Summary
Daredevil: Born Again Episode 4 is, to my mind, one of the best Daredevil episodes ever, masterfully presented in small details, interactions, and monologues instead of showy fight scenes.
It turns out I’m in the minority here, but I genuinely thought Episode 4 of Daredevil: Born Again was one of the best episodes of Daredevil ever. Not just on Disney+; I mean across all three seasons of the Netflix series. I was so confident in this viewpoint that I expected it to be entirely uncontroversial. I was wrong.
So, take this with a pinch of salt that is perhaps warranted for someone clearly outside the consensus. But if you liked these characters in their original incarnation, I find it hard to understand why you wouldn’t consider “Sic Semper Systema” incredibly true to them. It’s full of small moments and monologues and interactions that build explicitly on the foundations laid by three prior seasons; Fisk and Matt’s ongoing war with their darker impulses, Matt and Frank’s clashing philosophies, the inability of “the system” to resist corruption, and the necessity for those outside of that system to right its wrongs. Sure, there isn’t a flashy one-take fight sequence, but to me, this is peak Daredevil.
And I feel like people – especially critics, coincidentally – are missing the point. A strong throughline of Born Again Episode 4 is Fisk’s continuing foray into – and frustration with – New York politics, which leads to several very funny moments, including him being regaled by two renditions of Starship’s “We Built This City” and frustratedly screaming “Where am I?!” only to discover he’s in the Latvian Cultural Heritage Centre. But the idea that Fisk has been reduced to a bumbling comedy character is ridiculous. At the end of the episode, it’s revealed he has his wife’s paramour chained up in his basement.
And, if you recall, Fisk has always been funny. Someone created a 3+ hour supercut of him disgustedly saying “videos of cats” in Season 1. The fact he’s serious about it is the joke. His being annoyed by bad children’s choirs and Latvian culture is funny, yes, but the real point is that the more frayed he becomes with red tape and asinine mayoral obligations, the more likely he is to murder someone with his hands.
It’s the same thing with Fisk “forgiving” Daniel for accidentally leaking his big expansion plans to BB Urich during a drunken night out. Do you really think this is the Kingpin doing a guy a solid because he likes him? Or is it a psychopath detecting that he has a devoted sycophant on the payroll who he can compel to do just about anything? For what it’s worth, I like Daniel as a character. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just young and naïve and a bit of a square, and he lacks the qualities he thinks Fisk most embodies. There’s a reason Sheila is always in the background of these shots. She’s a seasoned political strategist; she has seen it all already and knows what she’s seeing with Fisk and Daniel.
Anyway, we might as well talk about Daredevil himself in this recap of Daredevil: Born Again, so here we go. Episode 4 picks up after that startling cliffhanger, where Hector Ayala got assassinated by a guy in the Punisher’s outfit. The autopsy suggests a professional hit, which doesn’t come as a surprise to Matt. But he’s thrown for more of a loop by Hector’s niece, Angela, who laments the injustice of a guy being exonerated only to be murdered by, no doubt, the same cops he was found innocent of attacking in the first place. And nothing can be done about it. Nothing official, anyway.
Michael Gandolfini and Vincent D’Onofrio in Daredevil: Born Again | Image via Disney+
It’s worth noting that in the comics, Angela becomes the White Tiger. It’s also worth noting that the episode’s title, “Sic Semper Systema”, is a play on the Latin phrase Sic semper tyrannis, “thus always to tyrants”. It means tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown. The adjustment implies the same about corrupt systems. It’s an important mile marker in Matt’s arc leading him back to an embrace of the Daredevil persona, introduced here by Angela, reiterated later by Matt’s latest client, Leroy, and then firmly solidified by the much-anticipated conversation Matt has with Frank Castle. The system isn’t enough.
Leroy is a repeat offender with a laundry list of petty crimes to his name who has been arrested for stealing sugary cereal and can’t get probation because of past offenses. He’s an interesting figure because on the one hand, he is committing crimes, failing to attend court-ordered meetings, and then complaining about the inevitable repercussions. But he’s also right, on that fundamental, instinctive level that you know is difficult to argue against but can feel in the pit of your soul. Charlie Hudson III, who plays him, delivers a quietly extraordinary monologue after Matt happily reveals he has negotiated his sentence down from 35 days to 10, as though he should be thankful for it. “They’re willing to spend five times more to lock me up than they’re willing to spend to feed me.” Free Leroy.
It’s almost a shame that this monologue has to share space with the argument between Matt and Frank, who he tracks down after investigating the scene of Hector’s murder and discovering that the shell casing – which nobody bothered to look for, it seems – was imprinted with the Punisher logo. This is just as good as their rooftop argument in Season 2 and feels like a logical extension of it. The drama still hinges on both of them having a justifiable point of view. But Matt is less staunch in his convictions now, thanks to the death of Foggy, Fisk’s ascension to mayor, and Hector’s murder. Frank once warned Matt that he was only one bad day away from becoming him. And he’s had several bad days since then.
Daredevil: Born Again Episode 4 ends with an extended tease for the season’s new bad guy, Muse, who we see lugging a body to a lair in the subway, to be drained of blood that will probably be used, given the artwork around the makeshift studio, to paint a not-too-pretty picture. The parallel isn’t hugely explicit, but it’s probably not a coincidence that earlier, “Sic Semper Systema” revealed that Fisk is still in possession of “Rabbit in a Snowstorm”, the all-white modern art piece that he likes because it “makes him feel alone”. The difference now, after the end of Daredevil Season 3, is that it’s splattered with blood.
