Welcome to The A.V. Club’s Daredevil binge-watch. From Friday, March 18 through Sunday, March 20, A.V. Club contributor Caroline will be watching and reviewing every episode of Netflix’s returning superhero series. Though she’s working straight through the season, she’ll be taking some breaks, too, posting five reviews on Friday, four reviews on Saturday, and four reviews on Sunday. You can follow along and comment on the whole season on the binge-watching hub page or chime in on individual episode reviews. For those watching the show at a more moderate pace, reviews by Oliver Sava will run daily starting Tuesday, March 22.
At least I have a better sense of what Daredevil was trying to do with “Guilty As Sin.” The episode was meant to officially introduce The Hand as an overarching threat and give Matt and Elektra a reason to split up. While I don’t think it did either of those things particularly well, its missteps thankfully don’t carry over into “Seven Minutes In Heaven.” Elektra immediately feels like herself again, which is a welcome relief. But after learning that his girlfriend has enjoyed killing people since she was 12 years old, Matt decides it’s time that they consciously uncouple. Weirdly, he takes an “agree to disagree” approach about the whole murder thing—evidence that Daredevil doesn’t fully realize how brutal her “Guilty As Sin” slaughter actually was.
Much like the Punisher, Elektra drops out of the picture (at least temporarily) after a four-episode arc, leaving a new ruthless force in her place. This mini-arc structure is a massive improvement on Daredevil’s first season, which unfolded without much variation. Season two, however, knows just when to shake things up.
And this time around it’s a very familiar face doing the shaking. By far the most compelling parts of “Seven Minutes In Heaven” center on Wilson Fisk and his increasingly successful attempts to become the prison’s Queen Bee. This storyline is fantastic from start to finish—particularly the opening 10-minute flashback in which we watch Fisk build up his prison support system (and gain a new Wesley in the process). But there’s only room for one kingpin in this prison and a man named Dutton has already claimed the throne. So Fisk decides to reach out to Frank Castle in hopes of getting the Punisher to do his dirty work for him.
Seeing Frank and Fisk together emphasizes just how different Daredevil’s two foes are. Though Fisk is the more elegant speaker, Frank holds his own in their conversations—cutting through the kingpin’s manipulative bullshit. And for his part Fisk comes to respect Frank’s Terminator-like abilities, deciding to help the Punisher escape after Fisk’s initial attempts to have him killed fail. I’ll leave it to Oliver Sava’s longer reviews to parse all the fantastic character dynamics at play here, but suffice it to say the prison stuff is really top notch.