Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2 (Review) 

Rating: 4 out of 5

IT’S always good when a genre show decides to take a few risks - and Daredevil: Born Again’s sophomore run did just that by grounding its story in a gritty, street-level reality that self-consciously held a mirror up to present day America.

Building on the successes of its first season, the show posed moral and ethical dilemmas for all of its characters, both good and bad, allowing for nuance and complexity as well as some genuinely dark decisions.

The central story continued to pit Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, aka blind lawyer Matt Murdoch, against Vincent D’Onofrio’s Mayor Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, as the latter assumes authoritarian control of New York and sets about hunting down superheroes/vigilantes and anyone who sympathises with them.

It’s a tinderbox waiting to go off - but one that, with its civil rights infringements, and abuses of power (complete with ICE-style police enforcement), clearly offers up some bruising social commentary, with Fisk an obvious allegory for Trump.

It brings a new relevance to a show that could easily have been written off as just another superhero offering.

What’s more, returning showrunner Dario Scardapane gets to analyse the physical and mental cost of those caught up in the struggle, whether it’s Murdoch continuing to fight against his darker, more vengeful urges or even Fisk attempting to cling to some kind of humanity, aided by his wife and partner-in-crime Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer).

Supporting characters are also put through the wringer. On both sides. Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page must wrestle with her own grief and anger over the death of Foggy in the previous season, while even Benjamin Poindexter, aka Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), seems to want a shot at redemption, while still emerging as - arguably - the show’s most prolific killing machine.

And then there’s mayoral aide Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini), another scene-stealer, whose loyalties are torn between his ambitions with Fisk and his feelings for BB Urich (Genneya Walton), a reporter leaking key intel about Fisk’s inner circle and correcting the misinformation being peddled by his office.

The show’s willingness to embrace complexity and nuance makes it stronger, asking as many questions of the audience as it does its characters.

This also gives rise to some truly great individual episodes, the first of which - Gloves Off (aka episode 4) - combined thrilling action with trademark emotional complexity and a doozy of a climax. The brilliance was established early on, with a virtuosos (and much memed) sequence involving Bullseye’s morning routine before he ambushes a troop of Fisk’s task force in a diner. It’s comedic and supremely well choreographed - and helped turn Bullseye from out and out villain to beloved anti-hero.

By episode’s end, however, Bullseye had also been responsible for an assassination attempt on Fisk, during a boxing match, that would ultimately cost Vanessa her life. And to add complexity to an already perverse situation, Daredevil ends up saving Bullseye from near-certain death - an action that further places him at odds with his own sense of right and wrong, and which threatens to undermine his relationship with Karen.

Follow-up episode The Grand Design maintained the momentum, taking time to examine the fallout from the boxing match, not least for Murdoch as he attempted to decide whether to leave Bullseye for dead. Instead, a flashback to a crucial time with Foggy, involving another bold decision to do the right thing, helped guide Murdoch to offering Bullseye an unlikely shot at salvation.

The episode also served as a nice way to ‘bring back’ fan favourite Foggy.

And talking of bringing back, the return of Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) also gave the die-hard fans plenty to cheer, both with her own kick-ass brand of action and courtesy of her continued chemistry with Cox.

Another episode worth talking about was penultimate offering The Hateful Darkness (episode 7), in which the lives of several characters hung in the balance. For much of it, BB appeared certain to die at the hands of Fisk’s ruthless right-hand button man Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan, also brilliant), as he keeps her captive at an apartment.

But aware of Fisk’s growing monstrosities and his capacity for violent rage, Blake experiences a last minute change of heart (all too aware of his own brush with death) and allows BB to leave; sealing his own fate in the process. The final scene involved Cashman reluctantly shooting Blake in the head, having previously tortured him for information. It was a cold, sobering action - and one that underlined the show’s ability to surprise.

Gandolfini did some excellent soul-searching work here… his realisation that he stood on the wrong side of the NY power struggle and had backed the wrong guy painful to watch. His chemistry with Froushan was also great too - the two actors having built a strong camaraderie ahead of this episode, which made that final gunshot all the more heartbreaking.

In what was a hugely busy episode, Murdoch also survived his own assassination attempt, Bullseye came to the rescue of another key Murdoch informant, and Karen survived not one, but two perilous encounters: firstly with Fisk, when he visited her in prison, and then with Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), an attorney still traumatised by her season one encounter with Muse (now working for Fisk).

A shoutout also deserves to go to episode six, Requiem, and the moment when Murdoch visits a still grieving Fisk to discuss a non-violent way out for both of them, culminating in a full on fight that really did exhilarate. A shot of Daredevil’s iconic shadow on the side of Fisk’s face, as he approached, was a highlight - and the high point of a show that consistently maintained high production values.

If the season finale lacked the out and out bombast of some standalone episodes and moments, it still brought things to a satisfying close, while setting in motion new directions and possibilities for the incoming third season - including the notable return of Luke Cage, a new direction for Bullseye and the sight of Matt Murdoch in prison (which sets up a fan favourite comic book arc).

It also brought the Daredevil-Kingpin battle to a conclusion with equal parts intelligence (via legal manoeuvres) and brawn (Fisk being outwitted and resorting to crunching physical violence). But it did so while avoiding another direct smack down between the big two adversaries - their final moments together assuming more of an ideological discussion in which the lawyer and pragmatist in Murdoch was allowed to hold sway, even though it eventually came with immense personal sacrifice.

A final shot of an imprisoned Murdoch allowing himself a self-satisfied smile at how things had worked out was loaded with the kind of irony and emotional complexity that epitomised Daredevil at its very best, which is what season two consistently was.

Certificate: 16+

Episodes: 8