Daredevil: Born Again – Season Review

Huge Spoilers Ahead

Finally, I got to finish watching the entire first season of Daredevil: Born Again, and I have to admit that my opinion about the newest installment in the ‘Daredevil lore’ is mixed. While there are certainly some memorable moments within the show, it also has its fair share of low-impact moments, as well as some pacing issues. Of course, Daredevil: Born Again is undoubtedly one of the best things to have ever come out of Marvel in recent times, but it’s still a lot behind the Netflix predecessor show, Daredevil. Let’s read through a few of my thoughts about the show. To be honest, Daredevil: Born Again started with one of the best scenes in the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe lore itself—the Daredevil vs. Benjamin Poindexter (aka Bullseye in the comics) fight. The fight scene, in a way, paid homage to the hallway fight scene in the Netflix series, which in turn was a homage to the epic single-shot fight scene from the South Korean crime thriller Oldboy. But after this fight scene followed a lot of moments that barely caused any impact on the audience. Unlike the previous series, this show has partial tints of the ‘political thriller’ genre, to the point of even drawing some comparisons with the infamous Netflix show House of Cards. Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, gets appointed as the mayor of New York City. He publicly vows to get rid of this city of vigilantes (to the point of even throwing jibes at Spider-Man himself!). His relationship with Vanessa has reached a different stage at this point, as she had an affair between the events of the third season of Daredevil and Daredevil: Born Again, while Fisk was away from her.

Matt Murdock abandons his life as Daredevil after witnessing his best friend Foggy’s murder at Poindexter’s hands. Moreover, he almost killed Poindexter after all the trauma by simply pushing him from the top of the building, after which he began questioning his sense of morality. He started working closely with Cherry and Kirsten McDuffie, with their firm running solely with the motto of saving the innocent rather than gaining some profit. He also starts a relationship with therapist Heather Glenn. What follows afterwards is a string of bizarre-looking plans and attacks against Daredevil and his allies from different sides (with a large portion of it from Fisk himself). Fisk’s task force, aimed at bringing down all the vigilantes, also has an ominous alert hinted at throughout. A series of unprecedented attacks against the civilians and Matt’s close ones finally brings him back as the devil once again, which worries Fisk and even Vanessa. The rest of the series is about uncovering Fisk’s agendas and Matt struggling through his demons and finally deciding what he and the public want.

The show is unique in its aspect by introducing an aesthetic structure different from the Netflix series. The fighting style remains mostly the same, with slightly more over-the-top idiosyncratic aerial shots added to resonate with both the comic book version and the aura within the MCU. The acting side remains top-notch as usual. A political angle, as I said, is introduced and explored more than before. This one is similar to the plot where Lex Luthor gets elected as the President of the United States and misuses his powers to attack Superman, his archenemy. The courtroom angle is also heavily explored in this show, particularly in the case of Hector Ayala, aka the White Tiger. The newest Daredevil series also had some unique elements, like the ‘BB Report’ arc, a news channel run by BB Urich, niece of Ben Urich (who was previously murdered viciously by Wilson Fisk in Netflix’s Daredevil). BB Urich also sometimes moves around Fisk to support his political agenda, even though her real motive is revealed during the final moments of the show.

The biggest highlights of the show are something that deserves applause. There are indeed some moments, especially during the duel scenes, that could stun us from any portion of the globe. Matt remains the same athletic and unperturbed as he always was in the Netflix series. Moreover, the ‘bloodier’ segments of the show are something that comes at an unexpected moment. Some of the moments, like the death of Commissioner Gallo and Muse killing his victims, are on par or maybe even superior to anything violent from Netflix’s Daredevil (including even the scene where Fisk viciously murders someone using his car door). There are also some cool cameos from other MCU TV characters in this series. The fate of Daredevil: Born Again, in my opinion, surprisingly comes in an ambiguous line. Nothing remains predictable at this point, as only with the upcoming episodes would we be able to make a proper judgment about what kind of show this would be. But again, such creative decisions, in my opinion, have somewhat affected this season of the series from being able to stand in its own (like how some of the Marvel movies struggle to do so without the help of previous works, or maybe even the ones that would come afterwards). But the show has its low points, like the pacing. Unlike in Netflix’s Daredevil, where everything is pretty much consistent as far as pacing is taken into consideration, Daredevil: Born Again falters and loses grip on some segments to the point of severely lagging in between. Some parts of the show could even bore us.

In short, this unbalanced mixture, in my opinion, is the biggest drawback of this series. Moreover, the series also ends in a severe cliffhanger for the events in the next season, which I found a little difficult to grasp. I felt somewhat similar to how the climax of the South Korean film The Wailing made me feel initially (even though it didn’t disappoint me like the series did on some levels). Of course, the initial plan was to have 18 episodes, which was altered into dividing it into two different seasons with 9 (or maybe 8 episodes in the next season?) episodes each. Moreover, it also suffered from a creative overhaul of sorts, which could explain what went wrong with the writing part of the series. The fate of Daredevil: Born Again, in my opinion, surprisingly comes in an ambiguous line. Nothing remains predictable at this point, as only with the upcoming episodes would we be able to make a proper judgment about what kind of show this would be. But again, such creative decisions, in my opinion, have somewhat affected this season of the series from being able to stand in its own (like how some of the Marvel movies struggle to do so without the help of previous works, or maybe even the ones that would come afterwards). Anyways, I’m still hoping to see more of this chapter in the next season, as it also teases a ‘team up’ with members from probably even the Defenders. Let’s hope that all issues will be sorted out in the next part of the series.

Daredevil: Born Again is currently available on your Disney+ platform.