Recap of Episode 6 of ‘Daredevil: Born Again’: The Return of the Boys to Town

That’s more like it! After a meandering 40-minute detour into an uneventful bank robbery, Daredevil: Born Again is now back to its roots as the iconic series it is known for. The essence of the show shines through with corrupt cops, snippets from BB Urich’s YouTube show, the familiar supporting characters, and an intense fight scene. The show has steered away from briefly resembling a mid MCU TV series and is back on track.

Both Daredevil and Kingpin have retired, as portrayed in the latest episodes. The recent installment captures the essence of the Bugs Bunny meme “LORD FORGIVE ME BUT ITS TIME TO GO BACK TO THA OLD ME” in a 40-minute live-action format. It highlights how both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk find it difficult to adhere to the system any longer. They are compelled to engage in morally questionable actions, believing it serves a greater purpose, thus making them formidable and dangerous individuals.

Fisk’s descent back into darkness is portrayed as more swift compared to Matt’s journey, given his inherently evil nature despite attempting to refine his criminal operations. At a fundraising event, he is compelled to flatter numerous affluent individuals in Manhattan, including Tony Dalton, and faces rejection each time. Likewise, Luca, the leader of the Irish mob, declines to comply with the debt demands from the Fisks, following their unsuccessful bank heist in the previous episode.

Meanwhile, sanitation workers discover that the street artist whose anti-Fisk agitprop has been going up all over time is, in fact, a serial killer, albeit one in the strictly imaginary “homicidal artist” vein of the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman and the various guest murderers on Hannibal. At first our big bald boy just wants to cover up the crimes. But when the killer, who goes by Muse, strikes again by killing two fangirls unfortunate enough to come across him and recognize his handiwork, Fisk senses an opportunity. He deputizes an “anti-vigilante task force” consisting solely of members of the Punisher-branded cop gang — “I prefer ‘motivated individuals,’” he tells his reluctant police chief — known to use vigilante tactics to further the NYPD’s agenda. 

In other words, in the name of fighting vigilantism, he’s licensing vigilantism. He’s creating a security force loyal only to him, not to the regular chain of command. He’s appropriating the Punisher’s iconography as a fascist emblem of violent retribution. He talks about law and order while facilitating lawlessness. He’s Donald Trump, is what I’m saying. That’s clear to everyone, right? In fact, he’s actually a bit better than Trump, because when one of the donors tells him “You’re using taxpayer dollars to further enrich yourself, and your ‘colleagues,’ so to speak,” he at least has the decency to deny it. But when he says “Find what a person wants and either withhold it or provide it, and they’ll do anything,” he’s talking straight out of the Trump playbook. MAGAism and gangsterism are one and the same.

Despite Fisk’s efforts, word gets to Murdock via his ex-cop PI, Cherry, that a serial killer is at work in the city. Matt connects this with the late White Tiger’s investigation into unexplained disappearances, which the slain vigilante’s niece, Angela — played once again by a standout Camila Rodriguez — says are linked to a particular abandoned subway line. When Angela goes missing, Matt finally says “fuck it” — no, literally, he says “fuck it” — and suits back up as Daredevil to track her down.

I’ll pause at this point to note that the preceding episode is rendered completely unnecessary by this one. Matt had already kicked a few Punisher-gang cops’ asses by the time the bank robbery occurred, so he’s already crossed the violence threshhold he swore off after failing to prevent his best friend Foggy’s death. Luca, meanwhile, doesn’t even mention the failed robbery when he tells Fisk he’s refusing to pay up, and Fisk doesn’t mention it either. Other than a a brief mention by Matt’s girlfriend Heather and a few wordless flashbacks while Matt’s praying, there’s no way you’d even know the robbery happened from this episode. If you skipped over it completely you wouldn’t miss much.

Back to the matters at hand, or at hand-to-hand as the case may be. Matt tracks down and battles Muse, who like most crazed serial killers in superhero stories proves to be a surprisingly capable martial artist. Fisk takes out his frustrations on his captive Adam, Vanessa’s former lover, to whom he gives an axe to make things more sporting. Matt saves Angela from Muse but loses the killer in the process (a bit hard to swallow given Daredevil’s super-senses and ninja skills), while Fisk beats Adam nearly to death but ends up dragging him back into his dungeon cell, where he sits and…I guess the therapy speak for it would be “processing,” as Angela puts it earlier in the episode. 

That line alone is proof that Born Again is back. If there’s one thing i know about teenagers in therapy, it’s that they fucking hate anything that sounds like being in therapy. Angela’s dialogue with Matt is sharply observed and strongly delivered. When he asks what she expects him to do with her disclosure that her uncle was investigating the disappearances before he was murdered, her response, “How about literally anything?”, is the cri de coeur of a generation of young activists.

The fascist leanings of Wilson Fisk are equally sharply observed. Since he bears a strong resemblance to Mussolini already, it’s only fitting that he’d eventually assemble an army of blackshirts to take to the streets on his behalf, conflating his enemies with the criminal scum of the earth and licensing his minions to act accordingly. “Sometimes, when you need to get the job done, it requires a little, well, creative thinking” is the modus operandi of the entire Musk/Trump administration. Don’t let anything as pesky as “the rule of law” or “representative democracy” or “human decency” stand in your way!

It’s remarkable, when you think about it. At a time when the president of the United States is busy asserting lawless license to punish anyone he wants in any way he sees fit, he’s also destroying both the social safety net and the public school system, while encouraging reactionary brutality by his followers on both sides of the thin blue line. And here we have a child completely failed by the system — she tells Matt she can’t go to the police with her concerns because the police are murderers, and he agrees — which is run by a Noo Yawk lunatic who services his own id and calls it justice. That is Daredevil: Born Again. Accept no substitutes, not even from Daredevil: Born Again.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.