★★★☆☆
Daredevil (Charlie Cox) officially joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Daredevil: Born Again, and that promise initially gave fans a lot to look forward to. Unfortunately, season two lost a little bit of that Marvel magic.
The show’s first season saw the return of Daredevil alongside Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) in an all-out war over New York City. The season loosely followed the plot of the comics and felt like a natural way to bring these characters into the fold of the wider Marvel world.
Season two picks up with Daredevil and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) in hiding from Kingpin’s newly corrupted NYPD, which has been targeting masked vigilantes. Daredevil and Page are doing everything they can to disrupt Fisk’s criminal activities, but they’re massively unequipped and understaffed.
When season one ended, it seemed like Daredevil was going to have a few Marvel heroes join him in the fight against Fisk. That hasn’t quite panned out yet, although Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is promised to appear later in the season.
Still, the series gives Daredevil several well-choreographed fight sequences of his own. The season kicks off with Daredevil infiltrating one of Fisk’s ships that is allegedly carrying weapons and contraband into New York. Daredevil takes out most of the crew and sinks the ship in one of Marvel’s most bloody and action-packed fight sequences yet.
If Daredevil: Born Again learned anything from the original Daredevil series, it was to not shy away from the grit of street-level comic books. The series is also taking a few other pages from the comics, including the debut of Daredevil’s new black suit, which gives him extra stealth as he avoids the public eye.
Daredevil: Born Again is making a few puzzling character decisions that the original never would have made, though. It made for inconsistent storytelling and weakened the character arcs of the main characters in the show.
For instance, Dr. Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), Daredevil’s ex-girlfriend, has officially joined forces with Fisk. She is firmly anti-vigilante and bears false witness as a therapist for vigilantes, making them seem crazy and unstable.
This isn’t going to be an emotional reveal when Daredevil finds out because he ended on bad terms with Glenn and has rekindled his romance with Page.
Even for Glenn’s own characterization, she has gone from the well-intentioned and kind-hearted psychologist in season one to someone who now lies in court to prove a point. Glenn’s developments aren’t serving the character, let alone the series.
A similar situation is unfolding between Page and the young journalist BB Urich (Genneya Walton), where Page is really acting out of character in ways that don’t serve her own plot or the show’s.
Firstly, as a character who has experienced so much death and loss throughout her life, Page should be the last person putting a kid like BB’s life at risk. Page has either gotten sloppy or apathetic, and either one doesn’t make sense for someone who is at the peak of her rebellion against Fisk.
As he always has, D’Onofrio still serves as one of the show’s most intriguing character portrayals as the Kingpin, but even his character’s direction seems muddied after the entrance of the new character “Mr. Charles” (Matthew Lillard). Charles only takes away from Fisk’s villainous spotlight and undermines his authority as the Mayor of New York City.
Daredevil: Born Again still has the intriguing premise of last season at its core, but it’s beginning to get sidetracked by lesser plot points. Keeping Daredevil and Kingpin at the center of the story has always been what Daredevil: Born Again should be about, and if this season begins to juggle too many plotlines, it might not create the cohesive narrative that fans may be expecting.
