Daredevil: Born Again Episode 4
"Sic Semper Systema"
Writers: David Feige, Jesse Wigutow
Directors: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Cast: Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Margarita Levieva, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, Kamar de los Reyes, Ayelet Zurer
I need to write about Daredevil: Born Again, Charlie Cox, Lady Gaga, and cuntiness (for the straights, I mean this kind of cunty).
I am, for the most part, Lady Gaga agnostic — a sacrilegious admission for a cis, white, gay man like myself. But Lady Gaga's initial ascension happened in 2008 when I was working for Wizard Entertainment and completely closeted from all of my coworkers. At that time, I just didn't know how being gay and working in comics would play in 2008. I've ... changed a lot in the past 17 years (skull emoji).
I am, as I went into in the first recaps for Born Again, a diehard Daredevil fan. This goes back to my college days, before I came out even to myself — back to the Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev era circa 2004. But Daredevil really grabbed my heart and squeezed it with the start of the Mark Waid/Paolo Rivera/Marcos Martin run in 2011. This was debonair Daredevil. Swashbuckling Daredevil. Midcentury modern aesthetic, clean lines, grace and wit — and, once lulled, grit. This, DD fans know, leads into the epic Waid/Chris Samnee run, where the storytellers masterfully wove dark and light in a saga where Matt Murdock's most persistent villain was depression. Hard relate.
In 2011, Lady Gaga entered her Born This Way era, an era that I recall deeply offended me because I was still grappling with internalized homophobia (see also: depression) and I was being told that this woman and this song were for me. I could either be a "drag" or be a "queen." No thank you. I saw myself in a blind lawyer with a habit of self-sabotage. Now in 2025 I'm also a drag queen. Like I said, things change.
I set the stage that way because I need to impress upon you, the reader, just how unusual it is for me to say this: Watching Lady Gaga's triumphant return to Saturday Night Live last week crystallized exactly how I feel about Daredevil: Born Again. Specifically, watching her perform "Killah" — a sexy, Bowie-infused, glam rock dirge about feeling your fucking oats — made me feel the way that I wanted to feel while watching Daredevil: Born Again.
The lady and the lawyer have switched places. It's 2025 and chaos reigns.
The "Killah" performance is just so cunty. It treats kind of a basic idea (how many "walk from backstage to the main stage" performances have we seen on SNL?) like the highest form of surrealist performance art. Lady Gaga, in a Bowie-cum-Prince accordion-pleated purple pantsuit, struts her way to the stage, flanked by two similarly-attired backup dancers who are doing the most. They stop along the way to do some midcentury interpretive choreo on the floor that slips into a goofy side spin, all with the straightest fucking face. Making it to the stage is a celebratory moment, where everyone is dressed like crayons in Savile Row tailoring. Lady Gaga bangs on some cymbals, lets loose a guttural scream, and then emerges from her purple pleated chrysalis in a blood red showgirl number. It's ridiculous, mesmerizing, so self-assured, and just absolutely confident. It feels like you have never believed in something as much as Lady Gaga believes in doing this performance.
The parallel here is also one of timing. The last time we saw Daredevil in a show bearing his name was in 2018, in the show's killer third Netflix season. And thanks to COVID-19 restricting the Chromatica era to living rooms, the last time Gaga's monsters got to see their diva do her thing was ... uh, I don't know Gaga canon at all but she was in A Star is Born in 2018. Safe to say, she hasn't done a full pop freakout like this in a while. That SNL performance and the rollout of her album Mayhem? That's their Lady Gaga: Born Again. This is her triumphant return and victory lap all in one. It's cathartic, baby.
That's what I wanted from Daredevil: Born Again — and, bitch, after a few weeks of waiting, "Sic Semper Systema" is the closest the series has come to serving that.
In this very specific metaphor, Charlie Cox is Lady Gaga — and this episode shows just how much of a grande dame he is. Our boy finally gets to show off in this episode, with scene after scene that pushes and pulls at every aspect of his incredibly well-defined personality (and physique — although I still curse whoever keeps handing Cox a razor to shave his naturally burly chest). This episode plants a Bowie knife in the plot and drags it horizontally, carving a thick, ragged line under Matt Murdock's character arc. Finally.
This development starts with Matt being assigned an incredibly open-and-shut case: a dude was busted stealing boxes of Fiddle Faddle from a bodega. The cashier is a witness, there are multiple security cams, and also Matt can clearly tell that the man, Leroy (Charlie Hudson III), is lying — especially when he floats blaming it on a Skrull as a possible defense. Still, Leroy demands parole. He will not accept any jail time. That means Matt has to really work to get what his client wants.
Before we get to the social commentary — can we just talk about how Matt Murdock flirts his way from 35 days in jail down to 10 with D.A. Sofija (Elizabeth A. Davis). Holy hell, Matt Murdock is hot — and I love that this is very much A Thing in the MCU. Cox and Davis have a thick back and forth over legal proceedings and precedent and philosophy — it's great. This is the Matt Murdock that we got to see in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and I am thrilled to see that side of him fully integrated into his own show.
And then there's the system. While this case is open-and-shut, it's also comically emblematic of how broken the system is. Leroy can't stay out of the system long enough to get on his feet, which leads to him breaking the law to survive, which puts him right back in the system again. He stole Fiddle Faddle because he was sick of eating literal garbage, garbage he had to eat because he was kicked off of food stamps for missing a check-in while he was — drumroll — in jail. Now the system is going to pay way more money to put Leroy back in jail than Leroy would have spent on Fiddle Faddle. And again, Matt Murdock, Human Lie Detector, knows this is the truth.
The system that he believes in sucks. The system that is keeping Hector Ayala's execution from being investigated sucks. And Matt has Hector's teenage niece Angela (Camila Rodriguez, in a heart-wrenching turn) and Leroy, a Fiddle Faddle felon, spelling this out for him.
As if that wasn't enough, Matt also hears this sermon from Frank Castle.
Jon Bernthal. Charlie Cox. Shouting. Punching. Crying. The scene is killer.
Matt finds the shell casing from Hector's execution just so quickly, exactly as easy as he knew it would be if the cops cared to look. The shell casing has a familiar skull logo on it, which leads Matt to Castle's lair in the basement of a basement of a nondescript facility.
To comment on plot for a second: Thank god we don't have to sit through Frank convincing Matt that he didn't do it. I also don't care that the show gives us no context for Frank's current state. Why does he have a lair? How does Matt know where it is? Skip the boring stuff and get to the goods — and this scene has the goods.
Bernthal's Frank Castle remains kind of a miracle, to me. Bernthal takes a character that I have no interest in — one who very easily slips into bland, macho, right-wing power fantasy territory for me — and gives him a soul. He gives him, especially in this scene, purpose. It's a harrowing purpose, sure, but the way Bernthal plays Castle's PTSD, his grief, his rage, it's all in harmony. And the show knows exactly what that song can do to Matt Murdock.
I don't know how Cox manages to take Matt from snarky to patronizing to a full sobbing breakdown in the course of one scene. It's a big ask, but this is a big scene. This is the scene. Frank sees something in Matt that I don't think Matt has realized yet: Frank sees that Matt is now on his level. He sees that Matt, this Matt, has lost his family too. Frank calls this out and orders Matt to say "his name," to stop pushing past his grief and his rage. He wants Matt to admit that justice was not served when Bullseye (they call Dex "Bullseye," finally!) was given life. Foggy didn't get life, did he?
This was Matt Murdock's come to Jesus moment, if Jesus was a reclusive veteran with an impressive arsenal and a bunch of merciless disciples that he derisively calls "bullshit fanboys." The episode ends with Matt ascending to the roof of his apartment building — where he has somehow conned his landlords into letting him have a storage unit on the roof where he can store his various helmets and billy clubs? What's that lease look like, Matt? Does maintenance have access to your Devil Closet? Whatever — it feels like Matt is close to suiting up again, thank god.
I don't want to give much real estate to the other half of the show, because it drags. Maybe that's intentional, as Wilson Fisk is learning that the day-to-day of being Mayor Fisk is excruciatingly dull (and involves multiple renditions of "We Built This City" in quite possibly the funniest running joke of the entire series). Vincent D'Onofrio feels as restrained as Fisk, like the actor isn't sinking his teeth as deeply into these more plot-by-numbers marriage counseling and political maneuvering scenes. I still find Ayelet Zurer's Vanessa Fisk to be fascinating, but the pacing of this storyline feels stretched a bit thin. If anything, the Fisk storyline demands more Daniel (Michael Gandolfini). Watching him eagerly throw himself at the mercy of Fisk after copping to a major screwup was hella compelling, and I'm intrigued to see how this burgeoning master/apprentice relationship will play out.
But on the matter of cuntiness — we're so close to being back in business. The missing ingredient, the one thing that is essential to Daredevil as a character and program, the thing we have now not seen in two episodes, is bloody mayhem. We've gone two episodes without an action sequence. This is wild. The show — rather the vestiges of the original format — is holding back a key component of the show. And considering that this episode does pretty much nothing to address my concerns last week, about this show writing out Daredevil's integral supporting cast and replacing them with characters who only appear this episode in silhouette (??? Was Nikki M. James unavailable???) or not at all (this ep needed more Cherry flavor), we are far from firing on all cylinders here.
Considering that this episode ended with incoming villain Muse making his full-fledged TV debut, I have high hopes for next week. I really need this show to serve the full-on Daredevil primal rage one-take beat-'em up catharsis that only Daredevil can serve — and I know the perfect song to set such a scene to ...
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