keeping the faith
Better the ’devil you know…
Gotta hand it to you, Fisk, you know how to put on a show,” says an underworld criminal during Daredevil’s return. You can say that again. With half of Marvel’s Netflix division culled, the return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s crime heavy Wilson Fisk to full baby-brute action would almost justify Daredevil’s continuation singlehandedly: even if the Kingpin was the only show in town (he isn’t), new showrunner Erik Oleson’s shift in Hell’s Kitchen would be cooking with gas.
With Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox, reliably excellent) renouncing the ’Devil under church care after The Defenders’ battering drudgery, Fisk’s employment as a squealer under FBI house arrest kickstarts the densely woven narrative. Although the feds belittle Fisk, D’Onofrio’s seismic subtleties make it clear who’s really in control.
Despite Fisk’s imposing size, the devil is in the detail: the way he somehow smirks without moving his mouth, or freights tiny words with deadly suggestion. When Fisk offers “tea”, he makes a nice brew sound like a murder weapon.
On which note, the heat gets cranked up further by a man capable of weaponising household items. Coiled, cool and quite crackers, Ben Poindexter (Wilson Bethel, revelatory) is an FBI sharp-shooter whose skills Fisk soon clocks. When Fisk realises Matt has exorcised the devil, the big man employs Dex to hurt people: and hurt ’em he does. If Marvel TV’s scraps had started to look a bit Ninjago, episode six’s thrillingly intense, scarily of-the-now newsroom assault hits the bullseye required.
From an epic prison pile-up to a cinematically staged cathedral incursion, every fight here is a brutal delight. Oleson earns his punchy fan-service by roping the action to a satisfyingly meaty criminal psychodrama of betrayal and tragedy. Jay Ali’s excellent performance as beleaguered family man and FBI agent Ray Nadeem is Daredevil S3’s backbone, though other arcs receive impressively detailed attention. While wild-card villains are often best dealt without explanation or elaboration, Dex’s unsettling origin story and none-more-timely romantic ‘issues’ bust the rule.
Elden Henson’s rock-steady Foggy Nelson and Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page also benefit from expanded treatment, while Oleson gives a certain tough-loving nun’s (Joanne Whalley) backstory its due. A few missteps (Matt’s ‘visions’ of Fisk, a faintly over-easy climax, Frank Castle’s absence) aside, most risks here heighten the stakes and tighten the tension judiciously. If the final twist is any indication, this is one Marvel show that must go on. Kevin Harley