It might seem hard to believe, but for eight whole episodes, Daredevil has managed to keep it’s hero and villain at opposite ends of the playing field and while both are utterly obsessed with what the other is doing, they’ve only ever managed to converse once, separated by the impersonal barrier of a walkie talkie. As separations go, it’s certainly impressive, but now it’s time for these two men, who are striving to save their city in very diffrent ways, to make things extra personal and finally meet face to face.
It’s a tease that most standard, feature based MCU properties simply don’t have the time to muster (could you imagine a Thor movie where it took eight hours for him to meet Loki?), but what with the standard Netflix show package of a hefty thirteen episodes, the Daredevil showrunners could afford to take their time and milk the thing for all it’s worth. But while the prospect of Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio’s finally sharing the screen is enough to make your mouth water, we’ve also got one of Daredevil’s most brutal confrontations to contend with – and it doesn’t involve the Kingpin.
Just because Matt Murdock has conceded that his quest to bring down crimeboss Wilson Fisk as a black masked vigilante has hit more dead ends than a man with inner ear issues trapped in a hedge maze, it doesn’t mean he’s happy for his friends to try via a more legal route. But while Karen, Foggy and Ben go through the business of Union Allied Construction with a fine toothed comb and attempt to find the link between this and some crumbling tenement buildings, Murdock fancies taking a more direct route to understand more about his foe.
If one thing good thing has come from Wilson Fisk going public in order to get ahead of certain accusations is that Matt now knows much more about him than he previously did, so in order to try and come at Fisk from a different angle, the blind lawyer opts to go to a certain art gallery and have a friendly chat with Vanessa, the Kingpin’s girlfriend. However, after a bout of textbook Murdock flirting (seriously Matt, even when digging for info you’re incorrigible), our hero soon inadvertently finds himself face to face with his hated enemy for the very first time and it’s all he can do to keep his composure.
Meanwhile, Fisk is still encountering pressure from his partners, namely the Japanese Nobu who insists that Wilson gives him a certain tenement building as per their agreement. However, Fisk acquiesces with only one stipulation: bring in someone who can take out the black masked vigilante once and for all and in an attempt to lure Matt’s crime fighting nom de plume into mortal combat, has Mrs Cardenas, the last existing tennent in Nobu’s building killed.
While Karen and Foggy grieve for the kindly old lady, Murdock gears up to kick some ass, but when the specialist turns out to be Nobu himself, the two tear each other to shreds in the ensuing fight. However, after getting sliced up by Nobu and then running into a bludgeoning ambush from Fisk himself, a half-dead Matt only has one place left to turn. His oldest friend, Foggy Nelson.
To say that episode nine launches itself out of the gate like a turbo charged greyhound is something of an understatement as at various times during the installment, we keep flashing forward to the unfeasibly vicious brawl between Murdock and Nobu that holds nothing back when it comes to slashy ninja weapons or crippling blows to the head. But before I allow myself to gush over the magnificently staged fight, or the shock ending, the sense of escalation the rest of the episode has has to be cheered on too.
For a start, we get the return of Peter McRobbie’s Father Lantom who proves to be something of an interesting sounding board when it comes to Matt’s fluctuating faith and the conundrum he has about whether he should cross a line and take the Kingpin down for good. It’s a juicy scene with an especially gripping tale from the priest concerning what he learnt about the nature of good and evil back in his missionary days. While it’s a crackingly haunting story, it doesn’t exactly give Matt the clear advise he was looking for and while he watches his friends try and plot to outmaneuver Fisk (while Foggy takes repeated verbal digs at the black suited vigilante who still is a whipping boy in the press due to some skilled framing), he finally attempts to get closer to Wilson in the guise of his everyday identity.
It’s a fascinating moment, watching Charlie Cox lay on that Irish charm on the woman of his hated enemy, but when Vincent D’Onofrio’s suddenly strides in, suddenly the air turns electric. We’ve seen Murdock and Fisk size each other up in various other forms of media before, but after all the bullshit that’s built up between them over eight episodes full of plans, counter plans and a whole lot of bad blood, it really is something to see, especially considering that Fisk has no idea that he’s having a slightly tense social interaction with his nemesis and Matt is desperately trying to stop his civilian mask from slipping. It’s not like we need reminding of the gradually rising stakes, but it is a wonderful primer for their second meeting, where they’re now wearing their more socially unacceptable identities as the Devil Of Hell’s Kitchen and the Kingpin.
But first, let’s turn our attention to the fantabulous Nobu fight which might not match that famous hallway fight for technical flashiness, but it certainly beats it when it comes to visceral damage. While Matt and Nobu (dressed in the scarlet refinement of the ninja clan known as the Hand, no less – but they aren’t named as such yet) literally tear chunks out of each other, one is reminded of the bloodthirsty nature of the legendary kitchen fight in The Raid 2 – OK, so Daredevil made not quite the squirty, crimson heights of that masterful spot of bloodletting, but a moment where Nobu lodges his blade in Matt’s side and then drags him along the floor by is is certainly way more gruesome than anything you’d get in Iron Man. But as awesome as the fight is, it goes up another notch when after our hero accidentally vanquishes his foe with.a mixture of gasoline, sparks and a wad of accidental good fortune, the Kingpin himself crashes the party and lays the mother of all beatdowns on a wounded Murdock. It’s a fight we’ve all been aching to see but due to the fact that Matt probably has no blood left in his body due to being sliced up like a kebab, Kingpin bests him easily by unleashing that bestial temper upon him, but it’s still pretty neat that in a single episode they both manage to meet each other in both their respective guises at different points.
Still, another crushing loss for Matt Murdock means another gripping and violent hour of television for us and with a cliffhanger ending that sees an incredulous Foggy stumbling across his friend’s ragged, lifeless body in the final shot, we’re likely to get a big dramatic showdown that’s been brewing since forever. Welcome to rock bottom, Matt, it may suck for you, but it makes damn good TV.
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