There’s a very old saying that correctly states that a hero is only as good as his villain. If that’s the case then it’s no surprise that the likes of Batman and Spider-Man are so famous with the expansive and famous rogues gallery they have in their corner. However, some heroes favour quality over quantity and while you might be hard pressed to name five villains that regularly bother Daredevil on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, the wrong doers you do know prove to be of a very high standard.
Yes, if you want to get all technical about it, the mountainous, string pulling Kingpin (aka. wealthy businessman Wilson Fisk) started off as a Spider-Man villain, but after proving to be a far more comfortable fit for the Man Without Fear, he’s proven to be the perfect thorn to stick repeatedly in Matt Murdock’s side. So without further ado, after his introduction in the previous episode, it’s time for Vincent D’Onofrio’s take on on the uber mastermind to take centre stage and pop some heads. Literally.
After a cold opening that delivers a flashback that clues us in to how exactly tough the Ranskahov Brothers are (makeshift shivs fashioned out of the rib bones of a corpse that shares their cell isn’t anything to sniff at), we get right back on the different trails both Matt Murdock and Karen Page are taking in order to find out who the mysterious crimeboss known as the Kingpin is.
Murdock has taken to wearing black sweats and using his heightened, superhuman senses and superior brawling abilities to punch as many holes into the Kingpin’s operations as he can and while he’s starting to make Fisk’s criminal partners and allies openly nervous, Karen (unbeknownst to Matt) has aligned herself with grizzled reporter Ben Ulrich who is desperate to matter once again. However, while Karen and Ben make slow inroads by looking into the liquidation of Karen’s former job, Matt finds that his on the spot enlisting of nurse Claire Temple to tend to his frequent wounds might come back to bite him. You see, during the time when Claire discovered Matt’s alter ego bleeding in a dumpster, the only witness to her helping the black clad vigilante has handily been in a coma since Murdock dropped his criminal ass off a roof to protect Claire’s identity, but after the Ranskahovs manage to snap him out of it with a well placed jab of adrenaline. With Claire’s identity now in possession of vicious Russian mobsters, Matt has to race to clean up his mess before the Night Nurse pays the price.
Elsewhere, the man responsible for all this trauma is gearing up for a fateful evening as the Kingpin heads out for a date with gallery owner Vanessa Marianna. During this evening we get to know Wilson Fisk the man, but after one of the overzealous Ranskahovs crashes the evening to make nice for their recent failures, we’re due for a neck snapping date with the monster the Kingpin can truly be.
With Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin now established, it seems that the status quo of Daredevil has finally been all laid out with multiple characters on both sides on the law facing each other, but while this fourth episode mostly is concerned with the direct fall out from the events of the second episode, the stand out stuff proves to be the time we spend with our newly introduced villain. But before we concentrate on Fisk, we should cast an eye on the rest of the episode and even though the action is somewhat of a replay of The Cut Man, it does manage to move things along to the point where the climax promises to have some fairly noticable ramifications. For a start, it’s becoming fairly obvious that the different members of the Kingpin’s crime community seem to measure out the various stages of criminal empire that Matt is going to have to topple, video game style, before he can finally claw his way to Fick’s final boss. That means that the Ranskahovs are essentially a step up from basic street thugs, which is slightly worrying considering Matt’s already picked up some notable boo-boos when dismantling their trafficking ring. However, it seems that Matt might not have to finish the job himself when all he has to do is embarrass the proud brothers in the eyes of their opportunistic peers and the cracks have spread to the point where the Russians are desperate for any info on the man in black they can get their hands on – enter Claire Temple.
I have to be honest, while I get that this episode is teaching Matt to be more careful and protective with the lives of civilians, I found it rather strange to see Rosario Dawson plonked into the role of a damsel in distress, wrapped up in gaffer tape and threatened with a baseball bat – however, it does serve to remind us that when it comes to non-MCU levels of violence, Netflix really ain’t fucking around. Speaking of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the episode offers up a rare mention of the greater universal it’s supposedly a part of with Wesley’s throwaway mention man to iron suits and a magic hammer, but it’s only a passing affirmation that everything is actually connected.
The other main thread concerns Karen’s rather clumsy (and rather dangerous) attempts to try and come at the criminal conspiracy while getting some much needed aid from Vodie Curtis-Hall’s Ben Urich. However, while this is all building up to something down the line, it’s a storyline that’s still very much in its infancy and hasn’t yet built up momentum yet to become fully engaging despite offering a fair few good character moments.
Thankfully, the rather “samey” tone of “In The Blood” is nicely disrupted by Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk finally taking the stage in a way that initially feels counter intuitive to the build up the character has received. Anyone a little bit concerned that his version of Kingpin isn’t packing an obscene amount of disguised muscle in his gargantuan bulk, the show pulls something of an intriguing bait and switch to show us multiple shades of the cold blooded crime boss. While watching the Kingpin got on a date may seem counter intuitive to the arch villain people think the character is, it shows us our villain can be a vulnerable man, awkwardly fiddling with his cufflinks in almost a childlike fashion as he attempts to woo a woman he has feeling for. In fact, the show does it so well, that when the Kingpin finally shows what he’s capable of, it’s genuinely shocking – even for a show as brutal as Daredevil. Incensed that his date is accidently torpedoed when one of the Ranskahovs enters the restaurant in an attempt to pay amends for their recent failures, Fisk ambushes the guy at a meeting later that night an proceeds to throw a frankly terrifying tantrum that end with him slamming the man’s head repeatedly in a car door until the fucking thing pops off completely.
As a statement of intent for its main villain, you couldn’t hope for a more shocking scene as it instantly fills us in on how much shit Matt really is in (seriously, Fisk fights like a fucking beast), but it gives us the preview that D’Onofrio’s take on Wilson could end up having as many layers as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Hopefully the show can keep the momentum going with the other plot lines in order to build on everything the show has built, but I have to admit that Fisk openly inviting gang war just because he got cockblocked by accident is the thread I can’t wait to get behind…
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