In the 1st episode of Daredevil: Born Again, Bullseye was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Foggy. Matt stopped his vigilantism because, on the night that Foggy died, he threw Bullseye from the roof of Josie’s bar with the intention of killing him. Although Bullseye survived due to his reinforced spine, Matt felt that he was unfit to be a hero. With Karen out of the picture too, Matt joined hands with McDuffie to start his own firm. Since McDuffie isn’t just Matt’s colleague but his friend too, she sets him up on a date with Heather Glenn, which turns out to be a great success. This brief moment of happiness was sullied by Fisk’s ascension to the post of Mayor of NYC and his promise to make the city vigilante-free. Matt was apparently not the only unhappy person on that momentous occasion; Vanessa was pretty frustrated as well, since Fisk’s return meant that she was no longer the one handling the business with the Five Families and because Fisk was aware of her extramarital affair with a guy named Adam. Fisk promised that he wouldn’t step on Matt’s toes if he didn’t step on his, and he gave Vanessa his word that he wouldn’t harm Adam. Was Fisk telling the truth? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Matt Represents Hector Ayala
The 2nd episode of Daredevil: Born Again opens with Mayor Fisk making a public address to the people of New York, some of whom cheer him on while others boo him. Matt is seen downing a bottle of wine as Fisk berates Punisher, Spider-Man (don’t worry, he doesn’t have a cameo in the show), and Daredevil in the same breath. As Fisk makes big promises about cleaning up the city, the scene then shifts to a subway station where Hector Ayala (played by the late Kamar de los Reyes) gets into a fight with 2 NYPD cops, Shanahan and Powell, who are assaulting a guy named Nicky. The scuffle gets so aggressive that one of the 2 cops stumbles, falls onto the tracks, and gets turned into a bloody mess. The other cop obviously flashes his badge and arrests Ayala for “killing” a police officer.
While paying a visit to the 15th Precinct for one of his clients, Matt hears Ayala getting roughed up. The word on the street is that Ayala is a “cop killer,” but Matt decides to hear his side of the story. As soon as Matt figures out that Ayala isn’t lying about having no hand in the death of the officer—because Matt can hear a person’s heartbeat—he says that he’d like to represent him since it’s the right thing to do. McDuffie thinks this is career suicide because their firm, which is barely a year old, is incapable of taking on the might of the New York Police Department. Cherry says that the NYPD claims that there was no one at the station except for Ayala and those 2 cops, and that Ayala attacked them without any provocation and killed one of them. Matt tells Cherry to talk to Ayala’s wife and see if they can learn something important about Hector, and also find the guy that Ayala was clearly trying to protect from those 2 violent officers.
Matt and McDuffie show up at court to represent Ayala while Hochberg appears for the NYPD. It’s evident from McDuffie’s reaction that Hochberg is a force to be reckoned with, and they are not equipped to have a legal face-off with him. Matt gets a taste of what Hochberg is capable of when, as soon as he says that he wants Ayala to be remanded without bail, the judge grants the motion. Matt tries to get a word in, but the judge moves on to the next case, leaving Matt flustered and confused.
Fisk Begins Acting Like a Mayor
Sheila explains Mayor Fisk’s schedule for the day, which includes a meeting with Fire Chief Carter, Commissioner Gallo, and District Attorney Hochberg, but Fisk is more interested in knowing whether or not he is sitting in the same place that was once occupied by Fiorello La Guardia, because his abusive father used to be a big fan of the 99th mayor of New York. After some light banter about the importance of these meet-and-greets, Sheila bravely points out that Vanessa’s absence at Fisk’s public appearances is greatly hurting his image. Fisk acknowledges this and says that he and his wife are working on it.
While heading over to the senior center, where Fisk is supposed to get the key to a borough, the mayor finds himself in a traffic jam because of a crater on the highway (which could’ve been caused by a superhero landing). Instead of waiting to go around it, Fisk orders the highway maintenance workers to ignore the fact that they don’t have the permit approval to do their job and just fill in the crater. Since several people with phones are stuck there alongside Fisk, he turns this into a spectacle and proves that he is a mayor who will get stuff done immediately. In doing so, Fisk goes against everything that Sheila wants him to do, and he actually acts on Blake’s whimsical advice because Fisk thinks that Blake has his finger on the pulse of the city, while Sheila is outdated.
BB Urich gets word of the fact that Blake is in Fisk’s good books and uses him to get an interview with Fisk. As soon as BB meets Fisk, albeit in Blake and Cashman’s presence, Ben’s name comes up, and things get a little awkward, because everyone in that room knows that Fisk killed Ben. BB makes the air a lot more tense by bringing up the rumor that Commissioner Gallo and his fellow officers are planning to resign in protest against Fisk becoming the mayor. Fisk subtly tells BB that he isn’t going to reveal his schemes to her. So, BB makes the whole situation worse than it already was by asking Fisk to address his estranged relationship with Vanessa. At that point, Cashman is forced to throw BB out.
As Blake profusely apologizes to Fisk for making the mistake of setting up a meeting between him and BB, Fisk says he intends to use her zeal for journalism to his benefit in the future, which definitely sounds ominous. What’s also ominous is Cashman’s visit to Glenn’s book-reading session, because it means that Fisk and his associates are aware of her connection to Matt, and they probably intend to use that bond to force Matt’s hand for Fisk’s nefarious purposes. We also see a disturbed guy approaching Glenn and asking her if she is taking new clients for her therapy sessions. This guy is played by Hunter Doohan, who is rumored to be playing the serial killer known as Muse. If that’s the case, Glenn has stepped into a world of danger by dating Matt.
Mayor Fisk shows up at the funeral of the deceased police officer with the intention of cornering Commissioner Gallo, who instantly tears into Fisk and doesn’t hold back while displaying his hatred for the Kingpin. Fisk doesn’t retaliate instantly, because he knows that’ll create a scene and put him on the backfoot. He lets Gallo finish his piece and walk away, thinking that he has the upper hand. Later on, when Gallo shows up at the mayor’s office with his resignation letter, Fisk plays his trump card: photographs of Gallo’s secret child that he is fathering with a woman that’s not his lawfully wedded wife. On top of that, Fisk promises that if Gallo resigns, he is going to make the lives of the officers at the NYPD a living hell. So, Gallo cancels his resignation, but he does warn Fisk that he won’t cater to the mayor’s whims. I think he is being way too overconfident, and he’ll bend the knee if push comes to shove.
Matt Learns Hector Is The White Tiger
Cherry and McDuffie meet Soledad, Hector’s wife. While McDuffie gets busy convincing Soledad to show up for her husband’s court sessions, Cherry goes into Hector’s bedroom to obtain some info on him under the pretext of getting his suit, you know, to make Hector look presentable when he shows up in front of the judge. Fortunately or unfortunately, Cherry finds a different suit—the suit of White Tiger. Cherry immediately shares this information with Matt, thereby interrupting another one of his dates with Glenn, and Matt rushes over to Ryker’s Island to confront Hector about his vigilantism.
Hector is unapologetic about being the White Tiger and keeping the streets safe. That said, he clarifies that, on the night of the incident, he wasn’t wearing his suit or his superpowered amulet; hence, he doesn’t fit into Mayor Fisk’s anti-vigilante narrative. Matt warns Hector that the plaintiff and the judge won’t treat this case in a nuanced way; they’ll see a vigilante and, in order to suck up to Fisk, punish him. So, they need to be very careful about their next few steps, starting with Hector being honest with Matt.
Next, Matt asks the judge to direct Hochberg to not use Hector’s White Tiger alter ego while talking about the case of Officer Shanahan because that part of his life has nothing to do with the incident. Surprisingly, the judge agrees with Matt. However, that’s not enough to win them the case, and Cherry is quite unforgiving when it comes to reminding Matt that he is fighting an uphill battle. Matt goes to the nearby church with the aim of turning to God for some answers. Coincidentally, that’s when he locates Officer Powell and decides to follow him to see if he can get some dirt on him that’ll help Hector’s case.
At the end of Daredevil: Born Again episode 2, while Matt stakes out Powell’s apartment, he gets a call from Heather, who tells him that they have to cancel their date because she is meeting her new clients. These new clients turn out to be Wilson and Vanessa Fisk. Now, based on Wilson and Vanessa’s confessions about why they decided to seek therapy to save their marriage, it seems like they are genuinely desperate to mend their relationship as it’s hurting Vanessa’s business, Fisk’s political career, and of course, the couple. But something tells me that choosing the therapist who is dating Matt Murdock, out of all the therapists in the city, wasn’t a random choice at all.
Speaking of Matt, his decision to stalk Powell pays off because he hears about Powell’s plan to kill Nicky, i.e. the guy that Hector saved at the subway station. Matt gets to Nicky’s apartment (he overhears the location when Powell is talking to his murderous colleagues) and tells him to meet Cherry near Fort Tryon Park while he keeps Powell and his mates busy. Matt tries to deal with them amicably, but as soon as the off-duty officers start hitting him, he taps into his Daredevil side and unleashes hell on them. If this whole scene was edited a little better and wasn’t just a string of quick cuts, this would’ve been the highlight of the episode. But I guess it’s wrong of me to expect too much from this era of Marvel; we should just be glad that Charlie Cox’s version of the man with no fear exists in the MCU, right?
