Summary
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 is spread a little thin in “Shoot the Moon”, juggling too many subplots and perspectives at once. It’s a functional episode to build tension and drama down the line, but its pacing suffers on its own terms.
I was initially curious why Disney+ elected to air two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 at the same time instead of letting the weekly cadence build tension organically. About halfway through Episode 2, “Shoot the Moon”, the logic became pretty clear. This isn’t a great episode on its own terms; it’s spread too thin across multiple characters, pulling in threads from the first season I thought would probably end up being abandoned. There are strong highlights and a climactic action sequence, but this is all about build-up, not payoff.
The premiere left Matt with a particularly burning question – why did Benjamin Poindexter, aka Bullseye, save him from Fisk’s goons? – and “Shoot the Moon” doesn’t answer it. But it does intensify the search for understanding a fair bit, especially since Fisk makes a calculated, very politically savvy play to put Matt and Karen on the back foot. This creates an untenable scenario where innocent people are being held to account for Matt’s vigilantism, forcing him to be more direct in fighting back against Fisk. And that, obviously, only makes him more vulnerable, closer than ever to crossing his few remaining personal lines.
Bullseye’s Inscrutable Motives
The ambiguity around what Bullseye is really up to creates decent mystery for now. Matt can’t figure it out – he had the opportunity to kill him and didn’t, so obviously needs him alive for some reason – and Fisk, who learns with visible frustration that Daredevil was saved by someone with eerily exceptional aim, knows that Bullseye still has a score to settle with him.
We also see Bullseye in a church asking after Sister Maggie, who’s currently in Rome (read: didn’t re-up for this season), but this feels more like a tether to Season 3 of Netflix’s Daredevil than anything else. Bullseye’s search for absolution, though, may be an idea that keeps recurring.
Either way, Bullseye’s presence requires some action. This is what prompts Fisk to make a daring political play, which is to expose Matt Murdock… not as the vigilante he really is – that’d mean admitting his life was saved by a “blind guy”, which he’s not willing to acknowledge for the sake of optics – but as a hero who saved his life and deserves to be found safely. It’s a masterstroke, since it means everyone who is vehemently anti-vigilante is looking for Daredevil, and everyone else is looking for Matt.
A Direct Approach
The political thing is part of a broader idea that Matt and Karen need to go on the offensive to make any progress. Fisk’s smuggling operation is complex enough that it isn’t really possible to unravel it without direct intervention, and that’s an even more impossible task now that the search for Matt/Daredevil has intensified to such a degree.
There’s also a ticking-clock element, given that once the weapons move deeper into Red Hook, they’ll functionally disappear, and any evidence that they were ever there will go with them. This and the social crackdown – more on this in a minute – are creating a climate where Matt may have to walk directly into the lion’s den, which isn’t exactly ideal.
I Hope You Remember Angela
With carte blanch to do basically whatever they want, Fisk’s AVTF continue an aggressive crackdown on the streets, brutalising people for nothing and dragging them away for sham trials on trumped-up charges, including “assaulting an officer”, which is why Angela del Toro’s aunt is arrested after she very lightly grabs an agent’s sleeve to prevent him from assaulting a bystander.
Angela, you’ll hopefully recall, is the niece of the late White Tiger, whose death at the hands of the task force was a major plot point in Season 1. This scene seems to exist not only to showcase the AVTF’s ICE-style abuses of power, but also to rope Angela back into the plot, since she goes straight to Kirsten for help preventing her aunt from disappearing into the system.
Angela’s arc is clearly going to be adopting the mantle of White Tiger, so we’ll see how that goes.
Viral Video
Another of Fisk’s key issues in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 2 is the spate of viral videos that are doing the rounds, not only satirising him but also leaking insider information from within his office. Naturally, as Deputy Mayor of Communications, Daniel is on the hook for this, and it’s really obvious that BB is using him to spill secrets to make the videos.
“Shoot the Moon” does confirm this, but it also makes it clear that a) BB isn’t going to stop, despite putting Daniel at risk, and b) Daniel is a bit too fond of BB to grasp the obvious. I do suspect this subplot is going somewhere, but for the time being, it’s a bit light, since it just makes Daniel look like a bit of an idiot.
Hunting Season
The obligatory big action climax finds the AVTF rounding on Josie, the proprietor of the bar that Matt, Karen, and, once upon a time, Foggy have conspired at since the very beginning of the show, and that has now become a kind of hub for their vigilante activity. It’s a lot like their targeting of Cherry – who is still laid up in hospital, surrounded by his friends – at the end of the premiere.
Matt arrives to take them all down and free Josie, but the bigger development here is that Karen’s training has paid off enough for her to be able to take one of the task force goons down herself. After the dust has settled, she reveals to Matt that she has taken the guy hostage.
Instead of being hunted all the time, perhaps it’s time for Matt and Karen to start hunting the bad guys? Sounds good to me.
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