Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episodes 2-3
"Shoot the Moon" / "The Scales and the Sword"
Writers: Dario Scardapane / Heather Bellson
Directors: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson / Solvan "Slick" Naim
Cast: Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Wilson Bethel, Margarita Levieva, Lili Taylor, Tony Dalton, Michael Gandolfini, Nikki M. James, Arty Froushan, Genneya Walton, Zabryna Guevara, Clark Johnson, Ayelet Zurer, Camila Rodriquez
"Integrity can cost." What was inferred in the premiere is now text, actual dialogue spoken aloud by one character to another. This season is about integrity and the cost of maintaining it in the face of truly incomprehensible adversity. Every character is facing some moral dilemma, some real "roads diverged in a yellow wood" type stuff — and Daredevil: Born Again has wasted no time in ratcheting up the tension. The show is paced like a house on fire.
What makes Born Again Season 2 already feel leaps and bounds better and bolder than Season 1 is its cast. I frequently moaned about how sparse Season 1 felt, how it felt like Daredevil was the only character on the show. The opposite is true of Season 2. In fact, the cast is so stacked that it borders on distracting, like Daredevil is being edged out of his own show. That's a complaint that could potentially be made, but it's not one that I'm ready to make just yet — because the entire cast is truly crushing it, and there is more than enough story to go around.
These two episodes, "Shoot the Moon" and "The Scales and the Sword," were released together, and it makes sense, structurally. These two feel like a two-parter in spirit if not name, as they primarily deal with — surprisingly — wrapping up the whole Northern Star, AVTF reign of terror, and vigilante internment storylines. Okay, I don't actually think all those plotlines are over, but I think there's a version of this show from the 2010s where 13 70-minute episodes were devoted to the build-up to Jacques Ducquesne's show trial. The fact that the show blew through this much plot, this thoroughly, this quickly, has me excited for what's coming next.
But to back up a bit — let's start with what Daredevil himself is up to. He and Karen are trying to track down the sole survivor from the initial Northern Star wreck, a hunt that gets derailed when Mayor Fisk gets the brilliant idea to plaster the "missing" Matt Murdock's face all over the city under the guise of "bringing the hero home." Now the AVTF is looking for Daredevil and every New Yorker is looking for Murdock. It's pretty genius — but that plan is still not a match for the tried-and-true MCU disguise of sunglasses and a baseball cap. And in Karen's case, a Party City bob.
Still, we get to see a new side of Matt this time, one that we haven't seen over this character's incredibly long run on TV: swashbuckling Daredevil. Okay, he's not quipping and the tone of the show is as grim as ever, and DD ends every fight by having what sounds like an asthma attack, but he cracks smiles now. Look at the end of "Shoot the Moon," when his and Karen's hideaway in the back of Josie's is raided by AVTF cops. He smiles after grabbing a gun. It's a weird takeaway, maybe, but I'm happy that Matt has found a kind of internal/external harmony ... even if it came with the sacrifice of his secret identity.
And then there's Karen, who is every bit Daredevil's equal in terms of life-on-the-line-ness. Karen is out there in the field, with Matt, fighting — and capturing! — enemy combatants. This is a Karen who, the show recognizes, has been through some shit — and a Karen who has two vigilante role models in her life. After being run out of their home, Karen and Matt reconvene at Frank Castle's old hideout. Karen managed to bring an AVTF agent, a textbook whippersnapper, back with her, much to DD's chagrin. But this guy wants to help, and he has an access key to the Red Hook dock as an offering. It's a good thing that Matt's a human lie detector.
But as simpatico as Karen and Matt seem, I do like how this scene puts tension on their partnership. First of all, capturing an AVTF agent, "hunting" them as Karen says, doesn't sit right with Matt. And then there's Karen's simmering inclination towards an "ends justify the means" approach that Matt just can't get behind. Living in the world as it is now, I hear everything Karen is saying, and I hear her exasperation when she has to say that, ugh, no, of course killing Fisk is wrong, yadda yadda yadda. But, as she points out, Vanessa had Foggy — their best friend — killed ... "and nothing fucking happened."
"And nothing fucking happened."
Wow, if that doesn't resonate!!! And I have to imagine, this resonates with Matt, too. Because while I do find him cracking a smile while cracking skulls to be a bit charming, it's also ... like ... Matt's violent as hell. In the conclusion of the two-parter, when he's breaking all of the "vigilantes" out of their Red Hook jail, he literally pokes holes in cops with his billy club and shows just a modicum of restraint. We have to be on a collision course with Matt's and Karen's shared rage.
Let's keep talking about the good guys for a second, because we're assembling our own little ... Quasi-Defenders, maybe. There's Daredevil and Karen Page, and then there's Swordsman, a guilty-until-proven-innocent (lol no chance) vigilante, and the premiere subject of Mayor Fisk's highly publicized vigilante trials. Gotta say, Jack/Swordsman is an example of the MCU working, firing on all cylinders, coalescing to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. Jack was a comic relief, mom's-annoying-boyfriend character in Hawkeye. Now, by putting his devil-may-care charisma in shackles and a cage, and front-and-center in such a heavy allegory as this one, Tony Dalton has infused the character with way more soul than was possibly initially intended. The way Jack knows all of this is a foregone conclusion, despite the best efforts of his incredibly rushed lawyer, Kirsten McDuffie, it really makes you root for the guy. And then when he's eventually freed and called upon to fight alongside DD in a grand prison break? I'm going to be honest here: Watching Tony Dalton fence with a stick of rebar while wearing the remains of a tuxedo ... was incredibly hot. And mercifully, he survived the escape, driving all the prisoners out of Red Hook (and hopefully avoiding traffic).
Let's talk Kirsten: Nikki M. James is a real standout already, and it has to be noted that, with Charlie Cox in full superhero mode, she is now shouldering the weight of the show's entire legal content. And she's doing so with aplomb. There is a real righteous fury bubbling under her put together, professional demeanor, and I really live for it. I really enjoyed her being the one to confront Heather on that "hatchet job" of a psych eval she gave Jack. I loved how, even though she has the D.A. on her ass and is prepping for the first in a string of trials of the century, she still takes time to comfort and support a teenage girl whose aunt was wrongfully detained by ICE — I mean, the AVTF. But, you get it.
But out of everyone, Kirsten really had the clutch hero moment of the entire two-hour experience: the way she clocked every step, every sound of her blindfolded escort to Jack's prison cell and was able to relay it to Daredevil? Killer stuff, just great. I would like to think she's going to be let in on the secret identity thing sooner rather than later.
Now, that teenage girl I mentioned! The return of Angela del Toro, niece of Hector Ayala, the White Tiger. I loved seeing her again, as the White Tiger storyline was one of the more successful ones last season. Watching her aunt be arrested as a vigilante for daring to touch a violent cop, well, that's the world we live in, too. And I'm actually really glad that, so far, there's no inkling of mystical white tiger energy emanating from Angela's uncle's necklace. I like that, at least as of right now, her story is one of a Gen Z kid who is sick of watching adults do nothing, who — true to what we saw of her last season — takes matters into her own hands. She came through at the Red Hook prison break, giving Karen help Karen didn't even know she needed.
Then there's BB Urich, who we don't get much of in these episodes, although it is confirmed that she is the one behind the viral anti-Kingpin videos. Which ... duh? Not only was that obvious to us as viewers, it has to be obvious to everyone in the mayor's office. The first person you would look into would be the social media person. Daniel Blake knows it's her; he invites BB over for a dinner that he whipped up (with help from Julia Child, which ... I hate how ... cute this little skeezeball can be). This is where that line comes up: "Integrity can cost." Blake has said, "Fuck integrity, I have a dope apartment in Manhattan and I'm the Deputy Mayor of New York City!" Blake has made the kind of moral concessions that, um, nearly everyone with even a whiff of influence has made over the last ten years. And he's done it gleefully. Why can't his friend BB do the same? (There's the whole "the mayor murdered my uncle" thing, for starters ...)
But how much does Blake like BB? Integrity can cost, but what about love? Or, maybe a more accurate description, infatuation? When Fisk confronts Blake about these embarrassing videos, Fisk asks Blake if he's protecting anyone. Blake immediately says he's protecting Fisk, which is the right answer, and maybe it's even half right. But Blake is clearly protecting BB, too. And what will happen once Sheila, Fisk, or — most likely — Buck catches on and comes for BB? There's something brewing here, including a begrudging respect between Buck and Blake that I did not see coming. The way Blake convinced Buck to eat that hot dog, man, Daniel Blake is actually smooth, actually a threat. There is some Survivor shit going on in the mayor's office.
Then there's Chief-of-Staff Shiela and Kingpin's personal psychiatrist, Heather Glenn. We get a brief moment of regret from Shiela, who's reminded of the upstanding life she could be living if she'd taken a job with the governor (Lili Taylor! What a casting coup! Love this!). But Heather? Heather is damaged — and you get why. As she tells Kirsten in their run-in outside the courthouse, it is kinda annoying when a vigilante tries to carve you up like an art piece. But Heather is going through something more than she's letting on, and she's not exactly hiding her damage here. I fear Sheila is going to turn towards the light and Heather's going to go dark, and I don't think it'll end well for either.
And lastly — oh my god there are so many people on this show! — the Fisks. These episodes really underlined the amount of power these two currently wield. As Karen noted, they're untouchable. The governor of New York has to come down and personally confront Fisk over this Northern Star debacle, and she has to use an obscure, century-old legal loophole (one discovered and secretly delivered by Karen) in order to shut the port down. We get a look at the Fisks' day to day, though, which is a string of events and dinners where they are hailed as heroes (I hate how much this is like real life). Vanessa plays matchmaker with her employees, Fisk prepares for a charity boxing match — they're above the fray, mostly.
Because Vanessa is being hunted by the most dangerous man in NYC: Bullseye, who we actually don't see a lot of this episode. His two kills, those AVTF goons in the elevator, is shot with a bit of sinister delight. Where Bullseye's story is going (why is he looking for Matt's mom???) is beyond me.
And Fisk, well, he ends the episode by turning what could have been a disaster into a win. After Daredevil and friends free all of his political prisoners, Fisk seizes the opportunity to blow up the Northern Star, killing all of the average Joe witnesses he hired to retrieve all those guns. Now not only can he blame the jailbreak on Daredevil, he can also use DD as a scapegoat for the explosion, mayhem, and death. Fisk stays winning.
As for what's next, I don't have a clue. The season has already blown up a status quo that could have easily lasted another couple episodes. One thing is clear: this is a show that's not pulling any punches.
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