Daredevil: Born Again has always excelled in the action department. Its fight scenes move with propulsion and clarity and typically resolve with a brutal finishing move that pops like splash-page punctuation. This season has delivered plenty on that front. But when it eases off the throttle and lets its ensemble feel the impact of its violence, as Born Again does this week in “The Grand Design,” the Marvel Television series proves to be no slouch in the character department either. Thrillingly, this downbeat hour highlights the series’ strengths by threading a bonus Netflix-era episode through the immediate aftermath of last week’s clash between Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). Born Again reconnects with the episodic moral dilemmas that partially defined its earlier incarnation, folding seemingly minor stakes into the series’…well, it’s in the title.
“The Grand Design” is an apt name for an episode that splits past and present into parallel tracks that converge on its most dramatic moments, serving as a reflective nod to character history before the season accelerates toward its uncertain future. It’s a neat narrative trick that reinforces the series’s core theme of redemption, bolstered by the surprise return of Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). His morally upright arc, shown through flashbacks, intersects poignantly with scenes of Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil (Charlie Cox), deciding what to do with Bullseye, the man who murdered him, in the present. Through these shifts in time, demarcated by whether Cox is wearing a floppy wig or not, we learn how the troubled hero relearns the meaning of mercy.
As Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) teeters between life and death and her husband’s mask slips to reveal the frightened boy underneath, “The Grand Design” once again finds Born Again subverting expectations while supporting its core drama—a double act that its first season often struggled to pull off. On the Fisk front, the episode builds on the demented relationship between Fisk’s top lieutenants, Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) and Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan), a subplot that had previously tiptoed around Blake’s peripheral involvement with the anti-Fisk videos made by BB Urich (Genneya Walton). Buck makes his awareness of the leaks from within the mayor’s office known as he guides Blake, his new hot-dog bro, on a mysterious, Sopranos-tinted detour through the Catskills while Blake sweats in torrents. Later, Buck pops the trunk to reveal the true purpose of their trip: disposing of the corpse of Christofi Savva (Yorgos Karamihos), first mate of the Northern Star. He gives Blake a choice following his stay of execution: “saw…or shovel?”
Blake and Buck’s bro-down clicks with other fraught male relationships in the episode. Of course, there’s the professional trust between Wilson Fisk and his late associate James Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore), who we learn this week introduced Buck to Fisk when he needed a shrewd assassin on the quick. Don’t forget about Murdock’s tenuous peace with Benjamin Poindexter (Bethel), who’s clouded by his grief and rage over Foggy’s death. Tying everything together, including the affecting scenes of Vanessa slipping away as Kingpin watches helplessly, is the theme of memory—how people cling to it and what might happen if they ever let it go.
At the heart of all this is Foggy Nelson. His defense of childhood bully Ray (Nathan Wallace)—a petty criminal facing what seems like a death sentence for turning on Kingpin—forms the narrative backbone of the episode, if not the entire season. Foggy eventually uncovers the reason for Ray’s hostility toward him: He resented Foggy’s friendship with his brother and had a tougher time growing up in Hell’s Kitchen than most. So Foggy seeks a legal loophole to free Ray from jail and finds one. Despite all the disrespect Ray has thrown his way over the years, Foggy digs into the Nelson & Murdock coffers and finances Ray’s new lease on life—not because he necessarily feels sorry for him, but because he refuses to stand by and watch the system he believes used to destroy people.
Note Matt’s dismissive “aww” when Foggy argues his case. His ethical compass has wobbled from the start. (He moonlights as a vigilante with a pain fetish, after all.) But Foggy’s defense of his childhood bully has set a moral precedent for him, one that’s easy to uphold in peacetime and trickier to maintain when shit hits the fan, as when, say, he faces a tyrannical mayor exploiting his city for profit and power—or when he finds himself in the company of Bullseye. Don’t forget: Daredevil threw Ben from the top of a four-story building in the series premiere; it should have killed him. Now, Murdock feels responsible for his enemy. It’s that ironclad sense of righteousness that also helps to explain why he took Bullseye’s bullet for Fisk last season. Or “maybe it’s the grand design,” Ben says, babbling about the balance of scales. The counselor isn’t trying to hear that right now. First comes survival, and the AVTF is at the doors.
Those scales Ben’s talking about, the ones that balance with Vanessa’s death, seem to tip even further by the end of the episode. The Fisks’ personal journey through memory is, in its way, just as revealing as Murdock’s. The glimpses of their past lives, especially those leading to the gallery where Kingpin first encountered Rabbit In A Snow Storm, add up to the one thing he believes in above all else: her. Since Daredevil season one, it’s been clear that Vanessa understands Fisk in a way no one else ever could. She gets that his inner emptiness is reflected in the piece, which invites all kinds of projection (she even indulges in some before she ever meets him, oddly enough), but it’s the key to understanding Kingpin. As he sits at her bedside, that inner calm she came to love shows itself for a moment—they share a laugh, and it’s sweet—but it doesn’t last.
Wilson Fisk’s inner rage comes to the fore as Vanessa breathes her last. Throughout the episode, sounds from the beach they visited echo, and the whiteness of the sun reflecting off their clothes repeats as a striking visual motif. The man who built an empire on control is suddenly faced with a situation that forbids it. All those sounds and lights dissolve into a void. “The Grand Design” ends with an ellipsis, an appropriately comic-booky “Never The End” moment that suggests that this design, no matter how grand and exciting, is the pattern Fisk and his foe are doomed to repeat over and over until the bitter end.
Stray observations
- • I’m going to miss Ayelet Zurer. She brought an easy grace and subtle good humor to her role. Fisk won’t be the same without her and neither will Born Again.
- • Daredevil’s black armor has been chipping away all season, revealing red underneath. This week, the red is more pronounced on the suit, almost resembling blood. Representing what? Baptism? Rebirth?
- • The crappy wigs are being put to work this week.
- • Is Matt Murdock a foot guy? Discuss.
- • “You know, I could kill for a hot dog!” Why does being friendly sound so evil coming from Buck? Also, is this foreshadowing? Will Buck kill Blake one day? Kill him over hot dogs?
- • There’s a hilarious bit with Buck pulling into a hardware store and exiting with an electric saw and a shovel to poor Daniel’s horror.
- • Bears repeating: Michael Gandolfini is doing exceptional work this season. Ditto Arty Froushan.
- • Matt mentions “a nurse” who can help Bullseye, but I sincerely doubt he means Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson).
- • “Little help?” We’ll see how Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), who’s been on a Punisher-boosting streak lately, reacts to her new roommate next week.
- • The last time we heard the sounds of the ocean play over the credits was the episode where the original White Tiger, Hector Ayala, was killed by the AVTF.
- • No tunes from Josie’s jukebox this week.
Jarrod Jones is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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