Daredevil on Netflix was one of the best things to come out of the MCU, though its questionable if its actually part of the MCU. Not to get into the weeds too much, but basically, there used to be “Marvel Movies” and “Marvel TV” as separate divisions. They had different heads, and there was dumb company politics and the claim that the movies didn’t want people to feel obligated to watch a TV show to understand the films.
Then they merged the divisions, and now every movie has a TV show attached and we get shows with questionable conclusions and it turns out that was all bull shit it was just the Movie group trying to control freak everything.
But I am not salty about that. I deleted those Agents of Shield write ups, you can’t prove anything.
ANYWAY, that’s all actually mildly relevant here in a few ways I will get to.
Daredevil: Born Again. Its actually kind of a continuation of the previous 3 seasons of Daredevil. Unfortunately, I don’t remember enough details of that show to know exactly what may have changed. Foggy and Karen Page return, sort of, though I will comment more later with spoilers. We get the same Bullseye, we get Punisher who is clearly familiar with Matt etc. I am sure there are minor details that are absent. There is no mention of the other members of The Defenders (Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones).
For my mostly spoiler-less thoughts, I liked it… asterix… asterix asterix… . The asterix being, this is basically Matt Murdock: Born Again. He barely did it es any Daredevil stuff. Its “plot justified” but it also feels weird.
The second asterix is that it does not really end like, at all. I BELIEVE the “ending” of this story is basically going to be the plot for Spider-man: Brand New Day.
Remember what I said about how Marvel Movies and Marvel TV had a feud going because TV shows were too much for your average movie goer?
Anyway, its still pretty good, but mostly because the Matt Murdock part of Daredevil is great. The whole show also has this sort of, undertone of commentary on modern politics. Fisk is basically a Trump stand in, if Trump were an actual narcissistic mobster jackass and not a narcissistic stupid idiot wannabe mobster jackass.
Anyway, I’m going to move on with some spoilers, so if you care about that, then its time to duck out.
So, Foggy and Karen Page. They brought them back. I don’t think they were but they got them back, the show went through a bit of a rewrite and re-shoot. Except they didn’t bring them back, not really. Foggy gets killed in the opening scene, murdered by Bullseye. (Sorry, whats his name Poindexter). Bullseye also returns, with the same actor, but he also kind of just disappears into jail after Daredevil yeets him off the top of a building.
Which is a pretty amazing bit. Like right out the gate, like ten minutes into the show, Daredevil catches and beats the shit out of Bullseye, then after Foggy is basically confirmed dead on the street below, he just, chucks the dude off the building. Poindexter survives though, and ends up in jail to return later, briefly.
Anyway, we time jump to a year later and Matt has given up his Daredevil work over Foggy’s murder. Karen has moved away. She returns briefly in the last episode, but isn’t really seen again. Matt has just been doing lawyer stuff, trying to exist in the legal world without the mask.
Meanwhile, we get Fisk drama, with Vanessa and Wilson. Vanessa has been running the “family business” while Wilson was away, recovering from his gunshot wound or something, its honestly not clear where he was and they are both direct and weirdly vague about it in the dialogue. Fisk decides to let Vanessa continue to run things while he runs for and wins the election of Mayor of New York.
Matt of course isn’t happy about this.
So the middle chuck of the series is kind of both filler and set up. We get some trial drama for a hero we have not met before called White Tiger, who gets involved with some corrupt cops abusing a homeless guy and one ends up dead. This leads to Matt representing Hector/White Tiger, though he ends up getting murdered after being found innocent.
This murder basically leads to an excuse to get a cameo out of Punisher, because the bullet shell has a Punisher Skull on it.
Punisher basically shows up in two episodes, this early cameo meeting, and at the end of the series. His entire plot. Basically involves “People who use the Punisher, like corrupt cops, are not friends of The Punisher.” its very much a commentary on real world activities.
We get one random episode where Matt thwarts a bank robbery for some sort of special crystal, which us basically a tie in to Ms Marvel as Kamala’s father is the bank manager. Its actually probably my favorite episode. Its also the moment Matt starts to really crack and start wanting to go back to his Daredevil activities.
We get a few more kind of filler episodes with a serial murderer, who attacks Matt’s new girlfriend, a marriage councilor that has been working with the Fisks over their marital issues. Which is another subplot where Vanessa has apparently been cheating on Wilson and it turns out Wilson has the dude locked in a cage.
So, they have thus nice cut back and forth as Daredevil confronts Muse (the serial killer) and Fisk beats the shit out of the dude Vanessa was sleeping with. Now, Muse, his thing is making murals using his victim’s blood. The Daredevil/Muse fight is in a room with jars of blood as a victim is bleeding out. My comment during this dual fight was basically, “One of these fights is in a room full of blood and I have a feeling its not going to be the bloodiest fight going on.”
Fisk definitely ravages the dude. Doesn’t kill him though.
Fish dies kill a dude in a gruesome way though. There is a skull crushing scene. Its pretty graphic. Like, we are pretty much talking The Mountain crushing Pedro Pascal’s head in here. Its pretty rough.
Anyway, the assault by Muse on Heather Grahm, (DD’s Girlfriend), as well as Bullseye escaping and trying to assassinate Fisk, leads to an all out assault by the corrupt Fisk driven Police force to take down anyone with a mask. This is basically the finale, and lead in to Spider-man (probably). Matt took Bullseye’s bullet for Fisk, and is now kind of wounded. He teams up with Frank Castle, who was called in by Karen Page. They battle a large cop force together, and in the process find White Tiger’s true killer. This leads up to the need to take down Fisk.
But as Matt says, “we need a real army.”
And there is some drama, and that’s that.
So, presumably the “army” will include Spider-Man, and maybe some others. I have not super been following the Spider-man news. Maybe Ms Marvel and Kate Bishop? I doubt it though based on comments about Kamala being out west from her dad’s cameo.
Anyway, its kind of, really disappointing as an end. Matt never really gets to confront Fisk. Nothing is really resolved as far as the real overall conflict, just a bunch of subplots.
And Daredevil barely shows up all series. He fights Bullseye in episode 1, he fights the Bank robbers, without the suit. He faces off with Muse, he fights but mostly watches Punisher fight a bunch of cops.
Its kind of weird.
