enemy to try and get the lay of the land; but has Wilson Fisk truly turned over an immense new leave, or is there a larger game at play?
“It’s not entirely unpleasant seeing you again.” rumbles Vincent D’Onofrio’s Fisk during a tense chat with his arch enemy in a coffee shop that could be seen as the MCU’s version of a similar scene in Michael Mann’s Heat and not only is the Kingpin a master of crime, he seemingly has a nack for understatement too. You see, when you take into consideration the rather tortured path Born Again took to get to the screen and add then it to the still unsteady gait the MCU has been fighting for the entirely of it’s phase 5, fans of the Netflix show have understandably been a little on edge. However, after a lot of tinkering behind the scenes (massive upheavals occured in order to belatedly align it with the previous seasons), it seems that on the strength of the first episode alone, everyone can breathe a huge sigh of relief because while the show comes with the expected sheen of a Disney+ MCU show, all the stuff that made the Netflix show special has been ported over to Born Again to form an almost seamless match. In fact, the show seems to be so desperate to ensure that that brutal edge endures, it opens with an absurdly devastating action scene that not only reintroduces Wilson Bethal’s maniacal Bullseye, but kills off Elden Henson’s Foggy shockingly early which leads to yet another battle to the death between the psycho and his horned adversary.
From there, the rest of the episode skips forward a year and dedicates it’s time to getting us up to speed on the new status quo, but thankfully it remains gripping for two major reasons. The first is that the opening scene is so vicious in its intent, it gives the episode the energy it needs to get through it’s new set up of Matt slowly dating again in the form of physiatrist Heather Glenn; but the other is that the new show realises that the best seasons of Daredevil have always been the ones that tell duel tales of both Murdock and Fisk simultaneously. Thus while we watch Matt trying to find his place in the world after his trauma, we also follow Fisk as his attempts to become mayor come to fruition and it’s this that fires up most of the drama.
For a start, we’re not entirely sure that if that blast of “good” rays he got at the end of the Echo series has actually made him change his ways. It certainly seems that he’s trying to distance himself from organised crime even if his wife, Vanessa, is funding his political endeavors after taking over crime boss duties, but there’s no denying that his rise to political prominence is very topical considering what going on in the States these days as a divisive, controversial figure takes a seat of power. It’s all powerful, potent stuff and while fanatics of the Netflix years may be truly horrified at the sacrificing of Foggy Nelson to mix things up, Heaven’s Half Hour manages to calm our fears enough that we can now relax and watch the rest of the season.
Issues? A couple. While it’s far too early to speculate on all the new faces that include Michael Gandolfini, Clark Johnson and Zabryna Guevara, or even any of the new plot threads, I do feel that the opening brawl between Daredevil and Bullseye was lacking a little something compared to their previous three encounters. Anyone who’s read my reviews for season 3 knows that I have a massive soft spot for any time these two legendary enemies butt heads and while it’s nicely brutal (Matt is practically pincusioned by throwing knives by the fight’s end) all the tears gas and flickering lights make it tough to follow the fight, which is especially annoying when you have a skill set such as Bullseye’s that requires a few inserts here and there to really drive home the impact of killing someone with a billiard ball.
However, we’ve only just started and all indications suggest that the MCU-ification of the man without fear hasn’t dulled his edge at all. In fact, with that spellbinding scene that sees both Murdock and Fisk size each other up with the eyes of men who have been at war for far too long, there’s an argument to be made that this new era has a damn good shot at being even better than previous three seasons of blood, betrayal and billy clubs.
Unfortunate phrasing aside, I guess it’s time to start worshiping the devil once again.
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