Summary
Charlie Cox is always good in Daredevil: Born Again, but Episode 8 has him teetering closer to the edge than ever, demanding a brilliantly layered and borderline unhinged performance.
A lot happens in Episode 8 of Daredevil: Born Again; people die, there’s a prison break, a swanky ball, and the truth, finally, about what happened to Foggy Nelson is revealed. But within it all, there remains one constant: Matt Murdock having the kind of bad day Frank Castle warned him about, teetering closer to the edge — of becoming the Punisher, or the Kingpin — than ever. Charlie Cox is always good in this role, but he’s brilliantly frayed here.
And there’s no wonder. Matt has been dealing with a string of terrible circumstances ever since Foggy was gunned down in the premiere. That episode, like this one, was a product of the new creative team who were brought in to reinvent the original iteration. For that reason, it feels more connected and coherent. But don’t forget everything else that has happened to Matt in the interim, pushing him further and further down this path: the murder of Hector Ayala, the creation of Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force, and Muse almost killing Heather.
Matt’s relationship with Heather is central to “Isle of Joy” because she’s still smarting from her near-death experience and is beginning to think Fisk’s approach to vigilantes is the right one. She doesn’t know Matt is Daredevil after all, and is tarring him with the same brush as Muse, which Matt can’t argue against without giving away too much. But that’s the point. Matt has had enough by this point, and if that means being more forthright with Heather, more antagonistic with his colleagues, and more direct in his investigations, then so be it.
Speaking of his investigations, all roads lead back to Bullseye. The episode opens with Benjamin Poindexter being moved into general population at the behest of Fisk, which is always for the sole reason of getting the prisoner killed. It isn’t immediately obvious, to Matt or the audience, why Fisk would do this. But it pushes Poindexter to reach out to Matt, which starts the ball rolling. If Foggy’s demise wasn’t just an unfortunate consequence of Bullseye’s quest for revenge against Daredevil, someone ordered the hit. But who?
The prime suspect is Fisk. Foggy had been drinking his celebratory bourbon on the night he died, which suggests he knew that he was going to win his latest case. He must have been silenced for some reason relating to that. But Fisk was “away” at that time. And who was running his empire? Vanessa.
Wilson Bethel as Benjamin Poindexter in Daredevil: Born Again | Image via Disney+
Vanessa’s ruthlessness is established – or should I say reconfirmed? – early in the episode, when she shoots Adam dead after Fisk reveals he has been keeping him in captivity all this time. It’s a turning point in their relationship that seems to improve things. Vanessa takes some solace in the fact that Fisk is still devoted to her to the point of violent obsession. And Fisk isn’t sad to see the back of Adam without having to break his promise not to kill him. It’s a win-win.
But Fisk doesn’t know that Vanessa ordered Foggy’s murder, and by the end of Daredevil: Born Again Episode 8, we still don’t know why. But Matt figures it out when he gatecrashes Fisk’s inaugural black-and-white ball as Heather’s plus-one. This is easily the most effectively sustained tension the season has managed to drum up. There’s a bunch of stuff going on at once; Fisk’s task force torturing a journalist disguised as a caterer in full view of the police commissioner, that same commissioner telling BB Urich that Fisk was the prime suspect in her uncle’s murder (and her responding that she already knows and is working towards exposing him for that reason), Fisk threatening Jacques Duquesne with exposing his identity as the Swordsman (see: Hawkeye), and Matt trying to overhear all of this while also pretending he’s listening to Heather about her concerns regarding their relationship.
And there’s another thing to consider. Earlier, the conversation between Matt and Poindexter had culminated with Matt losing it and smashing Poindexter’s head repeatedly into the table. In a scene cribbed straight from the comics, Poindexter later used a loose tooth to break out of captivity disguised as a guard. While Matt is dancing with Vanessa, and Heather is dancing with Fisk, and both couples are in the process of revealing some serious truths about the other, Bullseye is in the rafters with a rifle, taking aim at Fisk.
In the shocking climax of “Isle of Joy”, Matt dives in the way of the bullet meant for Fisk, taking it in the shoulder and saving the life of his greatest nemesis. Why? And will he survive the effort? One doesn’t imagine that a Daredevil series would take the bold step of killing Daredevil off and hope to retain an audience, but it could very well fundamentally upend the show’s core dynamic. Suddenly, the finale seems an even more tantalizing prospect than it did before.
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