Wilson Fisk's reign as New York mayor continues, but Daredevil is determined to expose his criminal connections and bring him down, with the help of allies including Karen Page and Jessica Jones. With Daredevil on the run and Fisk protected by mechanisms both legal and illicit, the odds are stacked against the Devil of Hell's Kitchen as never (well, rarely) before.
After Daredevil's original four-season run (including his turn on Defenders) came to an end and Disney+ took over control of Marvel characters on the small screen, fans could assume they'd seen the last of Charlie Cox's take on the character. That decision was reversed twice, first by bringing him into the mainstream MCU through cameos in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, and then by reversing a decision to reboot the character at the eleventh hour and retroactively canonising the entire Netflix-Marvel run of shows (including the characters of Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage).
Although welcome, this decision was only made after production on Daredevil: Born Again had started, so the first season was a little hamstrung in having to incorporate the material shot for the original, reboot version of the story with the new material acknowledging the prior canon. Season 2, happily, is free of such restrictions and the show can try to achieve the potential of what it wanted to be.
There are basically two main storylines here. The first is a political story as Wilson Fisk - Kingpin - tightens his control over New York's political life as well as its criminal underbelly, a balancing act he is initially very successful at but soon threatens to unravel, as his impatience cannot deal with the slow-moving wheels of bureaucracy. His own allies and workers start developing doubts about his brutal methods, but are too scared or feel too powerless to act. Daredevil is keen to take down Fisk, but is losing the battle of public opinion and the relentless surveillance state makes it hard for him to move around the city and do his normal thing. The actual US government smells a rat with Fisk, but is constitutionally bared from intervening...unless Fisk can be exposed.
The tension of the show is driven by these competing plotlines. Daredevil can't just track down Fisk and beat him up, and Fisk can't just unleash the full force of his brutal methods whilst his every move is being tracked in the full glare of media and political scrutiny. Both characters are constrained, and have to work within those constraints, which is much more interesting.
The show is also strengthened by the expansion of the cast. After only fleeting appearances in Season 1, Deborah Ann Woll returns in a key role as Karen Page. Woll is an extremely strong (and underrated) performer, and imbues Karen with a lot of charisma and dangerously impetuous energy without ever making you lose sympathy for her. It's a remarkable balancing act and having her back is great. Jessica Jones also gets a key role in several episodes, and Krysten Ritter brings her world-weary cynicism as usual, but here tempered with more empathy, hinting at off-screen character development.
Not all the cast are firing on top guns. Matthew Lillard is possibly the least convincing CIA agent in screen history, and there's maybe one or two many identikit political movers or criminal gang lords wandering around the story. A bit of sprawl can be a good thing, and this season at least feels like events are happening on a big scale, but not so much when you start forgetting which minor criminal gang leader is supporting Fisk, which is opposing him, and which is apparently supporting him but also willing to backstab him.
There's a lot going on here, for a nice change, as it fills up the eight-hour runtime quite well, with a lot of subplots to go around. Cox is possibly at his very best as a Daredevil constrained by the system he swore to uphold and with his pool of allies rapidly thinning out, whilst Vincent D'Onofrio gives an outstanding performance as Fisk has everything he ever wanted - power, respect, influence, a beautiful and intelligent wife - but finds it still cannot fill the hole in his soul. There's always been a tragic, operatic element to Fisk's story and character, especially this version of him, and D'Onofrio plays that to the hilt.
An excellent season of television which, at times, threatens to be the best thing Marvel has put on the small screen, unravels towards the very end with unexpected rapidity. The trial of a main character turns into a trial of Wilson Fisk, his motives and his measures, and it's extremely tense and well-written. But the show goes too far when the tension breaks and we end up with a situation which gets very implausible (bordering on the idiotic) very quickly. The season's cliffhanger ending is so contrived that it will have your eyebrows halfway to Mars before the end credits are done. I know Marvel are aware they have a good villain deficit (especially since Thanos bought it, twice) and D'Onofrio is one of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal, but they are also at risk here of over-using him and eliminating his menace and power.
This is frustrating and disappointing, as up until the last half-hour or so, Daredevil: Born Again's second season (****) and the sixth season overall to feature Cox as Daredevil in a leading role, is outstanding. As it stands, the in-production third season is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the ending of this season seem less disappointing. The show is currently streaming worldwide on Disney+.
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