Daredevil: Born Again – Season 1, Episode 6: Excessive Force (2025) – Review

There’s nothing more satisfying than when a TV show finally delivers on it’s promices. Since Daredevil: Born Again began with the still-devastating murder of Foggy Nelson, the show’s two major players of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have found themselves doing everything in their earthly power to forge on with their bold new lives and not slip back into the worlds of violence that defined them for so long. Murdock had renounced the mantle of Daredevil and was sinking all his energies into his law firm after he crossed a moral line, whereas Fisk was putting his time as the Kingpin of crime behind him, trimmed down his bulk and was attempting to help the city he loves by successfully running for mayor of New York without crushing a single head in a car door.
However, after numerous episodes have chipped away at their resolve, it’s finally time for these men to fall off their respective wagons in spectacular fashion. The catalyst? A truly unnerving serial killer named Muse with a truly creepy M.O.. Apparently, it’s time to let the animal out.

After a sanitation worker tries and fails to remove an inflammatory, anti-Fisk mural by the mysterious street artist known only as Muse, it’s discovered that the graffiti scrawling nuisance is actually an overachieving serial killer who not only mixes his victim’s blood in with his paint, but he may have racked up a staggering body count of over 60 people. Reeling from this news, Mayor Fisk decides to use this lunatic to his advantage by gathering up all the bad apples that are part of the NYPD and putting them all together in order to make the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, a fist to further bend New York City to his will as his dwindling patience with how slow red tape makes everything finally runs thin.
Meanwhile, Matt, who has shrugged off last episode’s bank heist as quickly as we have, is approached by Angela Ayala, the niece of the murdered vigilante, White Tiger, who believed her uncle was unknowingly looking into the Muse case before he was murdered, but after Murdock politely blows her off, she goes exploring on her own with predictably deadly results. When Matt is finally brought up to speed by Cherry and realises the true extent of the damage Muse has caused, it finally galvanises him to finally become Daredevil once again to help the struggling artist struggle a hell of a lot more thanks to repeated knuckle sandwiches.
Elsewhere, Fisk has somewhat a similar eye opening experience when going back to doing things the Kingpin way gives him the urge to confront Adam, the kidnapped man he’s had imprisoned for having an affair with his wife, Vanessa. Done with sticking with established rules and getting walked over in return, Fisk chooses to once again settle things with blugeoning fists while Daredevil has to weigh up his morals when he finally confronts a maniac who is anything buy paint by numbers.

After the previous episode, I was getting the feeling that maybe Born Again was in danger of going off the boil thanks to a filler episode that generally didn’t actually need to exist; however in spite of the rather weak episode (or maybe even because of, who knows?) Excessive Force pushes back twice as hard and pays off a lot of the pressure that’s been continuously building over the last five episodes. I’ve always said that the show is always at its best when it’s protagonist and antagonist are experiencing problems that mirror the other to really double down on just how similar they truly are and after matters have reached critical mass, both men seem to reclaim both their respective mantles with explosive displays of violence.
Their are plenty of other aspects about the episode that work and plenty other seeds that have been sown that will bare fruit at some point (the return of Tony Dalton’s dashing socialite, Jack Duquesne, strongly hints that he has also become a vigilante known as the Swordsman; the formation of the Anti-Vigilante Task Force), it’s all about Matt and Wilson and I couldn’t be happier. From some intriguing foreshadowing that includes a suggestion that Fisk’s weight is once again increasing as he starts exploring less legal avenues to get his way, to Matt grimly accepting his horn-headed destiny with a terse “Fuck it”, the episode proves to be just as thrilling and pump your fist in the air exciting as you always hoped it would.

However, what makes things extra sweet is that all of it is completely earned. Some aspects may be a little convenient for some (Ayala comes knocking at Murdock’s about the disappearances the exact same time the police discover Muse’s existence?), but saving the life of the niece of the man he failed is a far more blood pumping call to arms than gradually stopping an armed bank robbery.
And stop it he does. In a single brutal brawl with the artery draining artist, Daredevil: Born Again reaches those vicious, savage heights we all hoped it would. With no dialogue, the fights gets right to the heart of Matt’s conundrum and tackles it head on as hero and villain beat the living shit out of each other until Daredevil manages to get the upper hand. However, while he had Muse dangling from his neck, Matt steps back from the edge just enough to avoid killing the masked miscreant and thus we finally get our Daredevil back. However, aiding Murdock’s return to the reds is the fact that a similarly empowered Wilson Fisk, sick of all the restraints and checks he’s had to put on himself, finally confronts the captive Adam and hands him a fire axe. His offer is simple, if Adam can kill him, he gets his freedom – but we all know Adam has no chance because he’s about to go from whipping boy to punching bag and sure enough, the Kingpin re-enters the chat by being reborn through sheer, blugeoning, purging violence much in the same way Murdock has.
It’s magnificently poetic as it details both these men reclaiming their true selves by way of blunt force trauma, but once again, every truly great Daredevil episode makes sure to draw that dividing line – no matter how faint it may be – between the two old adversaries. Kingpin brutalises to lash out at the world and beat it into what he wants it to be. Daredevil sends things to the hospital because he’s trying to protect and seeing as Muse and Adam both survive their ordeals, there’s plenty of chances for our leads to try again.

After a tantalising build up that very nearly went off the rails, Daredevil: Born Again finally lives up to its promise, bringing together the mythic themes of the original show and the scope of the MCU by bloodying it’s knuckles in order to try and continue the themes of preserving justice while not becoming a monster. Whether the remaining three episodes can continue to sustain this thread will be revealed all in good time; but the fact that the show is bucking the MCU’s usual trend of killing off its bad guys means that the imminent grudge matches will only carry more emotional weight.
If the congregation would rise, it seems that Daredevil has truly been born again.
Hallelujah.
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