Usually when Marvel releases more than two episodes at a time on Disney+, it hints that we’ve got a couple of slow burning installments due to lap up with our eager eyeballs. However, while the thought of Daredevil: Born Again season 2 slowing down a tad so soon after starting may cause the action junkies among us to fidget impatiently, there’s a feelong that the world of Matt Murdock has grown so exponentially, it’s actually a bit of a relief to take a step back and truly sense those surroundings.
As season premiers go, Daredevil: Born Again season 2 was as dense and intricate a show as Marvel has ever put out, spinning real world politics into a complex web that ducked and weaved through the large cast like a lithe boxer. But can the show manage sustain the bulk of merging a gritty crime show with violent superhero shenanigans while preventing Daredevil himself from getting lost in the shuffle?
Only Matt Murdock could find that the life of a costumed, underground freedom fighter gets ever more complicated. Not only has his friend and confidant, Cherry, suffered a heart attack, but after getting unmasked by the AVTF, Daredevil has his fat pulled from the fire when his old enemy Bullseye snipes his attackers into oblivion as some form of twisted absolution. Of course, whatever bizarre plan the assassin has cooked up for himself this time has to wait, even though he really does seem to be targeting Murdock’s enemies is some baffling act of redemption. As Matt and Karen try to figure out their next move, Mayor Fisk changes the rules of the game once more.
While he well knows that Murdock and Daredevil are one and the same, the fact that Murdock publicly saved his life from a bullet from Bullseye means that he simply can’t just come right out and reveal his secret identity. However, by maintaining that Murdock is missing under suspicious circumstances rather than simply being off the grid, he now cunningly has the public hunting for both personas of his arch nemesis. But while his movements have been severely limited by Fisk’s latest move, Murdock has to take a back seat as the immense supporting cast between him and Fisk moving in their relative orbits.
After the AVTF arrests Soledad (the wife of slain vigilante Hector Ayala) during a misunderstanding, her niece, Angela, goes to the offices of Kirsten McDuffie to reclaim the magical pendant that allowed her uncle to fight crime as White Tiger. Elsewhere, the tension between puff piece reporter BB and Fisk’s Deputy Mayor of Communications grows when sensitive details are leaked out of city hall and posted online as part of the anti-Fisk campaign BB is secretly running. Add to this that Vanessa Fisk is having a spot of PTSD thanks to the threat of Bullseye being on the loose and it’s safe to say that the players in this drama are all fairly on edge – but when the AVTF mamage to raid Murdock’s safe house, Karen takes a hostage that might start to cross a line…
While the opening salvo of season 2 was great, it was such a dense episode that I didn’t even have room to mention some of the visual flourishes directors Benson and Moorhead put into the episode that enhanced the experience further – luckily, they’re back for this episode too, so now that the vast interlocking mechanics of that plot have groaned into motion, I’ve got some breathing room of my own to cover them. I have to say, I’m loving the visual quirks that the show has started to give some of its more extreme characters more of a visual presence and whomever thought to gradually change the aspect ratio of the show whenever Daredevil uses his super senses needs some sort of award, or tax break, or statue, or something as it proves to both me exhilaratingly subtle and ridiculously badass every time it happens. It also compliments the returning quirk of turning the contrast of the screen blue whenever Bullseye is making his presence felt and the lunatics decision to act on his deranged heroic impulses is a particular thread I’m looking forward to pursuing.
Elsewhere, we get some prime, Kingpin-brand scheming when Fisk manages to crush the skull of any plot discrepancies by helpfully articulating why he simply doesn’t out Murdock as Daredevil. Treading a nicely fine line between political optics and comic book logic, the massively malevolent Mayor reasons that trying to tie a “terrorist” (his words) to the blind lawyer who took a bullet for him would be too much of a stretch for the public and it’s impressive when you can explain away something so potentially silly with something that works.
But beyond Fisk trying to keep his house in order and Murdock finding that his options are growing more limited by the day, the majority of “Shoot The Moon” is mostly concerned with keeping the sizable supporting cast busy, while doubling down on making those real-world comparisons as deeply uncomfortable as possible. Watching the Anti-Vigilante Task Force go about their lawless business and abusing their power is quite the sight to see and it’s made all the more disconcerting when you realise that the episode was probably written and filmed before a lot of the issues we’ve seen on the news recently occurred. Marvel has stuck its toes into real-world politics before with varied results (She-Hulk’s commentary on misogynistic hate speech, Iron Man 3’s use of a puppet terrorist), but the use of the increasingly fascist practices of Fisk’s errand own personal police force is by far the most involved yet.
However, with this, the (hardly shocking) revelation that BB is the one behind the exaggerated features of the rubber Kingpin mask on her online campaign and the dual bouts of masked man PTSD that’s plaguing both Vanessa and Heather Glen, there’s so many socio-political irons in the fire that Daredevil is in danger of being a supporting character in his own drama. Oh, Charlie Cox gets some mercifully quiet moments with Deborah Ann Woll and gets to pull on the black and reds to pound on the AVTF a little more, but technically speaking, with the return of Angela and the potential rise of the White Tiger brewing, there’s probably even more stuff going on with the supporting cast in this episode than there was in the premier. Obviously I’m not complaining that Born Again is offering up gripping drama on a week by week basis, but with episodes two and three released on the same day, it feels like we’ve still got a lot of plot to move through before the superheroics take centre stage.
As fearlessly thought provoking as it is physically brutal, all sense of the uncertainty from season one has all been swept away by repeated poundings of a spring-loaded billy club. But while it’s comic book roots are still there (watching an enraged Fisk take out his frustrations on a trainer while sparring is classic Kingpin), the placement of eerily familiar politics in a main role means that Daredevil is hitting a little closer to home than usual. But that’s exactly what the medium is supposed to do, fight injustice – right?
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