“Gloves off” is a term that proves to be especially fitting for this second season of Daredevil: Born Again, as it usually means to stop acting with restraint, politeness, or caution, and instead adopt a fierce, aggressive approach to a conflict or competition – and that certainly fits what we’ve seen so far to a tee. Leaving the teething problems of season one far behind it, the new and improved Born Again has finally managed to live up to the bewitching brutality of the Netflix years, while still stirring in that MCU special sauce and we’re only halfway through the season.
However, while we’ve had plenty of opportunity to witness Daredevil lay some major pain on the fascist forces of the AVTF, it’s about time that the other main players got to flex those considerable muscles too. Yep, as you may well know, I’m always happy whenever a Bullseye heavy episode raises its head, but add to this that it’s Fight Night for Wilson Fisk too, and you just may have the best episode of the MCU era of Daredevil to date.
As the charity boxing event that’ll see Mayor Wilson Fisk step into the ring draws near, one character who has sat on the sidelines long enough is Benjamin “Bullseye” Poindexter. As we follow him from his daily routine of exercise, breakfast and cracking those lethal digits of his, he decides to finally advertise his return by calling in a fake Punisher sighting and then slaughtering the AVTF team that shows up. It’s an unmistakable calling card and once they get wind of it, both Fisk and an underground Matt Murdock both know to gird their loins.
However, while Murdock and his small New York rebellion have scored a massive moral victory by breaking out all the people wrongfully held under the Safer Streets program, they were still framed for the murder of the crew of the Northern Star – alternatively, Fisk is still getting pressure from CIA creep, Mr. Charles about the weapons delivery, so both sides are getting black eyes at something of a similar rate.
However, after Vanessa Fisk’s visit to Govenor McCaffrey provides fruitful to the future of Red Hook, it seems that all the Fisk’s have left to do is use his boxing exhibition flush out Bullseye and finally stamp him out for good. But as we well know, nothing really goes to plan in the world of Daredevil as the ever-shifting variables prove to be impossible to predict and as Fisk shows the crowd that his 300 plus pound bulk is not just for show, disaster is bound to follow.
In his new deluded mindset of a “hero”, Bullseye shows up to mete swift, sharp, pointy justice to the Fisks in a hypocritical attempt to save New York, but during their brief, three-way scrap, has the warring trio of Daredevil, Fisk and Bullseye sealed the fate and future of the Big Apple?
While the last three episodes have done some exemplary work grounding the Daredevil/MCU era in real world politics, Gloves Off use this as a launch pad to take the show back to showing the struggle between the show’s triple threats as a far more physical beast. Simply put, Daredevil hasn’t traded blows with Bulleye properly since the first episode of the first season of Born Again and he’s barely laid a finger (or billy club) on Fisk since 2018, so having the show contract and bring all three together in the same place is genuinely something I’ve been dying to see for a very long time and thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. Yes, there’s still those real-world politics swirling around thanks to Matthew Lillard’s CIA asshole and Lili Taylor’s Govenor revealing that she’s willing to get into bed with the Fisks if Vanessa is the face of it, but for the most part, the episode is all about getting back to masked dude beating the crap out of each other.
Benefitting most from this, unsurprisingly, is Wilson Bethal’s Poindexter, who up until now has been a vital, but rather nebulous presence in the MCU, despite racking up a rather alarming body count. However, for the first time since the Netflix years, we finally get to spend some quality time with the dextrous killer as he embarks on his new role as a self proclaimed defender of justice. This fits in perfectly with a lot of his themes back in season 3 of the Netflix show that saw the former FBI agent spectacularly fall from grace and become Wilson Fisk’s hitman. This version of Poindexter has always desperately wanted to be a white hat, despite the fact that he really enjoys killing things, and watching him go about his morning like an average Joe proves to be both amusing and unnerving in equal measure (watching him flip his eggs without looking is especially cool). And then he gets to murder an entire diner of AVTF agents in an orgy of cutlery flinging destruction proves to be thoroughly exhilarating.
The same could be said of the treatment of Wilson Fisk during this episode as we finally get him out from behind that hefty desk and channel that white hot savagery while we’re at it. It’s not like we haven’t seen Vincent D’Onofrio’s perfect take of the character throw his substantial weight around recently (just ask Commissioner Gallo’s mandible bone), but watching him throw hands gives us a timely reminder about how physically imposing the Kingpin truly is. However, Daredevil is always a show that works best when it’s main characters are in something of a free fall, and after episodes after episode of Fisk narrowly edging out on top, it’s high time the fat man took an L. And Jesus Christ, what and L. After the Mayor shows that he’s got what it takes to out-power a former heavyweight boxer, Bullseye takes the bait and attempts to slay his former benifactor, but in the chaos that sees guns drawn, throwing knives whizzing through the air and a timely intervention by Daredevil that essentially helps one of his two nemesis’ get away, we find that a bit of stray shrapnel has alarmingly found its way into Vanessa Fisk’s temple. It’s especially cruel when you consider that the offending piece of debris came from Fisk trying to deflect a projectile (a glass statuette of himself, no less) with the heavyweight championship belt and while we don’t have confirmation that Mrs. Fisk is dead (Vanessa does has a comic book history of being in comas), it can’t be good news for anyone Wilson even has a passing dislike of.
It’s worth noting that despite all the flying knives, lightning quick fights and various spotlights on the villains, the episode also does a good job of not letting Matt Murdock get swamped by all these other plot threads. Not only does Charlie Cox get to do a bunch of detective work and brawl with Bullseye multiple times, but he even gets to spend time in the church where he was born (Netflix flashbacks ahoy!), reference his mother and wince at the news that the charity boxing match is taking place where his father used to train. I guess everyone is catching strays this episode…
After skillfully building up a world crackling with social relevance, Daredevil: Born Again uses it as a magnificent backdrop as it goes back to indulging us with comic book-forged grudge matches and the result is marvellous. Yes, holding up a mirror to real-world affairs is great, but it proves to be even better when a trio of costumed men who fucking hate each other use it as their own personal arena. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Bulleye episodes never miss…
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