u/EricMalikyte

So, I finally got a chance to watch the rest of Daredevil: Born Again this Mother’s Day, and while I’ve felt like this season has been incredibly up and down in regard to themes, pacing, scope, and I could probably write a whole video essay about what I felt was wrong with these elements, I was still excited about finishing this season out.

Now, the Alt-right outrage merchants and slop-tubers are raging about Karen Paige existing as a woman while beating up a Nazi-stand-in, and a lot of the more centrist channels are singing the show’s praises, I actually think they’re all wrong about this.

While I’ve enjoyed seeing a lot of these characters and actors reprising their Netflix roles, and I will always enjoy seeing Charley Cox in action as Matt Murdock and Daredevil, I’ve consistently felt like this whole series has felt…off…

And with the first revival season, I figured it was having two different writing and production teams working on two very different shows. How some of the old Netflix crew came in and had to “salvage” what the other team did, as it was sold by some reviewers on the YouTube…

But, after seeing this season, I no longer think that’s the case.

And I think the problem is that Daredevil: Born Again feels hollow.

Spoilers, by the way.

Not that it’s a shell of its former self. No. It’s not the same show as what was released on Netflix back in the day (no, I don’t want to go to IMDB to check what year it was released, I don’t care, because that’s not the point.)

But rather, the show feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be.

The show wants to ask the question, “What is a vigilante? And what is a criminal?” It wants to ask whether it is just for a man like Matt Murdock to go to prison, while Wilson Fisk, a clear murderer and criminal that has escaped facing consequences for his actions for how many years / seasons gets to leave while only suffering what amounts to a slap on the wrist for someone who probably has off shore accounts set up that more than likely can’t be touched by the MCU’s legal system.

It wants to ask us to believe that Matt Murdock, who has not only lost loved ones to this mad man’s bullshit egotistical reign of terror, but watched him literally terrorize the people of his city and his fellow “classmen,” choose to accept this, and even convince Fisk to take a deal that doesn’t feel just at all, while he murders ordinary citizens right in front of Daredevil.

Or, how about I rephrase it like this.

It wants us to believe that Matt would throw away his life, reveal who he is as Daredevil, only to encourage Fisk to take a deal that basically ensures that he’ll be back at his old tricks before too long anyway, terrorizing the citizens of New York City, and somehow think that this decision is in character…

Even as Wilson Fisk, as some kind of stand-in for a certain Cheeto-man in Chief, murders people in the halls of a courthouse, as he straight up attempts to do a coup in New York City, some of those very people being murdered in front of Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and White Tiger (I think?).

It’s a show that wants to portray the resistance as some kind of January 6th style mob, equally capable of storming the courthouse and demanding Fisk’s head, while purporting to care about the idea of justice, of what the fictional court room represents where Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock almost convinced me that this show was something worth saving before the show flushed it down the drain.

And I guess that’s the most insulting thing to me. Because to me. Someone who has protested in defense of our Representative Democracy, who has called himself a member of the “resistance” against what the Trump Regime and its fascist, white supremacist members represent, and who has seen the corporate owned media in this country try to paint us as dangerous terrorists, when not once did we storm a capitol building, or demand certain public officials be hanged, not once did we resort to the violence that the Nazis in office have so often claimed us to be, or spread blatant disinformation to alter the outcome of an election, or disenfranchise Black voters the moment the Civil Rights Act was effectively gutted, or sent a paramilitary force of slave catchers into the streets of our cities and murder innocent citizens trying to protect the rule of law, not once did we resort to the kinds of violence that we are often been accused of.

But Disney seems to want you to think that we’re the same. That to punish the bad guys, for them to get the guillotine that’s fucken coming to them for the absolute terror they’ve reigned down upon us, upon our psyches, and upon our civil liberties, is to be just as bad as the big bad guy subjecting us all to the evil in the first place.

Don’t support the working people who are starving, trying to make ends meet. Don’t blame the Billionaires destroying our planet and hoarding their wealth while the system collapses in on itself and the world plunges into a depression that we are not fucking ready for, not even close. Don’t drag them from their bunkers and their islands where they traffic children and laugh at how stupid we are for letting them do it.

Whether you like it or not. Daredevil: Born Again had a message. And it was a political message. And to me, as muddied as it was, that message is that the status quo should prevail because killing or even punishing the bad guy is somehow “wrong.”

Instead of setting up an ending where Matt Murdock had to make a moral choice. To save the people of the city he claims he cares about, the communities of people who Wilson Fisk has consistently terrorized, to choose between his vow never to kill, or his vow to protect the innocent. Matt Murdock chooses to encourage Wilson Fisk to take the deal offered by the Attorney General—which essentially means that Fisk can leave the city, the country, and is no longer a citizen of the US, and effectively faces zero consequences for his actions.

I’m sorry…what?

Are we to believe that Matt would really choose this? The Matt that believes in justice? That wants the system to work? That wants to save lives?

I don’t know.

Comic books are silly sometimes. They're the very definition of fantasy, power or otherwise. Superhero comics are also silly. Villains come and go, and are in and out of jail for every excuse you can imagine. We understand that as a mechanism, an excuse, so that the Joker, or Lex Luthor, or the King Pin can be back in the next issue to challenge the hero again.

We know that Marvel and Disney want to bring King Pin back. Probably to fight Spider-man or some bullshit.

But they’ve also been consistently profoundly political. Offering a black and white morality that can feel hokey in more cynical times, but can offer a ray of hope to folks who might be feeling like the system isn’t there to protect us, that it’s only there to keep us in check so the rich can keep getting rich.

I figured that by letting Fisk start murdering everyday citizens, the show runners working on Daredevil: Born Again, were offering Matt Murdock a moral choice. Setting the stage for a showdown that forces him to choose between two mutually exclusive vows. To me, that would be a good setup for a climax to a superhero story as politically charged as this one.

But, instead, Matt doesn’t actually choose justice. He chooses what will ultimately end up sending himself to jail, while Fisk is able to build his empire back up and make his return again to terrorize New York City again.

And it does it, while trying to convince us, not only to keep watching this show as it makes weirder and weirder choices, that we should trust in corrupt institutions, that we shouldn’t even talk about reforming them even though the lawless consistently abuse them, while they terrorize the innocent. It wants, like so many Marvel shows and films, to endlessly protect the status quo, in a time when the status quo is not working for the working class, for immigrants, for Black Americans, for the neurodivergent, for the disabled, for trans folks, for the entire populations being threatened by genocide by madmen and dictators and the obscenely rich, and for the Indigenous people who have been told once again that they might not be considered citizens.

Like. We could have gotten a season where Matt Murdock had to face a self-defense trial for killing Wilson Fisk, where he has to come to terms with his choices, and decide whether Fisk’s life is even worth mourning, and whether he truly did become the monster he always thought he would become after crossing that line.

That could have been an interesting story. But I don’t think Disney is interested in telling good stories. It’s interested in getting you to consume the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, while your money gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and their shareholders keep getting richer.

Frankly, I’m sick of corporate slop that endlessly bends the knee to the status quo. That isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.

I’m tired of the real life Lex Luthor’s and King Pins of the world getting to do whatever the fuck they want while the rest of us and the world burns for their ambitions, and you should be too. You should demand more from your stories. From your art.

I'm giving away my cyberpunk battle manga!

Probably my favorite page I've made for my cyberpunk battle manga!

Daredevil: Born Again And Corporatized "Storytelling"

Me being an absolute dork dramatically reading my cyberpunk battle manga 😅