We’re six episodes in to Daredevil’s third season and there’s a real feeling that everything we’ve come to expect from the Man Without Fear’s Netflix outings has already been trotted out. Think about it; we’ve already had the required long fight sequence filmed in one shot; we’ve had the flashback episode to set up the villain properly (in this case Wilson Bethel’s unhinged Pointdexter); we’ve had the whole Matt/Foggy/Karen breakup/makeup thing and Murdock’s life has been well and truly ground into the dirt – and with all these familiar tropes already setting our characters up, something big is about to ocurr.
Yup, its time for a supervillain’s coming out party and all the schemes and machinations have led to a belated showdown Daredevil fans have been aching for the day Netflix announced it was getting into the Marvel business.
That’s right true belivers, it’s Daredevil vs. Bullseye. Only, it technically isn’t…. it’s Daredevil vs. Daredevil.
Karen has finally opened up to Foggy about the murder of Wesley way back in season 1, but while her friend simultaneously gives her legal advice while telling her that she is not a bad person and this seeming to be the tipping point where the trio of Murdock/Nelson/Page seems to start coming back together again. It may start with Matt showing up in his black costume asking Karen for a favour, but the fact that Murdock knows that Wilson Fisk arranged his own stabbing and that the lifer who did it has been sprung means that the is working as one for the first time in a long time. However, the plan can only work if Karen can locate Jasper Evens, the missing prisoner in question and get him to the offices of the New York Bulletin to confess on tape. However, there’s a catch and it means that the implicated Murdock has to be there too in order for Agent Nadeem to look over the whole thing.
However, Fisk’s plans are in full swing and not only has he now furnished the penthouse where he’s being held into protective custody into an actual home, but he’s also out of his prison jumpsuits and brazenly back to wearing his white suits. If this isn’t proof enough that he’s now calling the shots, his grooming of mentally unstable agent Benjamin Pointdexter has reached its zenith and he manages to place himself fully in Dex’s trust by revealing that their famously fucked up childhoods are eerily similar. With No job to focus him, no social life to ground him and no meds to calm him, Dex’s demons swallow him up to the point where he’s essentially putty in Fisk’s hands.
Wilson’s plan is to put another villain on the streets that will make New York forget his sins and after putting Dex in a very familiar suit and sending him out on a rampage to kill Evans, it seems that villain is… Daredevil.
You feel that? That’s the moment when an entire season comes together with such style and drama that you can’t help but punch the air in glee. Virtually every little plot thread the show has been brewing all season, the fights, the scheming, the sight of friends gradually coming back together just in time for disaster to strike is delivered as accurately as one of Dex’s makeshift projectiles. We’ll get to that cracking climax soon enough, but it’s worth noting that everything leading up to it is something of a masterclass in have every part of your story simultaneously and organically contract into one place to let the fireworks fly and the coolest thing is that much like the characters caught in Fisk’s tightening snare, you have no idea its going to happen until the trap springs.
The previous episode did such great work at establishing just how unstable Pointdexter is, that much like Fisk himself, all this episode has to do is give him a light push and a caring ear to send him completely tumbling into the abyss and become the Kingpin’s murder puppet. It also helps that D’Onofrio’s Fisk is now, once again in full arch villain mode, literally altering his surroundings to please himself and slipping into one of those iconic white suits that’s every bit important as Daredevil’s reds, Spider-Man’s webs or Captain America’s shield.
It’s also important that the season has finally got the band back together as our trifecta of good guys are far more gun to see work as a team than glaring at each other with teary, hurt eyes. In fact, now that Karen and Foggy have upped their standing and are now a talented journalist and district attorney hopeful respectably and now are much more than just the token love intrest/sidekick, is feels that the stakes are even higher. Of course, after five episodes of watching Matt declare “Matt Murdock no more” before getting his ass get handed to him on the regular, it’s actually a relief to see him finally turn from the gritty dark of living in a church basement and having no civilian life whatsoever and it almost feels like an addict finally admitting they need help. In fact watching Karen and Sister Maggie swapping notes about how bull headed Matt can really be thanks to some telling stories about his childhood is genuinely nice; but it doesn’t prove to be much to cling to when the shit spectacularly hits the fan.
As a long term fan of watching comics make the leap from page to screen, one of the biggest complaints I have is that some attempt will literally cut their own arm off before simply putting the right characters in the right costumes and simply have them beat the crap out of each other and anyone that agrees might be initially disappointed that our first round of Daredevil vs. Bullseye comes with some interesting costume revisions. While Murdock is still fighting in his black hood and sweats, we find that a fully deranged Pointdexter has been gifted a full blown Daredevil suit in order to completely besmirch the name of the vigilante, but while those aching to see Bethel in full Bullseye regalia may be initially pissed, it proves to add to the story magnificently. You see, it almost suggests that thanks to his dark attitude, Murdock almost seems to have lost his mantle only for someone else to pick it up and subvert it in a way that will rack up quite the innocent body count.
And rack it up Dex does and while past incarnations of the characters squaring off have resulted in more visually exagerated set pieces (I’m think the 2003 movie, here), here it’s treated as seriously as a heart attack. The fight is magnificently vicious which is smart enough to give both combatants noticely different fighting styles and weakness – Dex is way more dangerous at a distance while Murdock gets the advantage if he can get close enough – watching “Bullseye” (he hasn’t quite earned the title yet) fend off his foe with everything from a pencil to a stapler means we get one of the best and smartest fights in the show’s entire history.
However, as ruthlessly exciting as this episode is and as shocking as it is to see Matt defeated with a pair of scissors jutting out of his arm, I can’t help but worry that thecshow will probably follow it up with the standard two or three dead episodes that always seems to occur at some point during a season of the Netflix era. Still, until we find out, The Devil You Know manages to balance it’s characters, it’s action and it’s symbolism in such a way that this is brutally peak superhero televison that simply can’t miss…
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