Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 1
"The Northern Star"
Writer: Dario Scardapane
Directors: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson
Cast: Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Margarita Levieva, Matthew Lillard, Tony Dalton, Michael Gandolfini, Nikki M. James, Arty Froushan, Genneya Walton, Zabryna Guevara, Clark Johnson, Ayelet Zurer
Daredevil is a fascinating character. This lawyer-turned-vigilante has a way of wresting the best work out of any creator that dares take him on. To look back at Daredevil's publishing history is to see, issue after issue, volume after volume, an increasingly tall stack of the best comics in every respective creator's career. In the 48-ish hours that this episode has spent lurking in my brain, I keep thinking — why him? Why a blind, depressive, Catholic who's addicted to making the worst choices while chasing the most moral outcomes? I won't dwell on it here, but, compared to the Netflix seasons, Born Again Season 1 was a hell of a stumble. But now? I think we're at the start of something truly special.
And it all starts with Matt Murdock (Cox) finally getting a damn win. You get to see the devil — exhausted from single-handedly capsizing a massive tanker off the coast of Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood — smile. DD did it and he made sure Kingpin got the message, shoving his newly-adorned chest logo in the security camera as he clubs a bunch of goons. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen is on a mission, and he may have just won the war.
This opening action scene accomplishes a lot. Incoming/new showrunner Scardapane (Season 1's production was weird!) and directors Moorhead and Benson use this bit of brutal choreography to do a lot of showing, very little telling. We don't know how long it's been since the end of Season 1 and Mayor Fisk's fascist takeover of NYC and deployment of ICE — I mean AVTF agents. It's been a little while, long enough for Matt and his partner Karen Page (Woll) to somehow piss Fisk off even more than normal. Matt's been missing long enough to rattle his law partner, Kirsten McDuffie (James). Karen's been active in the fight long enough to become a wanted fugitive, long enough to amass a wig collection to rival Darlene Mitchell's. Our scrappy heroes, who've carved a love nook out of their old hangout spot, Josie's, have even strung together a loose network of everyday heroes, New Yorkers feeding them info on the down low, leaving manila folders in bodegas (smart move because, trust me, there are weirder things in bodegas). And the weeks/month(s?) of offscreen urban war have come to a head in this opener.
The stakes: remember that port that Kingpin was so desperate to open in Season 1? It's open, active, and being used to smuggle all sorts of nasty things into the city. This time, as Daredevil discovers, the tanker's secretly carrying so many extreme weapons of war that it would even make the Punisher say, "Wow ... that's a lot." DD doesn't have time to figure out what Fisk is preparing for. The captain was instructed to blow the ship up should it be boarded, and he follows orders. Fortunately for our favorite stowaway, his super senses — once again, wonderfully demonstrated by the disorienting ballet of aspect ratios — hear the ticking and chuck the bomb into a weapons container. This contains the blast just enough to do the trick. Instead of sinking to the bottom of the Gowanus, only one end of the tanker is wrecked. That end sinks, hitting the bottom of the bay and leaving the other end of the Northern Star hilariously sticking up above the surface — like a huge, steel-plated middle finger to Fisk.
This absolutely was not Daredevil's plan. He didn't know what the tanker was carrying. He didn't know there would be a bomb. I mean, there's always a bomb when you're a superhero, you know? But you don't know when or where there will be a bomb. Matt managed to 1. Find out what Fisk was smuggling into NYC and 2. Leave all of that nasty evidence splayed out for all of the world to see.
Daredevil got lucky.
For once. Matt Murdock had a good night.
No wonder our good boy is smiling.
This sets Fisk's half of the narrative in motion. D'Onofrio is, of course, as menacing and captivating a presence as ever, but I gotta admit: Wilson Fisk kinda seems in over his head. Don't get me wrong: He still has, like, a third of the series regulars in his pocket. Psychiatrist Heather Glenn (Levieva) is so racked with PTSD from her near-death run-in with Muse that she's completely in Fisk's thrall. Tasked with doling out fabricated psych evals for all the captive vigilantes, we see her diagnose Hawkeye alum Jack Duquesne (Dalton, as charming as ever — even in interrogation) as a sociopath because that's what Fisk's DA needs to lock the alleged Swordsman away. We see last season's moral compass, political advisor Sheila Rivera (Guevara) completely subservient to a man she knows is evil. And the Gen Z news-fluencer BB Urich (Walton) gave up all journalistic integrity to start making sunshine-y propaganda Reels for Fisk, the monster she suspects of killing her uncle Ben (not that Uncle Ben — more on this in a sec).
But yeah — Fisk's grip on New York City remains tight, but you can see the beads of sweat forming after the Northern Star incident, especially as New York state starts to get involved. Like, even IRL, the most corrupt mayors of New York City have problems with New York state government. Fisk's reach can't extend all the way to Buffalo! Now he has the state attorney general breathing down his neck. Fortunately, Fisk has a mysterious new ally on his side: Mr. Charles (Lillard).
I gotta say, it is wild to have borne witness to Matthew Lillard's truly bonkers career trajectory. When I was in high school, Lillard was the embodiment of tacky, whacked-out, pansexual trickery thanks to Hackers and Scream. I don't care if you are L, G, B, T, or +: if you're a millennial and saw Hackers in the '90s, you remember Cereal Killer. Then he got cast as Shaggy in James Gunn's (never forget that!!!) Scooby-Doo film franchise, trading in his manic eyes for googly ones as he committed hard to the bit. Lillard became the voice of Shaggy, too! For, like, 20 years! [looks at IMDb] Oh my god, he's still voicing Shaggy! Now Lillard, void of the kind of freeze-frame cosmetic tech that actors over 50 usually fall for, has naturally aged into a true character actor. All that chaotic energy, reigned in and refined, honed, still simmering underneath the guise of just a dude.
And now he's C.I.A. agent "Mr. Charles," which is the kind of name that teases a big reveal that I am 90% sure is not coming. He's cocksure enough to low-key disrespect Fisk's wife Vanessa (Zurer) to her and his face; this is the one time that Fisk actually seems steadfastly malicious in this episode. You don't mess with Vanessa. But that gets smoothed over, because Mr. Charles is here to help. They have to get all those weapons off the ship in secret. And instead of them all being obliterated and scattered across the floor of the bay, they're all intact and just sitting there. Does Fisk have enough men to get all those weapons — enough disposable men? Because, as we see when the AWOL ship captain is found in Astoria and mercilessly executed, those weapons are a secret that has to be kept.
Wow, I haven't talked much about Daredevil yet. That is, actually, a good thing. The biggest problem I had with last season was the complete lack of characters. The revival's original showrunners inexplicably ditched Foggy (Elden Henson) and Karen, meaning they couldn't be part of the show when Scardapane took over. Foggy was, therefore, killed (sigh) and Karen was shipped off to San Francisco. Matt was left alone with a brand new supporting cast of characters who were barely in the show. To prove this, look at what we get from Kirsten McDuffie, BB Urich, and Cherry (Johnson) in this episode compared to all of last season. Okay, Cherry got some good scenes in Season 1, but nowhere near enough.
But Kirsten? She gets a fantastic sparring scene with Fisk's District Attorney Hochberg (John Benjamin Hickey), one where you see all of her resolve claw its way out of her soul and through her mouth with a resounding "fuck you."
And BB gets two scenes illustrating her new dual life. In one, she's partying with smarmy Deputy Mayor Daniel (Gandolfini), kind-of-maybe-not-but-hmmm reeled in by his deceptively dopey charm? Gandolfini is perfect for this role because you want to love him — largely due to the fact that he's the son of the beloved, gone-too-soon James Gandolfini. Born Again wisely capitalizes on the IRL emotions a lot of viewers have for the actor, placing them onto Daniel, earnestly so. Because, like, he's a kid! What's he doing here? How we feel about Michael Gandolfini is how BB no doubt feels about Daniel Blake, and It's the perfect cover for whatever lurks in Daniel's cutthroat heart.
But BB — she's all pro-Fisk while she's with Daniel. But then we get a scene of her induction into Daredevil's network of supporters. All that stuff with Daniel is an act; in fact, it's screamingly obvious that she's also the one in the unsettling Mayor Fisk mask making anti-fascist meme videos. But this scene, a contender for the best scene of the episode, is what I have personally been waiting for since BB was added to the cast. BB finding someone who actually knew her uncle, it's beautiful. Having that person confirm that Fisk definitely killed her uncle, gut-wrenching. Having that person then say that she is likely the reason why Fisk killed her uncle, heartbreaking. This is the kind of lived-in memory that was largely absent from Season 1 when it was retrofitted from a reboot to a revival. But here, you feel a thread being tugged on after just laying there for — oh my god, 11 years.
And now, Daredevil. He used up all his luck in the opening scene, and the universe has a way of balancing things out. After all, Daredevil is a vigilante, and the AVTF is laying siege to his city. I don't, like, need to point this out, but: the AVTF is ICE. And they are the bad guys. So, yeah, ICE is bad. And it doesn't matter that Season 2 was filmed before ICE agents murdered American citizens in cold blood earlier this year. Like Andor last year, Born Again is pulling directly from the Gestapo playbook for its villains — and if the AVTF looks a lot like ICE, well, there's a reason why.
In this episode, we get to behold the AVTF in full force, kitted up in their hyper macho big boy playtime tactical gear, complete with stolen Punisher emblem (completely ignoring the fact that the actual Punisher disowned them, spectacularly, in the most brutal fashion possible). They burst into a restaurant, demanding that the owner turn over a "suspect." They beat the owner when she does not comply. Later, we see her join Daredevil's network, too.
And all that brings us to the last scene of the episode. The AVTF bursts down Cherry's door, ties him up, and beats him, determined to bring the Devil out from hiding. The scene is brutal, largely because Cherry knows these guys. Cherry is a respected, retired detective. And now here these basic-ass cops are, playing soldier, high on power, breaking the law in service of evil. One even has an eyepatch, because a twirly mustache would be to on the nose (actually, below the nose). Daredevil's rescue attempt is gloriously choreographed, but complicated by the fact that Cherry's having a heart attack that Matt can hear. He's distracted, he gets beaten, down on the floor, mask off, Cherry gasping, everything going black, until — luck.
Three impossible headshots connect. And then a calling card in the form of a throwing knife. "You're welcome" and a bullseye carved into it. Good luck, Matt — you're gonna need it.
The more I sit with this entire package and think about what lies ahead, the more thrilled I get. This is the opposite of what happened with Season 1, where the second half of the premiere signaled a shift from prestige to procedural that gave me pause. But this time? This episode presents the essence of Daredevil, that alchemical influence that inspires storytellers to just go off. It's evident in every millisecond of this episode through Benson and Moorhead's direction, which plays with staging, distance, depth of field in intentional — invasive — ways. Some of it's aggressive, like the literal tilting of Heather's world as she descends further into vile complacency. And Hillary Fyfe Spera's cinematography adds a literal grit to everything. Everything about it screams dirty '70s NYC mob thriller, and rightly so.
We're seeing the show lean all the way into what it set up in Season 1's brilliant finale. We're seeing the uncomfortable exploration of what it means to exist in a reality that has been hijacked by evil. What do you do when faced with evil? When you are asked to step up or lie down? Karen Page grabs a punching bag, Heather Glenn pulls out an eraser. A small business owner defies armed thugs and joins the resistance — a cause that she is genuinely shocked has come to her doorstep, but it has.
And Daredevil? There was never a question. Matt Murdock has always done the right thing, often at the wrong time, frequently in the wrong way, sometimes with the wrong woman. But where every other season of the show saddled Murdock with doubts for various reasons, logical reasons why he should — or even could — walk away from this battle, Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 is all in. To me, that's why he has a "DD" on his chest now, after seasons of resisting the name and calling himself "the devil of Hell's Kitchen" (TDOHK would look very stupid on his chest). The threat is so great, the evil so pervasive, there is nothing else but the fight. Matt Murdock is, for all intents and purposes, dead. This is Daredevil: Born.
And there's no better hero to have right now.
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