How will Daredevil end? For creator Dario Scardapane, it all comes down to the titular hero and his greatest foe.
“When the time comes, I think there are ways to wrap this up,” he tells The National. “I think that these two people, Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, are heading towards an inevitability. What that is, I’m not going to say.”
When that endgame comes is another question. Marvel's Daredevil: Born Again is moving into the back half of its highly acclaimed second season, with season three already filming. But all good things must come to an end eventually – and, when it does, this story will come down to its two lead characters.
Warning: this article contains spoilers
Through the first four episodes of season two, the story has already tightened around Murdock and Fisk again. Fisk, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, is in City Hall, turning the office into an extension of his power. Murdock, played by Charlie Cox, is back in the shadows, pushing against him from the other side of the city.
Episode four’s boxing match at Fogwell’s ends with the villainous Bullseye – played by Wilson Bethel – launching an attack that leaves Fisk’s wife Vanessa bleeding, sending the season into its back half with both men under heavier pressure.
Scardapane says that pressure was built into the season from the start. In the writers’ room, Fisk and Murdock were treated as two parallel worlds – City Hall and the resistance – with the story constantly moving between them.
“When we break the stories up on the boards, the blue cards are Fisk, the red cards are Matt,” Scardapane says. “And when we find ways to kind of bounce those off each other, and this world that is City Hall against this world that is the resistance.
“We are always playing with the idea that you have a coin that you’re flipping back and forth and looking at both sides.”
Fogwell’s sits at the centre of that design. Scardapane says the boxing match is “the centrepiece of the season”, while executive producer Sana Amanat says setting it there was a deliberate taunt, with Fisk taking over Murdock's childhood ground and “spitting on the legacy” of his father.
The season is also closing the distance between the two men themselves.
“In order to topple a kingpin, you may have to gather some kingpin tendencies,” Scardapane says. “I think that this is the season that Matt and Fisk realise they’re closer than they’ve ever been. At a certain point you don’t know the difference. I think that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Cox says that shift is playing out through Murdock’s loss of certainty. For much of the character’s screen life, Murdock has been direct, proactive and convinced he knows what has to be done. This season, Cox says, that confidence has gone.
“I think Matt has more doubt in himself than he’s ever had,” Cox says. “In this season, he’s doubting himself, he’s doubting his efficacy. He’s doubting his decision-making more than ever.”
That changes the way Murdock works, particularly with Karen Page.
“He’s relying heavily on Karen Page to guide him,” Cox says. “For the first time, I think we get to see him saying to her, ‘What do you think? What should we do? What should I do?’ He’s really kind of almost surrendering his judgment to the thinking of another.”
Cox says the pressure between Murdock and Fisk still has to be protected on screen. Their meetings cannot lose force.
“If you bring Kingpin and Matt Murdock together too often, if you subconsciously tell this story to the audience that they can tolerate one another, then you’ll lose the stakes quite easily,” he says. “We often say that when these two come together, it has to be explosive.”
D’Onofrio says the same pressure is playing out from Fisk’s side. The character may now hold office, but that kind of public authority does not sit naturally on him.
“When you take a character like Wilson Fisk, and you put him in this kind of mayorship position, it’s not easy for him,” D’Onofrio says. “He does live on the fringe of society. That’s where he operates best, sort of underground.
“The metaphor you could use is like a vampire trying to live in the daylight. It’s not going to work well, and it doesn’t,” he continues.
That reading already fits where season two has gone. Fisk is trying to widen his reach through institutions while becoming more exposed at the same time. After episode four, D’Onofrio told Entertainment Weekly that Vanessa’s shooting leaves Fisk “more of a loose cannon” in the episodes ahead, while Bethel said episode five, releasing today on Disney+ globally, is among the season’s strongest.
The season’s political charge has become harder to ignore as well. Scardapane says much of the material was written well before release, and that seeing some of its “what ifs” begin to resemble the nightly news was “unsettling”.
But Daredevil has always been tied to those pressures, adds Amanat – a lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen trying to fight for justice even when the system itself is compromised.
Scardapane says the final minutes of season two will make clear where the story goes next, while Amanat says the team’s “safety nets are gone” as work continues on season three.
That is also how Scardapane describes building the show. “One of the things that you try to do every season is paint yourself into a little bit of a corner and then have an escape hatch,” he says. “If somebody was to say, 'all right, you’re ending the whole thing', I have ideas. They mostly come from some of the runs.”
With decades of Daredevil stories behind them, there is no shortage of places to pull from. As Amanat puts it, there are “60 years of great Daredevil content”, and the task is to take what has come before and “put a different spin on it”.
Wherever Daredevil: Born Again lands, it will surely be a loving ode to the trove of stories that inspired it.
Daredevil: Born Again airs weekly on Disney+
