Daredevil: Born Again Episode 8
"Isle of Joy"
Writers: Dario Scardapane, Jesse Wigutow
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Cast: Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Tony Dalton, Margarita Levieva, Wilson Bethel, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, Ayelet Zurer
That! Is! How! You! Do! It!!! Hot damn, in the penultimate episode of the season, Daredevil: Born Again finally shows up ready to play. We had to wade through weeks of meandering mediocrity to get here, but baby, we are finally f'ing here.
Just — some top-level thoughts that, knowing me, could end up being the whole recap.
I remember when I first got into comics, I'd see the credit for the "inker" and wonder, "What the why? You mean [to paraphrase a Kevin Smith movie] a tracer?" To me, "inking" was when I would trace my pencil drawings with a cheap ballpoint pen so that the copy machine at the Newport cigarettes regional office that my mom cleaned would properly pick up the lines on my X-Men paper dolls I'd drawn. It wasn't until 1998, when Jim Cheung took over penciling duties from Adam Pollina on X-Force, that I understood what an inker did. Pollina and Cheung couldn't be further apart, stylistically, but the transition somehow felt seamless — because of Mark Morales, the inker. There was a unifying grittiness, a texture that Morales applied to the art, one that I began to recognize as he moved on to work with Leinil Yu on Secret Invasion and, more recently, Ed McGuinness on Avengers.
On the flip side — and this is more applicable to Daredevil: Born Again, trust me — was the artwork of Paul Smith, a penciler. My absolute favorite X-Men artist, with his smooth, clean lines, mastery of fluid motion and expressive faces. But there's a difference between his 1983 Uncanny X-Men run and his 1984 Doctor Strange run: the inker. Bob Wiacek is the one who made Smith's artwork that clean, that fluid. Terry Austin — the inker who worked with the intricately detailed John Byrne on X-Men — brought that same, comparatively ornate style to Smith's work on Strange. Same artist, completely different tones.
Daredevil: Born Again should be studied in film school as an example of what a behind-the-scenes shakeup can do to a show that, on the surface level, looks consistent. Same actors, same sets, same storylines, same cinematography even — but the results, when those (metaphorical) lines are (metaphorically) inked by a different showrunner, different directors, feel dramatically different.
Another point to make, one that may just be me. When I watch great TV, I can feel it in my brain. It's like I can feel my brain, clenched due to anxiety, let go. I can feel all the worry — "What are they doing does this make sense was this part in the trailer what does this mean for Season 2 oh god people are going to think this means something else wow am I even enjoying this???" — slip away. I lock in with the show, and I trust it. It feels unrestrained, pure, easy. It feels like there's no reason to worry because it feels like everyone involved in making the show is doing exactly what they set out to do. This is all of Mad Men, Buffy Season 5, Cheers Season 1, all of Golden Girls, Daredevil Season 3, the first 8 episodes of WandaVision, Andor — and, finally, it's this episode of Daredevil: Born Again.
And, lord, lastly — I wrote last week about the moment when I knew Daredevil (the TV show) would be great. This point is, duh, tied with my previous one about locking in with a TV show. As of last week, I had yet to do that with Born Again. The show had taken no surprising turns. There was no momentum, no intensity, no stakes. It felt average. Now, y'all, I think we have a moment on par with Karen Page putting seven bullets into Wesley: Matthew Murdock realizing that it was Vanessa Fisk who put a hit on Foggy Nelson, and him immediately cutting in on the dance floor. Yes.
With those three points in mind, now I can get into the episode — which, if I have anything critical to say about it, is that it very much feels like incoming showrunner Dario Scardapane (Netflix's The Punisher) and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Moon Knight), uh, rushing in to save the show. Which is kinda what happened, as six episodes (Episodes 2-7) had already been completed when the dual SAG and WGA strikes afforded Marvel Television (and, reportedly, Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio) to reevaluate the work that had been done. Therefore, there's a bit of a — not a deck clearing, but a speedy rearranging of characters and plot points in this episode that, yeah, can feel a little whiplash-y. But, to the credit of the incoming creative team, it helps that pretty much every single one of their choices feels like it's fulfilling promises made — but not yet kept — by the outgoing team. Imagine a bell dinging every time I come to one of those promises.
The episode starts and ends with Matt & Heather and Wilson & Vanessa. As the former's relationship is falling apart due to a lack of honesty, the latter's is mending due to complete transparency. Heather killing Muse, in self-defense, has her in a bit of a spiral, one that's only solidified her anti-vigilante views. So, clearly, Matt's not going to tell her that he's Daredevil! But when Matt finally finds out that Heather is the Fisks' marriage counselor (ding!), he can't articulate to her why that is a problem.
Meanwhile, Wilson's finally come clean to Vanessa about the whole, uh, I kidnapped the guy you had an affair with and have been keeping him in a cell, treating him like a living punching bag. Vanessa, given a choice to free Adam or kill him, chooses the gun over the key (ding!).
Is it wrong that every time Vanessa does something technically evil, I just picture Lucille Bluth saying, "Good for her"?
And then there's Bullseye, one of the characters brought over from Netflix by Scardapane/Benson/Moorhead. That's why we haven't seen him since the premiere (ding!). He's suddenly been released into general population, which ol' Dex immediately clocks as his ex-employer's attempt to get him murdered in prison.
But, oh, you know Dex has a plan! He wants a consultation with a lawyer: Matt Murdock.
Matt finds out all of this from Kirsten McDuffie — yes, the show remembered that Kirsten is a character who can say and do things (ding!)! Nikki M. James is very good in this role, which is why it is baffling that the showrunners that brought this character in, cast her in the role, and made her an important part of Matt's life just did not use her for most of the last six episodes. But finally, we get a scene between Matt and Kirsten that feels consequential, as his need to only defend clients worth defending crashes into her desire to, you know, earn a living. There is a real push and pull here, especially when Matt spins out a bit and rattles off all of the soul-crushing losses they've endured. Would have been great to have seen more of that this season, but fingers crossed for Season 2 (currently filming).
Fully in wallow-mode, Matt returns to Josie's — Nelson, Murdock & Page's favorite bar and the site of Foggy's assassination.
There we actually get a substantial scene with Cherry (ding!), one that doesn't involve him blindly telling Matt to trust in a police force that has been proven to be wickedly corrupt all season long. And when Josie suggests they finish off Foggy's last round, Matt realizes that they're drinking Foggy's victory whiskey — meaning that Foggy knew he was gonna win what would be his last case. And if that's the case, then there was potentially a motive behind Foggy's murder beyond Bullseye just holding a grudge.
Sidenote: Even though we've been waiting for this moment for a month, this doesn't get a ding because this is a plotline introduced by the current team in the season premiere, so this is Scardapane/Benson/Moorhead finally, after biding time across those six episodes, picking up in earnest where they left off. This gets a finally!
Matt pays Dex a visit and, ooooh boy, this is some classic Daredevil stuff right here. Dex monologuing about being an animal in the jungle and pushing all of Matt's buttons while Matt sneers back. It feels good to be home!
It also felt great to watch Matt slam Bullseye's head into a metal table repeatedly. Mature decision? No. Cathartic? Momentarily.
Also very Daredevil-y? A super fancy black tie event, thrown by NYC's elite, wherein you know some shit is going to go down. This time, though, the elite party-thrower is Mayor Fisk. The entire cast converges upon this swanky event, giving us a string of excellent one-on-one scenes that expedite so much plot and realize so much potential.
- New Deputy Mayor Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) finally usurps Fisk's campaign director Sheila Rivera (Zabryna Guevara), and Sheila finally realizes that her days aren't numbered — they're done. Ding!
- Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton) catches up with another socialite, Artemis Sledge (Katherine Lanasa), whose husband is M.I.A. This picks up from a very quick scene in Episode 6 where Artemis belittled Fisk. Ding! And ... her husband is absolutely dead.
- We can assume her husband is dead because Fisk isn't taking shit from the wealthy anymore, evidenced by him pulling Jack aside and outing him as Swordsman. (remember that one shot of a fencing vigilante weeks ago? Ding.) There's still no mention or even inference of the fact that these two absolutely have a lot of very personal history from Hawkeye.
- The Anti-Vigilante Task Force chase down a reporter disguised as a waiter and punish him by shoving his hand in a deep fryer in front of the police commissioner — the guy Fisk blackmailed into taking the job back in the premiere (finally!).
- And then we finally get to see social media reporter BB Urich (Genneya Walton) stop being a pawn. Commissioner Gallo, enraged by his lack of control over the maniac cops in the AVTF, promises to turn his files over to Urich. And he tells her that Fisk was the primary suspect in Ben Urich's murder, back in Daredevil Season 1 (2015)! And BB already knows this! And that's why she's so cozied up to Daniel Blake! Ding, finally, finally ding ding ding!
It feels so good to finally have things happening on this show — especially between Matt and Heather.
Matt finally shows up to the event — in a tuxedo, which I point out because Charlie Cox in a tuxedo is worth pointing out every time it happens. He can't even pretend to be there as Heather's plus one, though, because — uh, a lot is going on. He's hearing all the dings and shouts of "finally." And then he realizes, during the Fisks' spotlight dance, that it wasn't Wilson Fisk that put a hit on Foggy. It was Vanessa.
Watching Matt confidently, purposefully, destructively hit the dance floor and cut-in — this is how you build tension on a show. We know that Vanessa is dangerous. We know that Vanessa and Wilson know Matt is Daredevil. We very much know Heather does not know that, and now she's been left on the dance floor next to Fisk as her man dances with Fisk's wife. We know that Foggy's death pushes Matt to deadly emotional extremes, and we know that Wilson Fisk will burn down everything around him to protect Vanessa. This moment is everything, because it can go so wrong in so many ways.
Of course it goes wrong because of Bullseye and not anyone in the spotlight. I neglected to mention that Matt introducing Dex's face to a metal table loosed up one of the marksman's teeth. And true to his name, you better believe Dex can spit a tooth with deadly accuracy. He makes quick work of everyone standing between him, a police uniform, and a bus out of the prison. He will get his revenge on the person who hired him and then put him in gen pop to be shivved — but not if Matt Murdock throws himself into the way of the bullet.
And that's where we leave the episode, with Daredevil bleeding out after taking a bullet — for Wilson Fisk.
I have to wrap this up, but to get back to my inker metaphor: Please, if you didn't pick up on it, go back and rewatch this episode for the visual language alone. Benson and Moorhead have a clear artistic point of view that goes so much deeper than the almost generic crime show we've been getting — a POV we got in the premiere that vanished in Episode 2. After writing about television for a decade and studying TV production in college, I should have a better grasp on the terms here but — they film many scenes, pivotal moments, from far away.
Sometimes far away, but zoomed in. This gives many scenes a voyeuristic feel, like you're in the ballroom watching all these conversations unfold.
There's also something operatic to this, like the characters are on a stage and you're in the eighth row of the theater. Like Vanessa and Wilson dancing cheek to cheek, this stylistic approach matches what writers Scardapane and Jesse Wigutow are doing within the story. They're giving Benson and Moorhead big, emotional beats to sell on a grand stage — and they're doing it.
I mean, is there a single shot in the previous six episodes as romantic as this?
I also have to point out the revolutionary way they're portraying Matt's hyper senses, by contorting audio and even the aspect ratio to visualize how Matt's taking in his surroundings. The previous six episodes chose to just show things in slow motion and in close-ups, which I felt killed all momentum. If Matt's radar sense is pinging, it's because there's something big happening. That moment should feel urgent, not like we accidentally hit half-speed on a podcast. Pair that with Benson and Moorhead's skills as horror directors, which they expertly withhold and deploy with such focus and precision (Bullseye's tooth, the deep fryer, the final shot), and you have a Daredevil TV series that feels every bit as visually engaging as the best Daredevil comics.
I want to close on the best line of the episode, because damn. As Matt prepares to confront the mayor at the mayor's party, Heather tells Matt that he's just "acting out." Matt's reply: "And mental health is knowing when and where to do it." It's taken a while, but Daredevil: Born Again finally found the right moment to act out.
If you haven't already, consider supporting worker-owned media by subscribing to Pop Heist. We are ad-free and operating outside the algorithm, so all dollars go directly to paying the staff members and writers who make articles like this one possible.
