#marveltelevison — Public Fediverse posts

Daredevil: Born Again – Season 2, Episode 6: Requiem (2026) – Review

Way back in June 2019, the third season of Jessica Jones aired, marking it the final installment of Marvel’s Netflix offshoot before the Defenders were cast into the limbo dimension of cancellation. Of course, a lot can happen in a world as crazy as the MCU, and ever since Daredevil was “born again” as a full fledged fighting member of pop culture’s most endearing franchise, rumour has swirled about who, if any, who follow the man without fear into a shared universe.
Obviously some of Matt Murdock’s inner circle prevailed in various forms (Karen Page, Kingpin, Bullseye, Vanessa, Foggy – technically) and even John Bernthal’s Punisher has managed to leapfrog his way from a role into his own upcoming special and a supporting role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but what of the likes of the fellow Defenders? Well, it’s time for Jessica Jones to finally make her return – but maybe she shouldn’t have returned when things were quite so busy.

Vanessa Fisk is dead (properly this time) and her notoriously emotional crime boss husband is taking it about as well as you’d expect. After crushing the life out of the surgeon who offers him condolences, Mayor Wilson Fisk seems dangerously inconsolable, but as his rage simmers, the anger of the people of New York is finally boiling over. But as the public finally seem to be turning on their Mayor and his heavy handed task force, numerous other threads are also picking up speed to create maximum drama.
Scheming CIA creep, Mr Charles, is angered to discover that Fisk has gone back on their deal and hidden away the weapons cashe that started this whole ball rolling, but after one of his strike teams fail to take down superpowered private eye Jessica Jones at her home with her daughter present, she teams up with Daredevil to remove those guns off the board once and for all. However, a small victory for Matt Murdock isn’t going to ease the growing tension between him an Karen that been caused by him saving the murderous Bullseye and getting him medical aid despite him being responsible for the killing of Foggy. But it’s not just members of the underground rebellion who are feeling the relationship pinch. Daniel Blake is now convinced that BB is the once who is leaking sensitive material to the public and tries to weed her out by offering her fake info and Heather Glenn’s fracturing mental state ramps up a notch when the Mayor’s right hand man, Buck, offers her a strange way to physically work through her Muse-fueled PTSD.
However, when it comes to crumbling facades, Fisk’s is all but done and as his Anti-Vigilante Task Force prepare to violently subdue the protest massing outside city hall, he’s visited by one last person offering both condolences and an ultimatum. Daredevil wants Fisk gone, and it’s time for these old enemies to throw hands one more time.

It’s weird that the return of Jessica Jones will get the most press of this episode when it’s easily the least important thing that occurs during the entire episode. That’s not to say that having Kristen Ritter slip back into her jeans and leather jacket combo is huge – for fans of the Netflix era it’s positively massive – but it’s exceedingly strange that her return happens during an incredibly dense episode. There’s so much going on here, that dropping Jones back into our lap, complete with a daughter, Danielle, and an annoyingly fluctuating power set almost seems like an after thought, especially when the quieter, past-obsessed previous episode could have accommodated her better. Still, while the news that giving birth has caused her powers to glitch in and out is fairly eyeball rolling at best (Really? We’re nerfing Jessica Jones now?), the enhanced budget allows her super strength to be way more impressive and cinematic than it ever was back in the Netflix days. However, as soon as she appears, she’s gone as the episode has a hell of a lot of plot to move through before we get to that other, belayed holdover from the Netflix years – actual fisticuffs between Daredevil and Kingpin.
It’s a shame that Jessica’s return feels so brief and tacked on, because Born Again really is putting in the work when it comes to fleshing out that cast and constantly finding new ways to milk drama out of them. While the continuing progression of the relationships between Buck and Heather (way more intriguing than it has any right to be) and Daniel and BB progress nicely, it seems that the cracks are finally showing when it comes to the rebellious love-in of Matt and Karen. A less classier reviewer may make a joke that any relationship feels the strain when one member brings a third party into the mix, but the fact that Murdock will simply not kill Benjamin Poindexter despite having him weakened and handcuffed in his hideout is too much for Karen to bare. Watching the show’s central theme of whether or not a man has the right to kill is nicely spiced up by the years of bitter history history between the players (Wilson Bethal’s “Hello Karen” is a great choice for those who know) and watching Murdock and Page implode due to their beliefs may seem a little abrupt for this single season alone, but if we go back all the way to 2015, it’s been there all along.

And then, before you know it, we’re watching the public finally take a stand against the AVTF while Daredevil and Fisk get physical for the first time since 2018, but considering we’ve still got two episodes left to go, you may be a little confused as to why we’re entering big finish territory so soon. While that all remains to be revealed, any opportunity to watch our main characters whale on one another is welcomed and it certainly doesn’t disappoint, even if it admittedly feels a bit premature. Still, visually speaking it’s flawless and it offers up snapshots of comic panels made flesh as those moral polar opposites beat merry Hell out of each other. Daredevil’s horned shadow looms on the face of a grieving Fisk (the fact he doesn’t speak the entire episode until he’s confronted by his hated enemy is a nice touch) and certain moves have been taken right out of the pages of various showdowns that adds some much needed scale despite the fact that they’re essentially brawling in a basement while city is erupting upstairs. Again, this is all stuff that’s been on the boil for decades now, and to see that it still carries the requisite heft is wonderful to experience (notice how the black is gradually scraping off Daredevil’s costume to once again show the red), however, if the Defenders are actually going to eventually team up once again, maybe lay better groundwork than simply a fight scene that weirdly resembles Daredevil’s team-up in She-Hulk.

The road to the Defenders starts here, I guess, but unfortunately it’s somewhat drowned out by the noise of every other plot thread rapidly reaching some sort of climax. However, with two whole episodes still to go, and the Daredevil/Kingpin feud possibly slowing down, there’s still time for the return of Jessica Jones to make more of an impact than just beating up a few guards. But with so much still on Born Again’s plate, I’d happily defend her choices if she went back to laying low until things get quieter.
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Daredevil: Born Again – Season 2, Episode 2: Shoot The Moon (2026) – Review

Usually when Marvel releases more than two episodes at a time on Disney+, it hints that we’ve got a couple of slow burning installments due to lap up with our eager eyeballs. However, while the thought of Daredevil: Born Again season 2 slowing down a tad so soon after starting may cause the action junkies among us to fidget impatiently, there’s a feelong that the world of Matt Murdock has grown so exponentially, it’s actually a bit of a relief to take a step back and truly sense those surroundings.
As season premiers go, Daredevil: Born Again season 2 was as dense and intricate a show as Marvel has ever put out, spinning real world politics into a complex web that ducked and weaved through the large cast like a lithe boxer. But can the show manage sustain the bulk of merging a gritty crime show with violent superhero shenanigans while preventing Daredevil himself from getting lost in the shuffle?

Only Matt Murdock could find that the life of a costumed, underground freedom fighter gets ever more complicated. Not only has his friend and confidant, Cherry, suffered a heart attack, but after getting unmasked by the AVTF, Daredevil has his fat pulled from the fire when his old enemy Bullseye snipes his attackers into oblivion as some form of twisted absolution. Of course, whatever bizarre plan the assassin has cooked up for himself this time has to wait, even though he really does seem to be targeting Murdock’s enemies is some baffling act of redemption. As Matt and Karen try to figure out their next move, Mayor Fisk changes the rules of the game once more.
While he well knows that Murdock and Daredevil are one and the same, the fact that Murdock publicly saved his life from a bullet from Bullseye means that he simply can’t just come right out and reveal his secret identity. However, by maintaining that Murdock is missing under suspicious circumstances rather than simply being off the grid, he now cunningly has the public hunting for both personas of his arch nemesis. But while his movements have been severely limited by Fisk’s latest move, Murdock has to take a back seat as the immense supporting cast between him and Fisk moving in their relative orbits.
After the AVTF arrests Soledad (the wife of slain vigilante Hector Ayala) during a misunderstanding, her niece, Angela, goes to the offices of Kirsten McDuffie to reclaim the magical pendant that allowed her uncle to fight crime as White Tiger. Elsewhere, the tension between puff piece reporter BB and Fisk’s Deputy Mayor of Communications grows when sensitive details are leaked out of city hall and posted online as part of the anti-Fisk campaign BB is secretly running. Add to this that Vanessa Fisk is having a spot of PTSD thanks to the threat of Bullseye being on the loose and it’s safe to say that the players in this drama are all fairly on edge – but when the AVTF mamage to raid Murdock’s safe house, Karen takes a hostage that might start to cross a line…

While the opening salvo of season 2 was great, it was such a dense episode that I didn’t even have room to mention some of the visual flourishes directors Benson and Moorhead put into the episode that enhanced the experience further – luckily, they’re back for this episode too, so now that the vast interlocking mechanics of that plot have groaned into motion, I’ve got some breathing room of my own to cover them. I have to say, I’m loving the visual quirks that the show has started to give some of its more extreme characters more of a visual presence and whomever thought to gradually change the aspect ratio of the show whenever Daredevil uses his super senses needs some sort of award, or tax break, or statue, or something as it proves to both me exhilaratingly subtle and ridiculously badass every time it happens. It also compliments the returning quirk of turning the contrast of the screen blue whenever Bullseye is making his presence felt and the lunatics decision to act on his deranged heroic impulses is a particular thread I’m looking forward to pursuing.
Elsewhere, we get some prime, Kingpin-brand scheming when Fisk manages to crush the skull of any plot discrepancies by helpfully articulating why he simply doesn’t out Murdock as Daredevil. Treading a nicely fine line between political optics and comic book logic, the massively malevolent Mayor reasons that trying to tie a “terrorist” (his words) to the blind lawyer who took a bullet for him would be too much of a stretch for the public and it’s impressive when you can explain away something so potentially silly with something that works.

But beyond Fisk trying to keep his house in order and Murdock finding that his options are growing more limited by the day, the majority of “Shoot The Moon” is mostly concerned with keeping the sizable supporting cast busy, while doubling down on making those real-world comparisons as deeply uncomfortable as possible. Watching the Anti-Vigilante Task Force go about their lawless business and abusing their power is quite the sight to see and it’s made all the more disconcerting when you realise that the episode was probably written and filmed before a lot of the issues we’ve seen on the news recently occurred. Marvel has stuck its toes into real-world politics before with varied results (She-Hulk’s commentary on misogynistic hate speech, Iron Man 3’s use of a puppet terrorist), but the use of the increasingly fascist practices of Fisk’s errand own personal police force is by far the most involved yet.
However, with this, the (hardly shocking) revelation that BB is the one behind the exaggerated features of the rubber Kingpin mask on her online campaign and the dual bouts of masked man PTSD that’s plaguing both Vanessa and Heather Glen, there’s so many socio-political irons in the fire that Daredevil is in danger of being a supporting character in his own drama. Oh, Charlie Cox gets some mercifully quiet moments with Deborah Ann Woll and gets to pull on the black and reds to pound on the AVTF a little more, but technically speaking, with the return of Angela and the potential rise of the White Tiger brewing, there’s probably even more stuff going on with the supporting cast in this episode than there was in the premier. Obviously I’m not complaining that Born Again is offering up gripping drama on a week by week basis, but with episodes two and three released on the same day, it feels like we’ve still got a lot of plot to move through before the superheroics take centre stage.

As fearlessly thought provoking as it is physically brutal, all sense of the uncertainty from season one has all been swept away by repeated poundings of a spring-loaded billy club. But while it’s comic book roots are still there (watching an enraged Fisk take out his frustrations on a trainer while sparring is classic Kingpin), the placement of eerily familiar politics in a main role means that Daredevil is hitting a little closer to home than usual. But that’s exactly what the medium is supposed to do, fight injustice – right?
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