‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Episodes 5 & 6 Recap – A Superb One-Two Punch Of Vigilante Goodness

Daredevil: Born Again is pretty good, isn’t it? I wasn’t among the consensus when I called the fourth outing one of the best Daredevil episodes ever, but it’s hard to argue with me after Episodes 5 & 6, which Disney+ aired together as a two-parter despite the fact that they’re not directly connected. The last ten minutes of “Excessive Force”, in particular, felt like everything long-time fans of the Netflix shows want from these characters: Matt and Fisk both descending into their most primal, violent forms, paralleling through elastic, kinetic filmmaking. When Matt roared, I did. When Fisk punched Adam’s head in, I did, knocking a coffee off my desk and feeling pretty stupid about it.

But that’s the way of things when a show has you in its thrall, and this one has me hook, line, and sinker. I genuinely think it’s great; not great by the (typically low) standards of Disney+ MCU fare, but great in general, in tons of different ways. This is why these two episodes work as a double-bill despite being very different and not functioning as a two-part story arc. Between them, they show a level of understanding for the character of Matt Murdock and a stylistic verisimilitude to complement that knowledge.

Of course, people are moaning about Episode 5 being filler, misunderstanding the term as usual. For one thing, it’s a bottle episode, and loads of shows have those, even great ones. By any standards “With Interest” is a damn good bottle episode. But I don’t even think it’s especially siloed from the main plot. The robbery that frames it is at the behest of a named character who literally shows up in the very next episode. Angie Kim is a recurring character. Yusuf Khan is an explicit connection to the MCU. The “filler” accusations don’t hold much water.

But let’s talk about it. The idea is that Matt, entirely by chance, finds himself embroiled in a hostage situation at New York Mutual when a gang of colour-coded Irish robbers stick the place up on St. Patrick’s Day. Matt’s there to try and secure a loan for the firm from the bank’s assistant manager, Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur), recognisable as the father of Kamala Khan, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, and ends up foiling the plot from within.

And that’s it, really. Fisk isn’t in it. The only time the camera leaves the bank is to take in the streets immediately outside, where Angie Kim is trying to negotiate with the gang’s leader, Devlin (Cillian O’Sullivan, In from the Cold). It’s later revealed that Devlin is working for Luca, who is currently trying to usurp Wilson Fisk as New York’s underground kingpin, but nevertheless, this is largely a day-in-the-life double-act where Matt gets to have funny odd-couple banter with Yusuf and save the day. It’s clearly a holdover from earlier incarnations of the show that were intended to be lighter and more procedural.

Not that Daredevil: Born Again is all that light in Episode 5. After foiling the robbery, Matt chases Devlin down and viciously snaps his leg in half. Given his fully costumed return to the Daredevil persona in Episode 6, you can very much take this as a pitstop on his way to embracing his ruthlessly violent underside. But I still liked it less than Matt opening a bank vault using his super hearing, bonding with Yusuf, and hitting the old gemstone switcheroo. Sometimes, it’s okay to have fun.

Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Daredevil: Born Again | Image via Disney+

“Excessive Force” is fun too, in its way, but it’s very much not the same kind of light-hearted fare. After getting a good look at Muse in the previous episode, he’s front and centre in this one, dominating Matt and Fisk’s personal storylines as the lives of both a vigilante and New York’s mayor converge on the same blood-soaked subterranean lair.

Muse’s murals are all over New York, and thanks to the Sanitation Department, Fisk is quietly informed that they’re basically impossible to remove. This is because they’ve been painted in human blood, and DNA analysis has revealed that blood has been extracted from an alarming number of people. There’s a very dangerous serial killer on the loose, and nobody seems to have noticed, despite all the New Yorkers who have mysteriously gone missing around the same old subway station.

For Fisk, this is an opportunity. He has already made a firm stance against vigilantism, and since Muse wears a mask, he has to make a point. That point involves him organizing Powell and several other very dodgy Punisher fan-club cops into an Anti-Vigilante Task Force with unlimited powers. On the pretext of protecting New Yorkers from a killer, Fisk has built himself a no-questions-asked private army of corrupt cops, licensed to do whatever they feel is necessary to bring Muse – and by extension any other masked vigilantes, including Daredevil – to justice.

My fervent hope is that the Punisher will annihilate these guys, but we’ll see. Either way, it makes for a nice counterpoint to Matt’s take on the Muse problem. When Angela del Toro comes to him for help in investigating the disappearances that Hector was looking into before his death, he turns her down, claiming it’s a job for the police, but really being fearful of having to don the cowl again. But then Angela gets snatched by Muse, and Matt is forced to go full Daredevil to rescue her.

Now, I’m not blind to the dodgy CGI that carries Daredevil across the rooftops and then later down one of the subway tunnels, but thankfully, there’s none of that during the actual fight with Muse, which is refreshingly practical and great fun. But it’s also cleverly juxtaposed with Fisk’s savage beatdown of Adam, whom he arms with a fire axe just to give him a fighting chance. It doesn’t work. Adam is left half-dead, and Angela is saved, but Muse manages to escape.

Either way, some personal lines have been crossed here that there will presumably be no going back from. Matt is back in costume and has a particularly dangerous killer to track down, all while having a giant target on his back thanks to Fisk’s new task force. And Fisk himself has truly given in to his nature, sick of being disrespected by his former acolytes and choked to death in bureaucratic red tape. Both have broken the promise they made to each other. And both are now on an inevitable collision course.

I, for one, can’t wait.