Daredevil: Born Again Season 2's Ending Sets Up A Crucial Storyline For Season 3
Matt has finally dethroned Mayor Fisk, but he had to sacrifice everything in the process.
For three seasons of the original Netflix series and now two seasons of Daredevil: Born Again, Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have been locked in a seemingly neverending battle for the soul of Hell’s Kitchen. Their rivalry has outlasted the machinations of The Hand, the intervention of mass-murderer Frank Castle, and even the wildcard antics of Bullseye, and it has claimed the lives of characters caught in the crosshairs, like Foggy Nelson and Vanessa Fisk. No matter what happens, just like in the comics, it seems like Daredevil and The Kingpin can’t quite escape their base natures and will always end up back at each other’s throats.
When the first season of Born Again arrived last year, it felt like the ultimate culmination of that perpetual conflict — Daredevil abandoning the mantle while his archenemy ascended to the office of New York City’s mayor, backed by his own private militia. Season 2 only intensified the stakes, labeling Matt and Karen as domestic terrorists while Fisk’s own extrajudicial crimes grew in scale and audacity, with the fallout threatening to upend the structure of not just Matt and Wilson’s lives, but all of New York. And now that the dust has finally settled after last night’s season finale, while the city is hopefully headed towards an era of healing and reconciliation, our favorite lawyer-turned-vigilante is headed towards anything but.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2’s finale.
Once again, as with every season, Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s rivalry has turned both New York and their lives upside-down.
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Ending Explained
Faced with the momentous task of trying to get Karen Page acquitted of a laundry list of illegitimate charges in what essentially amounts to a kangaroo court, the legal team of Matt and Kirsten McDuffie pull out their biggest trump card yet: calling Mayor Wilson Fisk himself to the stand as a witness, questioning him about the nature of his hatred of vigilantism as well as his public declarations of Murdock’s “heroism” after the lawyer took a bullet for his longtime foe. Things take a drastic turn when Matt pushes to enter the video testimony of the late Christofi Savva (the murdered first mate of the Northern Star) into evidence, revealing to the courtroom that Fisk was using the cargo ship to smuggle weapons, and ordered its destruction to cover up the crime. However, even that’s not enough to fully sway the proceedings, so Matt plays his final hand: in front of the prosecution, the judge, the jury, and dozens of TV cameras, he reveals his secret identity to the world in order to testify against Fisk as a material witness corroborating Savva’s story.
The act finally convinces the judges to drop charges against Karen, and Mayor Fisk’s empire comes tumbling down as both the Attorney General and Governor McCaffrey both move to remove him from office. However, before he can even exit the courtroom, everyone’s favorite expert marksman Bullseye shows up and takes a shot at the mayor, throwing the courthouse into chaos and trapping both Matt’s crew and the major players of the Fisk administration inside.
Matt getting to grill his longtime foe in the same court he’s spent two seasons illegitimizing is one of the best parts of the season.
When Fisk tries to reclaim the narrative through a broadcast, he’s matched by a final City Without Fear broadcast from B.B. Urich, which inspires the citizens of NYC to don their own Daredevil costumes and take to the streets in protest. After they storm the building (which results in an unbelievable extended sequence in which Fisk murders countless protestors in cold blood), Matt manages to convince the crowd not to fatally beat Wilson, and instead urges him to take a resignation/plea deal that forces him to renounce his citizenship and flee the country.
While The Kingpin arrives alone and defeated on a tropical beach somewhere far away from New York, Matt Murdock finally gets to enjoy a quiet date with Karen Page — until the sound of police sirens pull the rug out from under viewers, right before Matt is taken away in handcuffs and placed in jail for assault, attempted murder, and numerous crimes connected to his vigilante persona.
Could Season 3 Adapt The Devil In Cell Block D?
Fans of the source material have been speculating all season that somehow Matt would end up in a prison jumpsuit, and it was all but confirmed by a now-deleted Instagram post by Mike Colter. Matt has ended up in prison more than once, but arguably the more popular of his jail-centered storylines is 2006’s The Devil in Cell Block D, the first major arc of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark’s run on the character and a direct continuation of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s acclaimed multi-year Daredevil saga. The lead-up to Cell Block D sees Matt’s secret identity uncovered by the FBI and leaked to the press, and after being charged with perjury and obstruction of justice (who would’ve thought that being a vigilante and a public defender don’t mix well), he’s thrown into Ryker’s Island with a whole host of angry supercriminals now aware that their vigilante archnemesis was a blind attorney the whole time.
Unlike the show, in which Matt unmasks willingly, the 2006 storyline was partially lampshading paparazzi culture with Matt’s identity being leaked to the press.
In the original storyline, Matt is forced to form a tentative alliance with two of his biggest enemies: Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle, who incidentally are both doing time in Rykers. While trying to figure out how to get his best friend released, Foggy Nelson is stabbed as a result of a hired hit, which forces Murdock to have to team up with his foes in a desperate prison break in order to find out who paid for the hit on Foggy.
Although The Devil in Cell Block D is one of Daredevil’s most acclaimed storylines, quite a lot of it has either already been used or simply won’t work in exactly the same way as it does in the comics. Both Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle are off elsewhere, indisposed, and Foggy Nelson is already dead, assassinated by the same person who was responsible for his (faked) demise in the comics — Vanessa Fisk. It’s incredibly likely that certain parts of the storyline will be repurposed and combined with the other major storyline involving Daredevil in prison — Chip Zdarsky’s Doing Time arc, which saw Matt willingly turn himself in (with his secret identity intact, however) after accidentally murdering a petty thief. While Cell Block D focuses more on Matt’s conspiratorial paranoia behind bars and the numerous enemies surrounding him, Doing Time focuses more on Daredevil’s disillusionment with the criminal justice system at large and the failures of prison to truly rehabilitate individuals, a thematic idea Born Again has already brushed up against.
It’ll be interesting to see if an adaptation of Cell Block D introduces any of Daredevil’s recurring villains already behind bars.
The ending of Born Again season 2 sets up a whole host of new variables moving forward, especially considering we know the Defenders are returning next season as well as the rumors regarding Peter Parker potentially paying Matt a visit in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Even if Matt’s sacrifice resulted in the takedown of the Kingpin once again, it appears as if he’s going to be spending a lot of time considering the consequences of his actions and the consequences of the system he spends so much time upholding when we finally see him again.
