Review: Daredevil: Born Again, “The Grand Design” | Season 2, Episode 5

Back in the heyday of the MCU, if you had asked me to name my favorite Marvel characters, I’m not sure Foggy Nelson would have cracked the top 15. While I’ve always been a fan of Elden Henson’s turn as Daredevil’s best friend, it was easy to get distracted by bigger, splashier performances in bigger, splashier roles. Yet looking back now, after years of bad movies and forgettable Disney+ TV shows, the existence of Henson’s Foggy kind of seems like a miracle.

In a Cinematic Universe of larger-than-life personalities, he’s a character who feels entirely human, which—at their best—is what the Netflix Defenders shows were designed to offer. It only takes a few moments of his flashback return this week to be reminded of his working-class humbleness; his insecurities and strengths; his genuinely funny sense of humor; and the motivation that drives him to use his natural smarts and eye for detail to try to make the world a better place. Foggy is plainspoken and down-to-Earth, yet there’s about 10% of him that’s completely surprising and unpredictable too; the part that connects his dweeby vibe to Matt’s cool guy charm and the part that got Marci to fall for him. When you compare all that to a character like Kirsten or even my beloved Daniel Blake, there’s just no contest. They feel like TV personalities, he feels like a person.

It's one of the reasons I was so pissed about Born Again’s decision to kill him off, which was part of the show’s initial pitch (where he was supposed to have died offscreen some time ago) and then got doubled down on when the new creatives took over and decided we should actively watch him get murdered instead. Whatever storytelling juice the show got from that choice, I just don’t think it’s more than the juice the show could have gotten from bringing him back as a main player. This episode proves that, even as it also makes Foggy’s death feel thematically important for pretty much the first time in Born Again’s run.