RIOTUS

So Daredevil: Born Again is back, and we get to see just how Matt Murdock and his allies manage Wilson Fisk’s authoritarian reign as Mayor of New York City. The end of the first season of the reboot series had Fisk, aka the Kingpin, outlawing vigilantes and creating an anti-vigilante task force, and basically enforcing martial law over the city, with DD and Bullseye being the main targets, along with The Punisher, who escapes capture. Since this is the MCU, there are, of course, other things happening, but we really don’t know the timeline; there is one that we’ve all learned before we’ve watched this season. And it leaves me with questions.

So this doesn’t have anything to do with DD, but there is one Marvel hero that is very much of big superhero stuff and the more grounded street level stuff, and his name is Spider-Man, and his new movie had a trailer. While we also know The Punisher is getting a “Special Presentation” this year from that trailer, you know he’s pretty much A-Okay. There are other things in that trailer that, while watching this season of TV, made me wish I hadn’t seen that trailer, as I said, it gave me more questions.

As I never watched the Netflix series of Daredevil, I came into season one knowing some stuff, but most of my history with the characters in the show is from the comic books. So while others might’ve had issues with certain tone changes of other issues in comparison to those previous TV seasons, I was able to judge it along the lines of how it fits into the MCU, and did it feel like Daredevil comics.

With a strong influence of the Devil’s Reign storyline from Marvel Comics, which, from my point of view, was inspired by President Trump’s first term, you can also feel that in the TV series. Charlie Cox pretty much owns this role of Matt Murdock more than most of the other actors in the MCU. The same for Vincent D’Onofrio as the Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. These guys are perfect and personify these two characters from the many different eras they’ve existed in (sans Kingpin being a Spider-Man villain : shakes fist:). The season starts with a banger, with Matt and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) fighting their guerrilla war against the Kingpin with an explosive fight set piece that I feel sets the tone for the whole season.

Each episode feels like it has at least one anchor point fight scene, with great blocking and solid choreography. Each one is captivating, and you get to see DD, Bullseye, or Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) do some impressive beatdowns of this seemingly endless number of NYPD AVTF members. For me, these were some of the best parts. I liked seeing the low-key super person fighting. It’s that feeling you’d get from comics in the eighties and nineties, along with the beat ’em up video games from those times as well. That’s not to say the many different story arcs are bad; they just, as I said, gave me more questions.

I feel Daredevil: Born Again will be seen as a very anti-Trump show for some viewers. I think people will feel some catharsis from seeing our hero side beat the brakes off of the Anti-Vigilante Task Forces guys, as they are a clear allegory to ICE, and while they had to be making this show before a lot more harsh things ICE has done recently. They’ve been around for a while, and it’s not that hard to extrapolate thanks to history. Fisk’s inner circle of helping him enrich himself and gain more power, even as he believes to his core how much he loves New York, I feel, is more nuanced than real life and the character at times in comics.

So much in this show, D’Onofrio brings so much to this version of Kingpin; he has so much emotion and feelings. Feeling like the underdog while having his foot on people’s neck, all of his body language and expressions he uses in scenes. Yet in all of this, he’s a bad guy, and I like the fact that this isn’t like Baron Zemo or Thanos, where the viewer can make a case to a certain degree that this person is right and the heroes might be kind of on the wrong side of things. While you know from the very start of the season that things will fall apart for him, watching it happen and how he reacts is one of the best parts of the series from this performance alone.

Good old Charlie Cox has some of the more lightheartedness of Matt, I know from a certain period of DD in the comics. With the spray-painted black suit with the red DD letters, he plays Matt completely at home on the run and out every night protecting people. He’s very much the moral center of the show as he keeps his strict line of what’s justice and right, and not going over that line of killing people. Cox’s performance does get to that tortured part of Matt when things are really pushing him to question his viewpoints, when things are getting worse around him for so many people. We do get our guy back in the courtroom, and those scenes work very well.

I like Cox in scenes with Nikki M. James as Kirsten McDuffie, where a lot of the legal stuff centers around. I wish she got a little more to do as a character this season, but I enjoy her when she’s on screen. Not enough Clark Johnson‘s Cherry for me. He raises the quality every scene he’s in, and as his representation of the old school police in this season, it becomes very lacking. Much like real life, the cops don’t really do much against a paramilitary force breaking the law under the auspices of the state. So I guess it’s spot on in a reality sense.

Krysten Ritter returning as Jessica Jones is good to see. She’s another actor from the Netflix shows that ended up being the perfect performer to bring this character to life, to the point that it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing it besides them. She still has her wit and has a great dynamic with Cox on screen. It’s also good to see a character with actual superpowers in the show dealing with all this. Daredevil, being a way to reintroduce her back into the world, was smart and was one of my favorite parts of the season.

So Bulleye or Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter, played by Wilson Bethel, gets a lot more to do here this season than last. In season one, he felt more like a recurring nuisance for both Matt and Fisk, and here he feels like someone Matt needs to save while also being a sword of Damocles for Fisk and his life. He’s still going after Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) for how she used him previously. Bethel’s performance is full of charisma; his Bullseye is cool and deadly. Effortless with his skill. He has this great set piece later in the season that is worth watching over and over.

Yet with all that said, there’s the version of me who has read too many comics, and I’m sitting here like why in the hell am I even liking Bullseye? This guy is one of the purest villains in the Marvel Universe. No redeeming value, no greater purpose, or being the hero in his own mind…just a killer. I miss that, honestly, and it’s something I end up missing in a lot of MCU adaptations of the villains, making them more well-rounded even when real life is showing us more and more that there are people in the real world who just like comic book villains – bad and should be punched in the face. The Anti-Hero Bullseye is just not something I completely enjoy.

I greatly enjoy Tony Dalton as Jack Duquesne, aka The Swordsman, even though I miss his connection to the Avengers here. I also loved the progression of Camila Rodriguez‘s Angela del Toro after the death of her uncle in the previous season. She adds a nice youthful energy to the resistance group led by Daredevil and Karen. I love Margarita Levieva as Heather Glenn, the now Matt ex-girlfriend who’s turned heel and joined the Fisks’ plan for the city and is becoming anti-vigilante because of The Muse. She plays the messed-up therapist perfectly, which makes me mad they wasted Typhoid Mary on the Iron Fist show, as I feel Glenn’s character would work as a better version. Levieva’s performance is great in each scene she is in, as she’s just chewing up the scenery in just the right way.

Now, Genneya Walton as BB Urich, I feel, didn’t work as much this season, even though she gives a great performance. I didn’t enjoy her methods of getting information from her friend Daniel (Michael Gandolfini), who works as the Deputy Mayor of Communication for Fisk’s administration. Their storyline is interesting, even though you can easily guess how it’s going to end up, especially with Buck (Arty Froushan) hovering throughout all of Daniel’s actions.

I like the more NYC crime stuff that Daniel and Buck go through. While BB has some very Mr. Robot-inspired stuff that I don’t completely feel works. Most of the stuff with the city doesn’t completely work for me, as I feel the city is too positive with what Fisk’s doing, given everything we’ve seen happen in this city for the last 18 years. See, this here is what is messing me up: when does this take place? The MCU does cast a shadow over this because of where it takes place and what we’ve seen in other things. Spidey has been Spideying for four years, and we don’t get a wanted poster or random dialogue? When does The Void put NYC in the shadow realm? Bucky ain’t got nothing to say, even though he’s a congressman for Brooklyn, NY in the US Congress.

While a lot of people don’t care and some want less connection, that’s not me. That’s how I got into Marvel Comics, and honestly, I thought the point of the MCU was to translate that. So seeing Matthew Lillard as this mysterious Mr. Charles connected to the CIA would feel like less of a waste if maybe just maybe he worked for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who we know is in NYC reformatting and operating out of Avengers Tower smack in the middle of NYC. How can Fisk outlaw vigilantes when she uses costumed vigilantes – HOW SWAY? I’m confused, and for me, it takes me out of the action at key points because I’ve seen just about all of the shows and movies, and I don’t even need to see the actors. Just some emails, random pieces of dialogue, or text messages, or something.

So the ending of the season is big and bold and full of action and most of everything you’d want from the season finale. Yet for me it left me wanting a bit also, I think some of the visuals allude to things from recent history that I don’t know if it’s responsible use in the way they do it. It made me feel uneasy. I did want to see Kingpin get beaten up, though, so again, great job with him, and Daredevil is going to place that is one of my favorite arcs from the comics, so I’m still down with season three when it comes out. I might seem overly critical, but overall it’s a good show and takes some chances that I wish a lot more of the MCU would do. The lead actors give great performances, and the fight scenes are easily some of the best on television, so Daredevil: Born Again season two is well worth watching.