Review: Daredevil: Born Again, “The Northern Star” | Season 2, Episode 1

Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of Daredevil: Born Again, which returned tonight on Disney+ with its second season. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers.

The first season of Daredevil: Born Again was a weird Frankenstein creation. As I analyzed in obsessive detail in my reviews last year, the mid-strike handover from one set of creatives to another left the show chopping up and stitching together two different takes on what a Daredevil reboot should be—it meant transforming footage that had been filmed for a lighter episodic legal procedural into a darker serialized story and weaving in main cast members who weren’t even there when the first six episodes were originally shot. Given all that, it’s kind of a miracle we ended up with even a vaguely cohesive show, which is basically what I would dub that first season in the end.

This time around, however, my expectations were high headed into a season where showrunner Dario Scardapane and head directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead were in charge from the beginning. I was expecting a big reset that would ditch what didn’t work in the Frankensteined version and deliver something fresh and intentional. So I was surprised to discover just how much this season two premiere feels like a direct continuation of last season. The fact that we’re just back to meandering storylines for supporting characters like Cherry, Kirsten, and Heather even as New York City is under literal martial law somehow felt like a jump scare.

In retrospect, however, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I had forgotten that production on season two began before the first season even premiered. So while Scardapane and co. were creating this season in response to their experience making season one, they weren’t really responding to the mixed critical/fan reception of the series itself (at least not at first—production eventually wrapped about three months after the season one finale aired). To their credit, that’s what allowed them to deliver this second season in just a year’s time, which does feel like a miracle in this day and age. And remembering that timeline helped reset my expectations for how much change we should expect in Born Again’s second season—not so much a transformation as an ongoing evolution.

Still, that isn’t to say there are no changes here. Though action still clearly isn’t the strongest suit for the otherwise stylish directorial talents of Benson and Moorhead, this premiere opens with a more tangible fight scene than the CGI-fest of last year’s series premiere. Rocking a brand-new black Daredevil suit, Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock sneaks onto a cargo ship in order to investigate Mayor Fisk’s latest criminal gun-smuggling enterprise, snapping a lot of bones and inadvertently getting a whole lot of guys drowned in the process. (Not that he really seems to care.) It’s a statement of purpose that Born Again wants to immediately prove its dark and gritty bonafides.

The other big swing choice this premiere makes is to not just bring back Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page as a main player, but to reveal she and Matt are now in a full-on fugitive romance together. It’s a culmination of a will-they/won’t-they dynamic that started way back in the premiere of the Netflix run, but didn’t really go anywhere beyond a “perfect” first date and a kiss in season two. (After that, Matt got distracted by Elektra while Karen got distracted by Frank Castle.)

For long-time Karen/Matt shippers—or just anyone who can appreciate the palpable chemistry between Cox and Woll—it’s an exciting choice. Personally, I think Karen and Matt are a fundamentally mismatched couple and that’s exactly what makes them so compelling. It’s completely understandable why they’re drawn to one another (again, the chemistry is off the charts), and yet they tend to bring out each other’s more dangerously impulsive instincts. It’s the reason Foggy was so key to the overall balance of their friend group. Without him, Matt and Karen have no checks and balances, which I suspect (or at least hope) will play out in intriguingly thorny ways this season. 

Indeed, if the first season of Born Again was about people trying to cling to a sense of normalcy as the world slowly spiraled out of control, this season seems to be about giving into the chaos. That’s true of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk as well. Fisk’s once earnest attempt to turn over a new political leaf has now devolved into using his Anti-Vigilante Task Force as his private army, and he’s more than happy to use his “extraordinary emergency powers” to dub the cargo ship sinking a “terrorist attack orchestrated and executed by the vigilante of Hell’s Kitchen.” Under his new Safer Streets Initiative, all superhero vigilantes are terrorists and will have mandatory life sentences if they’re convicted of extra-judicial actions—which it seems like most of them probably will be given how Jack Duquesne a.k.a. Swordsman is treated ahead of his upcoming “Vigilante Trial.” 

Even more so than last season it all feels like an eerie, unsettling parallel for our real world, even if I ultimately think that’s less because Fisk is supposed to be a one-to-one stand in for Trump and more just because fascism tends to manifest in similar ways throughout history. Still, it’s nice to see the show isn’t pulling any political punches this season. Much like Matt and Karen, Fisk is now operating without checks and balances—at least not legally. Matthew Lillard’s mysterious, delightfully lackadaisical CIA agent Mr. Charles shows up to stop New York’s Attorney General and Lt. Governor from placing any oversight on what Fisk is doing in New York City, although that leaves Mr. Charles as his own power player in Fisk and Vanessa’s criminal empire.

It's a strong setup for our two mirrored protagonists, but what concerns me a bit is Born Again’s seeming unwillingness to trim the fat elsewhere. Instead of zeroing in on Matt and Fisk and their respective personal/professional partners, this premiere also makes time to explore Heather’s ongoing trauma over killing Muse; the weird frenemy dynamic between BB Urich and Daniel Blake; Kirsten gearing up to take on more vigilante cases; Cherry taking on private investigative work; and AVTF Officer Connor Powell assaulting Greek restaurant owners. Even John Benjamin Hickey’s D.A. Benjamin Hochberg has an increased role after popping up in just two episodes last season.

It all runs the risk of making the show feel way too scattered and sprawling, which is the last thing an eight-episode series needs. Where Loki—the only other live action Disney+ Marvel show to get a second season before Wonder Man was renewed this week—kicked off its sophomore outing with a big statement of purpose premiere, Born Again eases us back into things almost too gently. That could all change thanks to a dramatic cliffhanger that sees Cherry potentially die of a heart attack while an unseen Bullseye murders the AVTF agents who just unmasked Matt. But, right now, the most interesting idea in this premiere is the fact that Matt still believes Fisk will be held accountable if he and Karen can just prove he’s smuggling military grade weapons and using the Red Hook Freeport to line his and his cronies’ pockets.

That seems awfully naïve for a guy who’s already sent Fisk to prison two separate times only to watch him get elected Mayor of New York City. But at least it gives Matt a more tangible, active arc than he had for most of last season. While this premiere doesn’t entirely fill me with confidence for the season to come, it doesn’t fill me with dread either. If Daredevil is the Man Without Fear, I’m more like the TV Critic Who’s Cautiously Optimistic.

Stray observations

• Welcome back to coverage of Daredevil: Born Again! As someone who basically started my TV recapping career with these Marvel Defenders shows, it’s still a surreal joy to get to return to these characters all these years later.
• Romance wise, I actually think Matt’s healthiest dynamic was with Claire Temple and I’m bummed the Defenders universe wound up pairing her with Luke Cage instead. (Luke and Jessica forever!) I’m also a Karen/Frank shipper, so I’m not above rooting for a semi-toxic relationship.
• There’s a very cool aspect ratio change when Matt hears that watch ticking and decides to stick it in a gun case as a kind of echolocation tracker. 
• Even under the guise of propaganda/“faux positivity,” I’m not sure why the BB Reports have gone from looking like Spike Lee interstitials to AstraZeneca commercials. Perhaps that’s why we get the weird detour to the masked Mayor Kingpin video instead.
• There are no signs of any other returning Defenders yet, but Karen does mention “Jess” being the source that helps her pull the ship’s manifest.
• Shout-out to Cherry for going with the insult “You hit like a kid” instead of “You hit like a girl.”
• Given how much Karen’s relationship with Ben Urich was a cornerstone of the first season of Daredevil, I should love the idea of Karen befriending his niece. But, in practice, the Karen/BB scene just feels so expositional and rote where it should feel emotional and personal.
• Karen: “I’ll never understand how you do that.” / Matt: “You know, years of brutal training from a borderline psychotic sensei.” Stick mentioned!!
• I can’t express how much it kills me that when Cherry quips that Matt knows how to lay on the guilt, the show can’t even make the easiest Catholic joke in the world. I truly don’t understand why this series is so disinterested in religion.