Binge-worthy: ‘Daredevil’ season 3

Iñigo De Paula

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Binge-worthy: ‘Daredevil’ season 3

David Lee/Netflix

A powerful villain returns, and a new one arrives to wreak havoc on Hell’s Kitchen

 

** SPOILERS FOLLOW **

 

Has there been a superhero show with as much self-doubt and trepidation as Daredevil? Jessica Jones and Luke Cage have also explored the personal toll of doing superhero things, but in Daredevil, the hero is elevated (or should I say lowered?) to the same status as Job, the Biblical figure. Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) can try to be the goodest do-gooder in Hell’s Kitchen, but suffering will always follow him.

Matt is presumed dead after the events that took place at the end of The Defenders, but he gets
nursed back to health by the nuns of St. Agnes church, which operates the orphanage he grew up in. His body was badly injured, but it doesn’t compare to the injuries his heart and mind had sustained. Matt fears for the safety of his two closest friends — Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), and tries to stay hidden from them. Matt’s attempts to quarantine his friends from the fallout of Daredevil’s actions isn’t anything new for the series and after three seasons of this, it does tend to get wearisome.

Matt, Karen, and Foggy go about their lives in the only way they can. Matt goes up against petty criminals in what looks like an attempt at suicide by vigilantism. Karen continues to work for the New York Bulletin (and continues to pay the rent for Matt’s apartment just in case). Foggy throws himself into his lucrative, but emotionally unfulfilling, legal career.

Getting through the first few episodes was a bit of a slog, but the show picks up momentum the deeper we get into the season. Daredevil is a bit of an outlier for Marvel Netflix shows, which usually start out strong and sputter towards the end of the 13th episode.

The lives of the three gain new urgency when they learn that Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio, excellent as always) struck a deal with the FBI. In exchange for intel on other criminal organizations, Fisk is moved out of prison and into house arrest in a hotel penthouse. His deal includes safe passage and immunity for his fiancée Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer).

The master manipulator

The facilitator of this deal is Special Agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali), a well-meaning family man looking to move up the FBI’s ranks. At first, the deal with Fisk goes swimmingly. The FBI gets to take down major crime bosses, but Fisk uses this as leverage for greater perks and creature comforts. His apartment, at first bare and spartan, is eventually filled with his prized possessions, and he later trades the drab prison uniform for his iconic white suit.

We eventually learn that Fisk has been playing the FBI all along. Not only that, many of the top-level agents have turned and joined his side. Fisk (now referred to as Kingpin by his FBI lackeys) is a master manipulator. Even Nadeem is coerced into working for him.

Fisk’s machinations are easily the greatest part of the show — not because the schemes are clever (most of them involve threatening FBI agents’ families), but for the sheer relentlessness of his planning. Every time Matt, Karen, and Foggy think they’ve cornered Fisk, he always ends up ahead. The trio’s teamwork has always been tenuous at best, but the frustration sends each one off on their own anti-Fisk quests. It’s utterly demoralizing for the three, but it does make for some great entertainment.

Another agent, Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) eventually becomes Fisk’s enforcer. Dex is obviously Bullseye from the comics, although he was never called by that name, and his origin story differs somewhat from the comics. Dex is instrumental to another of Fisk’s schemes: to clean the gangster’s public image. Dex dresses up as Daredevil and attacks the Bulletin office in an attempt to give Hell’s Kitchen a bigger villain to rally against.

Dex is a formidable adversary for Matt, and has the potential to be an interesting, even sympathetic, villain, but his backstory lacks any real substance. As a kid, Dex was an orphan with a killer curveball — literally. He uses his uncanny skill for throwing stuff to kill his baseball coach. His childhood therapist encourages him to find his center, his “North Star.” As an adult, that search leads Dex to the army, the FBI, and right into Fisk’s arms.

Luckily, Dex’s ability to turn even mundane objects into deadly projectiles makes for some great, sometimes humorous, action sequences. In fact, the fight scenes in season 3 rank among the best in the series. There’s a prison fight scene in an early episode that almost touches the greatness of season 1’s hallway scene.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall 

Fisk displays the occasional capacity for compassion and honor that we first saw way back in season 1. It’s what makes him such a compelling character. When his minions fail to buy back Rabbit in a Snowstorm, his most prized painting, Fisk decides to confront the current owner himself. The meeting is tense and beautifully written, as a meeting with New York’s most notorious crime boss should be, but the owner, a stately elderly woman, holds firm.

She reveals that the painting was stolen from her family by the Gestapo during World War II, and that the painting was her sole connection to her father. Even Fisk, with all his self-serving speeches about love and connection, can’t argue with that. “You have been through so very much. Vanessa would want you to keep the painting,” the big man concedes.

His love for Vanessa also gives him a strong reason for existing. His bid to reclaim New York is for naught if he can’t share his life with Vanessa. This gives Fisk, even with his intimidating presence and penchant for monologues, a sense of vulnerability. He’s not a chaotic figure with nothing to lose. He’s not a man who wants to see the world burn; he wants to rebuild it as a twisted monument to his love for Vanessa.

Unity and redemption

Faced with no other legal option, Matt decides to do the unthinkable: murder Fisk. Foggy makes an impassioned plea to Matt and Karen to give the legal process one last chance. They unite behind Foggy’s plan, and convince Nadeem to become a state witness. This resembles a common trope found in superhero shows — scatter your heroes during the first half, then let them unite in the third act to kick the villain’s ass.

Except the plan doesn’t work, because, well, Fisk. Nadeem gets to testify to a grand jury, but Matt overhears that the jurors had been threatened by Fisk and have voted to keep the testimony sealed. Matt decides to go through with his plan to kill Fisk.

Nadeem, on the other hand, abandons the trio and heads to his home. Knowing full well that Dex will be coming for him, he records a video confession. The video was his final gambit and play for redemption. Dex arrives and kills Nadeem. With Nadeem dead, the video is now considered a Dying Declaration, which is admissible in court. The video also goes viral, turning the tide against Fisk.

All of that may have been enough to take Fisk down, but this wouldn’t be a superhero movie without a dramatic final showdown. Matt infiltrates Fisk and Vanessa’s wedding, and much fighting ensues. During the bloody finale, Matt decides not to kill Fisk.

“You don’t get to destroy who I am,” he tells the bloodied crime boss. It’s a wonderfully-written spiel, and serves as a great emotional climax to the show. For Fisk, living in a cage away from Vanessa and knowing the city rejected him would be a worse fate than death. In the end, the two come to an agreement: Fisk will not harm Karen and Foggy, and Matt will not implicate Vanessa in Fisk’s crimes. Fisk is taken to jail — hopefully for the last time. – Rappler.com 

 

Daredevil season 3 is now streaming on Netflix

 

 Iñigo de Paula is a writer who lives and works in Quezon City. When he isn’t talking about himself in the third person, he writes about pop culture and its peripheries.

 

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