As we forge ahead into the continuous disintegration of Matt Murdock, it’s good to know people that after two seasons and a spinoff, the show still has new places for Charlie Cox to go – even if that place is to take him progressively darker than he’s ever gone before. However, in its third episode, season 3 has decided to return to a familiar plot thread: just exactly how far is Daredevil willing to go in order to clean up the streets?
It’s a time worn question that every superhero with a lighter touch has mulled over at some point and not only was it a sizable plot point in season 2, the trope was given its most famous airing thanks to the battle of morals between Batman and the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. Is there any way Daredevil can make such an oft used thread feel new and relevant as our hero once again frets about the taking of a life – even one as nefarious as Wilson Fisk.
The word is out that Wilson Fisk has been removed from jail thanks to the loose lip policy he’s adopted to grass up other criminal empires, so Matt Murdock’s super edgy phase naturally steps up a notch once he finds out. Wrestling with moral conundrums with a imaginary version of Fisk in his head, it’s obvious that our hero isn’t exactly in his right mind as his bitter mental debates have him teetering on the fence about whether to break into his FBI protected penthouse and finish him once and for all. Still, that doesn’t stop him from trying to gain entry by using his returned heightened senses to try a slink past all the security like a blind Jason Bourne.
However, while a grubby Matt attempts to infiltrate the Kingpin’s refuge, Wilson himself is obviously trying to find finger holes in the psyche of the men hired to protect him, but while Agent Nadeem seems to be resistant to his words thus far, we find that the man who saved him from the Albanian convoy attack, Agent Pointdexter, seems to be cut from a far less virtuous cloth when he lies to his therapist about being in a relationship with a woman whom he’s actually stalking.
Meanwhile, Karen Page manages to concentrate her growing reporter skills on a paper trail that Fisk actually owns the building that he’s being held in and smells some familiar blood in the water; but while she and Matt plot to bring Fisk down in vastly different ways, Foggy Nelson adopts another way by going straight to the District Attorney for help. However, he too only runs into a political brick wall as there’s an open reluctantance to stand against an FBI drunk on the information Fisk is feeding them.
However, after having a run in with FBI agents in his endeavours, Murdock feels he has to look out for his former friends one last time and reveals to Foggy that he’s still alive. But while Nelson reels from this revelation, Murdock warns him to stay away from Fisk for his own safety and doubles down on his “no weaknesses” stance, callously announcing that they are no longer besties.
While “No Good Deed” doesn’t add anything too new to the current status quo, it does continue to ratchet up the pressure that’s affecting all of the main players. Obviously bearing the brunt of it is Matt who now thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to try and sneak by armed federal officers in order to kill a man helping to bring down other crime organisations. However, he’s so obsessed with wrestling with the moral and religious ramifications of taking out his nemesis, he starts Gollum-ing as his guilt manifests into the form of Fisk lurking behind him as almost a devil on the shoulder of the devil. While this trope can sometimes come across as a little hokey, it also allows us to get something extremely important that the show doesn’t often grant us and that’s plonking Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio in the same frame. OK, so it’s not the two characters facing off in some life or death battle and technically it isn’t even real, but it’s still marvelous to see them verbally spar once again with Matt’s soul on the line.
Also getting an interesting amount of narrative momentum is Wilson Bethel’s Benjamin Pointdexter who, despite his ruthless nature and freakish ability to kill someone by throwing an unloaded gun at them, initially seems to be something of a stand up – if rather intense – guy when he sternly rebuffs Fisk’s attempt to get to know people him. However, if this truly is the man destined to become Bullseye, he’s going to have to have some pretty, fucked up, anti-social behavior locked away somewhere and lo and behold, by the episode’s end, we find that clench-jawed old Dex has actually been stalking the girl he’s been telling people is his significant other.
To be fair, Bethel hasn’t had enough screen time as of yet to make a showing of himself other than an steely gaze and an impressively angular jawline and those hoping to get a more frenzied, scenery chewing, obvious version of the villain in the vein of Colin Farrell’s paperclip flipping turn in the 2003 might feel a little underwhelmed. But Daredevil has had quite the success when playing the long game with such antagonist characters as The Punisher and the Kingpin himself and as Fisk zeros in on a man who could prove to be immensely valuable, he gets word from one of his associates that a certain man in black is back on the streets.
There is a certain danger that season 3 may be following a bit too closely to the basic plot of season 1 with both Daredevil and Kingpin circling around each other for thirteen episodes until they butt heads in the finale, so the season really does need to keep us on edge to avoid just being a simple retread. Of course, having Matt go dark and wrestle with demons both familiar and new as he scrapes himself slightly higher that rock bottom is all very well and good – but a scene that really did catch me unawares is a moment when we see possibly the last vestiges of the Matt we now both come back to the surface and then leave entirely. Yup, in one final act of “kindness”, Matt pops up to reveal himself to a (typically) drunk Foggy to ask him to back off Fisk before essentially dumping his best friend as he heads back into the night.
It’s a legitimately tough scene to watch as once again, these two long time friends find that Matt’s extracurricular activities have once again driven them apart – especially considering that Foggy had finally accepted that his buddy was dead.
So the screw tightens once more on our damaged and desperate cast as our hero continues to walk with one foot in the darkness and his conversations and debates with the Punisher last season now seen especially pertinent, especially as Murdock seems to be making an enemy of the FBI in his mission to purge Hell’s Kitchen of Fisk’s influence in the most permanent way possible.
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