'Daredevil: Born Again' Episodes 1 and 2 Deep Dive
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Daredevil is born again on Disney+. My name is Matthew Murdoch. I'm a lawyer. Exactly what kind of a lawyer are you?

Hey, really good one. Critics everywhere agree it's the best Marvel television series. Gritty, intense, and elevated. It's Daredevil at his best. If you step out of line, I will be there. Marvel Television's Daredevil, Born Again. Now streaming only on Disney+. Ready for your next adventure?

It's hard. It's hard to come to terms with the violent nature. Hating the power of it.

Greetings!

And welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today, and why don't I just jump right in and ask, what are you looking for in legal representation? It's Joanna Robinson. Hello. I have mounted and also won a mayoral campaign since we started this podcast.

That was a zippy one. It's me, the mayor of New York City, Joanna Robbins. That campaign, definitely shorter than a typical House of Art podcast. Correct. Jo, we are here today to dive deep into the two-part Daredevil Born Again premiere. These were long episodes. We're going to try to... Wrap our arms. Hold on to both of those devil's horns, if you know what I mean. I do know what you mean. And I think you do. I do. But...

First, of course, some quick programming reminders. What else is going on? The Versys, they're up already. They do. If people want to see the whole gang together, they can do that on the Ringiverse YouTube channel or Spotify. I'm pretty proud of my Versys performance here because not that it's a competition, but I kind of feel like I got my way a bunch of times and that felt good. You certainly, you whipped those votes with Lissette in impressive fashion. Thank you. Thank you ever so much. You commanded the room. Thank you. As usual.

I think it was more like Joanna's visiting. Let's be nice to her. She's in LA!

She's moving here. She's in LA. While you are here, what else will we be doing? Well, we're going to be talking about Daredevil Born Again, episode three next week. As we had previously mentioned, we will be catching up on Yellowjackets episodes five and six together in one podcast. Yes. Over on The Ringerverse. The Midnight Boys, pew, pew, have already dropped, of course, their instant reaction to the double Daredevil premiere. Wonderful podcast. Great show. Button Mash will be talking about split fiction.

And Steve will be joining Ben for that episode. And I heard Steve describe what split fiction is, and it sounded honestly fascinating. It sounded delightful. Genuinely. Honestly fascinating. Steve did a great job selling it. I agree. Joanna, how can people follow along, whether it's to watch or listen to our podcasts or just to hear Steve explain more things about games?

Thanks so much for asking. What's also true is that you and I are together on the Prestige feed talking about White Lotus. You and I did a rewatchables episode together. Yeah, that's coming soon. That's coming up. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of Mallory and Joanna time. Let's just put it in the reps. I'm charging every second of it. Put it in the reps. Listen, you can follow us.

And your podcatcher choice. Yes. That's a good thing to do. Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can subscribe to the YouTube channel or watch us on Spotify. That's right. Both are available to you. You can follow us on the social media platform of your choice. Whatever that might be. Whatever that might be.

That's a you decision. Yeah, sure is. And as always, you can email us, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. I should say we got some Daredevil emails. All, I was actually surprised to find this out. All of which were kind of negative, which is fine because I have some negative thoughts I care to share about the show. But if you want to defend Daredevil, if you love Daredevil, you thought it was the best thing you watched this year, this millennia, I don't know.

Hobbs and Dragons is dealing on a cop. Defend your show. I want to hear. I want to hear the accolades as well as the critiques. The last program reminder is always the same. It's the friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. What neighborhood are we in? Are we in Hell's Kitchen? Well, we don't get there as much. No. Becky's Diner closed. We're all sad about it. No more time in the kitchen. It's a hot bummer.

I love Hell's Kitchen, truly. The spoiler warning is obviously everything that happened in the first two episodes of Daredevil Born Again, anything that has ever happened in the MCU to date, anything that happened in the original three seasons of Netflix's Daredevil, anything maybe that happened elsewhere in the Netflix Daredevil larger universe, Marvelverse, and some comics canon as well. So basically, if it's ever happened in the comic book universe.

To a Matt Murdock or otherwise. It could come up today. It could come up. Yeah, it could come up today. But we have not watched ahead in this season of Born Again, and so we will not be talking about anything that is to come because we don't know what's to come. Joanna, a lot of engagement, a lot of depth, a lot of spread, people sharing memes. What if I just did Daniel Blake the whole pod? That would upset me deeply. Let's pod. Let's get to our opening snapshot.

Jaunty. On that front, before we do the things we're actually supposed to do, I want to respond to that great Daniel Blake quote. Have you seen memes coming out of...

Daredevil Born Again. I do not believe that I have been on social media in the last two days since this aired. You've been quite busy. I certainly have not been on Twitter. And even my typical fairly robust Instagram usage has been muted the last couple days. So I can't comment. Steve, have there been Daredevil memes? Oh, so many. Mainly sad fan cams. Oh, boy. Oh, for fuck's sake. Sheesh. Well, that's a bummer. Oh, boy.

No fun memes. Just sad fan cams and in-memoriams. I will remember you playing. Okay. Let's hit a couple quick table setters in the opening snapshot. The first two prompts here are things we talked about at length in our Daredevil primer pod, which we did last week. We had a blast. We went through our

13! In honor of a Netflix season being 13 episodes. Whose idea was that? I couldn't say. It could have been anyone. Our 13 favorite, respective 13 favorite moments from the original series. Check out that pod if you haven't yet. It'll be useful context for how we are viewing the new show, our relationship to the characters. In case anybody didn't listen to that pod, though, let's just very quickly refresh on a couple things. One, you're...

relationship to Matt Murdock, to Daredevil, the comics character, the original Netflix series, the glimpses that we've gotten of Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock in the MCU so far. Tell us. Yeah. I think I kind of surprised you with my level of fervor for Matt Murdock. I don't think you knew how much I love your favorite Matt Murdock. And

Like, maybe my favorite comic book character. Like, well, Squirrel Girl is up there. You do? That I know. I love Squirrel Girl, but he's up there. You have horror crevice and you love Squirrel Girl on an ocean vista. It's true. And then there's always Steve Rogers. You know, it's a crowded field, but Matt's up there. Yeah.

So, yeah, I loved the original Netflix series. We rewatched all of it. And I think I loved it even more upon rewatch, especially, like, given the spotty work we've seen since. It's like, wow, we didn't even know how good we had it. We knew that season one was a masterpiece when it dropped, but we didn't even know how good we had it with season two and season three until we saw Secret Invasion, among other things. So... Let it do! Yeah. So, speaking of Disney Plus and Marvel shows... Uh...

We talked about how delightful it's been and I rewatched their mere minutes. The mere minutes we've gotten of Charlie Cox in Echo, Charlie Cox in She-Hulk, especially Wonderful. All of that. No Way Home. Yeah. No Way Home.

All of those appearances have been delightful. And as I said in our previous pod, I think the handling of Wilson Fisk has been more of a mixed bag. Yes. Yes. Does that answer all your questions? Absolutely. If you'd like to hear more about Joanna's experience with the past versions of Matt Murdock and Daredevil, listen to that podcast. We had a blast.

I also love Matt Murdock and I love Daredevil. I love Daredevil stories. I loved the Netflix show. We feel very similarly about it. I think season one is an all-timer. And I quite enjoy my time, though the mileage varies. Of course, the many long episodes in seasons two and three, there's a lot there that I love. And I really genuinely had a great time revisiting that and revisiting it with you. That was super fun. I've also loved the glimpses of Matt so far in the MCU. It felt like this...

Also, like, a delicate balancing act of promising and winking and ensuring us that our patients would be rewarded without, like, frankly, doing, like, where we are with the X-Men, where it's like, yeah, we get it. The X-Men are coming. Can they come? Yeah. You know? I thought the little doses of Matt were dispensed. Can they come? Exactly. Right.

responsibly and of course agree on Fisk. It was like such a thrill and sent me into a euphoric state to know that he was going to be back in our lives. And there was a lot of like thinking face emoji stuff in response to what we actually got. Especially in this is, this is a really good, like sort of writ large, our approach to talking about these two episodes. They did not yet know exactly. Vincent D'Onofrio is going out there saying like,

I'm the Netflix Fisk. And then people of normal being like, he's not the Netflix Fisk. And so confusing moment on the internet, this very deeply confusing. Are we watching the continuation of a character we spent time with? Or are we watching a soft restart with character that we spent time with, but an actor we already know it is, is really confusing. And also like,

To try to understand the continuity of that, of like how we go from Daredevil season three finale to everything we see leading up, including where we find him here. Yes. And certainly some of the scenes that we discussed in the first two episodes, I think we will have some, wait, what's the answer to thing X questions that are on our mind about what transpired in the missing time in terms of that story?

Is this going to be a continuation question? Now we know it is. That doesn't mean every aspect of the plot is clearly clicking into place or aligning, but the intention is that this is a, as the Born Again title indicates, in addition to obviously being a tie to the iconic comics run, a revival and a continuation of the Netflix property. Those characters were not in a different part of the multiverse. These are our guys and we're back with them. Can I ask you a quick question about our rewatch? Yeah.

We never dislike doing homework. We love homework here at House of R. We love a rewatch, a reread. Yeah. However crunched they sometimes may be. Okay. Yeah.

Is there any part of you, though? And I know, I mean, we haven't even gotten to big picture thoughts, but I know that you enjoyed these episodes a bit more than I did. Yeah. Is there any part of you that wonders, would I have enjoyed this even more? I was going to ask you this. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Because I assume I know the answer to your question, which is that if you had not watched those three seasons, you maybe would have... Liked this a bit more? Yeah, liked it a bit more. I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's possible. I'm not feeling that way. I will say I'm...

I'm glad, ultimately, that I rewatched the show no matter what just because it was fun. And I think some of the refreshers on... Because that show ended... I mean, it began a decade ago and it ended almost a decade ago. It's seven, eight years. That show ended in 2018. What year is that? 2025. It has been a minute. So I was really glad to just immerse fully in...

Matt's essence in the substance of those relationships. I think, frankly, again, full spoilers. You were warned already. You're being warned again. I will talk. We'll go through all of the feelings and responses to Foggy. This is just like one element of it. I have plenty of other thoughts on it. And I know you do as well. I actually weirdly think it made it easier for me.

Like, if I had not revisited... Have you not spent 39 hours with Foggy? If I had waited eight years, seven years to be back with Foggy and then he had been killed in the first episode, I think I would have been genuinely outraged. And I think there's plenty of rage in the brew of emotional response, no matter what. But I think that actually made it a little bit easier for me. In terms of the, like, tail of the tape head-to-head comparing, I...

I'm going to try to be patient across the cross of the season with like whether it feels like this show is able to not replicate or mirror or match every single emotional, thematic, aesthetic aspect of the Netflix show, but whether it feels like it earned, frankly, and deserves to carry that continuation or revival label. These first two episodes and now we're kind of

We'll just bleed right into our opening thoughts on this. And also maybe if you could provide a little context for folks when you're sharing your opening thoughts on the reworking that the series went through, because obviously that's important to hit here. That feels more keen to me in the first two episodes, just the stitching together of these two different creative visions than the how does this match with the past? Yeah.

In a way that I might not feel at the end, I might say, no, like this feels too out of sync with the past to be a continuation. But I'm almost like, I don't even know yet because it's so clearly in the first two episodes, two shows that are trying to coexist, merge into one. Tell us about the reworking that the series went through and tell us how you felt about these first two episodes.

First and foremost, the title Daredevil Born Again means, as did Spider-Man Homecoming, means a bunch of different things. This is a soft reboot. The softness varies upon how they recut this, but this is a soft reboot of Daredevil. This is Daredevil come to Disney, come from Netflix to Disney, blah, blah, blah. And then also there is a famous comic run called Born Again from Frank Miller and David Musicelli. Um,

A lot of the stuff that happens in that comic run was used in season three of Daredevil on Netflix. So we don't anticipate. Right down to the taxi crashing into the river. Yeah. So we don't anticipate that there will be a ton of DNA shared between, as is often the case with Marvel and MCU, like a ton of this isn't a direct adaptation. The current showrunner.

is Dario Scardapane. I'm going to make his... Look at you! I make it really Italian. Yeah! If your name is Dario, I feel like you are leaning into the Italian, so... Or you're in Game of Thrones. Dario Noharis. Dario Scardapane. And then directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. So that's the current creative team, and that's who's working on season two currently. And we should say that Dario...

Sky the Bonnet, ran the Punisher TV show. And Benson and Moorhead, we know from Moona, and then also they worked on Loki season two. So that's like...

In terms of my confidence in them as a creative team, it's not like they were like, okay, this wasn't working, so we got Steve DeKnight in or we got Eric Olesen in, like all the people who were running the original Daredevil. They got these other people in. And so, like, The Punisher, how did you feel about The Punisher TV show? I actually really liked the first season. Okay. Yeah. As you know, I just...

I just love Jon Bernthal. And I find Frank to be such a fascinating character. I'm so curious to see how he's deployed in this season, especially after some of the Punisher Easter eggs that we got in these first two episodes. I'm curious how much... Less high on the second season. I'm curious how much this is going to lean...

The further we go into the season, is this going to feel like more of a Punisher show? Well, and they have announced that they're doing the Punisher special. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? You think Feige's just been listening to CR do Wayne Jenkins on the rewatchables, and he's like, I know what we need to give the people. It's clear what they want. Yeah. And what I heard is that on the days that Jon Bernthal was a little tired, he was like,

They just called Ciara to do some growly voiceover. Can you imagine? It would be a true delight. And then Moon Knight and Loki season two. Moon Knight, mixed bag. Loki season two, obviously, we quite liked. So originally it was Matt Corman and Chris Ord were the original creative forces on an 18-episode season. Now we're getting two nine-episode seasons. So very different. They started in 2022. Yeah, Jesus. Which is several years ago. Boy, yeah.

And then there was the writer's strike and they looked at the tape, people at Marvel looked at the tape and they were like, oh, no, this is not what we want to do. And so instead of doing a clean break, we're doing a new thing kind of show. That's when they brought in...

Deborah Ann Wall to play Karen Page. That's when we get some foggy in the mix. Some. Some little bit of foggy in the mix. That's when we get, I think, a bit more Wilson Bethel. I think we get as... Thrilling. Dex. Yeah. And then they had recast the role of Vanessa. Yeah. And they brought back the original actress who played Vanessa. So a lot of the scenes were...

Like specifically the therapy scene when they're sitting on complete opposite ends of the couch. As far away as you could possibly be from your spouse on the couch. This might be like a digital insert sort of situation. So those are some of the seams. This is originally meant to be more of like a case of the week legal procedural kind of thing. And so a lot of what's happening in this first two episodes is an attempt to –

Keep as much of the original as they can intact. And there's plenty of that still in the mix. They didn't toss it out. But try to round the corners on it. So I think, as I understand it, the original intent was Foggy is dead and Karen is gone. But that all happened off screen. And also...

Like, it happened before. So we would hear, oh, my partner Foggy, he died. Or my associate Karen, she moved to San Francisco. Killing Foggy in the first scene, very painful. Telling us that Foggy had died, I actually think there would have been, like, riots. Yeah. I really agree. And so we should say on these two episodes, episode one, Heaven's Half Hour, episode two, Optics. Yeah. The first episode here is directed by Moorhead and Benson. Yeah.

and written by Dario. The second, directed by Michael Cuesta. Cuesta. Cuesta. And written by Corman and Ord. But it didn't feel like a clean, oh, this is the new and this is the old inside of both of them. You could feel the stitching for sure. Also know, Joanna, that these two episodes were quite long. Quite long. The first episode was one

True, full, blue hour. And the second was 50 minutes. And the credits were way shorter than Marvel credits typically are. So like that's the runtime. Like the first episode was 55 minutes of TV. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I want to ask you what you thought of the episodes. I will say really quickly for me. Tell me. I'm quite mixed on them. Yes.

I am ready to, I want this to be great. Yeah. And I want to enjoy it. So I am keeping myself open for the rest of the season, obviously. I understand the juggling act they're doing, trying to meld these two shows together. I was reminded of one of the moments from the original run that we talked about in our 13 moments was this like tapestry speech, how like,

We as humans, God is weaving this tapestry and we only see sort of like the knots and the ragged edges in the back and we don't see the full vision and stuff like that. And I'm kind of like, I kind of wish I didn't. Maybe it would be better if I didn't know. I am physically incapable of not reading all the information about like what was original and what's new. But like perhaps someone watching at home who doesn't listen to two and a half hour podcasts and just sat down, had a fun, fine time at the Disney+.

The Palouse? Maybe, and they didn't know any of this behind-the-scenes drama. Maybe they were less distracted by all of the seams that I felt like you and I could see pretty clearly, you know? That's such a, I mean, we'll have to ask the BB report to do a little Man on the Street. Man on the Street.

because I do wonder. I feel like it is... And I broadly enjoyed the two-part premiere. I thought it was incredibly uneven, though, both episodes. And not to the level of the recent film, Captain America Brave New World. No. Not even close to that level. Not even close, no. But...

Like these are from different creative teams. These were filmed in different periods of time. These were parts of stories that were moving in a different direction. And I feel like even if somebody didn't have any of that context, they would watch it and say, oh, they need a few episodes here to find the rhythm of this, maybe. But you're surely right that bringing that extra like level of awareness and it's pinging around. Yeah.

the old brain melon while watching. How could it not? The old brain melon. How could it not? We did get an email from a listener who was talking about like how

She is someone who doesn't know the original very well, how sort of like at sea she felt. So this is the problem, right? Or the challenge, let's say, for Marvel, which is that they want shows and movies that don't feel like you have to do a three season rewatch of a Netflix series in order to enjoy. But so are friendly to newcomers, but also with something like this.

The hue and cry was like, you can't just pretend that the Netflix shows didn't happen. Especially, and Van was making this point on Midnight Boys, especially if you're going to use. That's the thing. Vincent D'Onofrio and Charlie Cox. Yeah. You can't.

Ask us to not think about the Netflix shows at all. So and if the emotional wallop that kicks off this entire revival is the death of Matt Murdock's dearest friend, you have to understand you can hear Matt scream on the rooftop and you can understand inside of the story that what happened was so impactful in his life that he stopped being Daredevil for a year as a result.

But you can't feel it the same way as if you'd watched Nelson and Murdoch. Right? You just can't. I think our listeners... Yes. But I would say more damningly, even than that, is that you... I was most like, how would anybody know what was going on here if they hadn't seen Hawkeye and Echo? Which to me is borderline irresponsible. That's true. If you're making this show. And then also... A lot of talk about Fisk getting shot in the face. Well, Fisk and Matt, too. It's just sort of like the Fisk and Matt relationship. Like, the...

The diner scene, which we'll talk about, which everyone is identifying as their favorite part, it seems like. Not particularly close. The diner scene, which everyone has sort of noted as their favorite part, it seems like, requires understanding of a lot of history. Absolutely. And so how does this function as history?

A show that is welcome to newcomers who have either never seen the Netflix Daredevil or haven't watched it since 2018 and didn't do a rewatch. So don't necessarily remember all of the nuances. You know what was on my mind with this? This might feel a little bit like of a weird comp. And it is, I concede, not a perfect comp. But I was thinking a little bit about the discussions that we had covering Ahsoka.

About Rebels. 100%. Totally. And, like, I remember feeling in real time while we were potting that, like, my instinct normally would be, make a show that people can fucking watch. Yeah. You know? Like, we want this to be welcoming. Without argument or dispute, the MCU has gotten to a point where people find it impenetrable. There's just no counterargument to that. Correct.

And I feel all that keenly. I don't want people to feel like the barrier to entry is prohibitively high. And something like this felt like a real opportunity to not make that so. But with Rebels and Ahsoka, I also had that really keen, like, wait, but if you watched Rebels and loved it, that matters and is good. And actually making a show for people who are invested in that original story is

on some level feels right to me. I think it's all, as is always the case in the execution and the balance. Because to make something, the goal should be to make something that rewards the time we previously spent with the characters without it being alienating for people who didn't do that. That's hard. That is so hard. Very hard. And increasingly, the MCU has put itself into spots or the IP machine writ large has put itself into spots where that is the test that people have to pass. And you are almost like insured a failing crew.

on that respect before you even start. And that's why I think something like something like Daredevil and Wolverine which really only asks you to have watched two Daredevil sorry Deadpool. I'm going to do that again. Something like Deadpool and Wolverine which really only asks you to have watched two Deadpool movies really. You don't even have to have watched Loki to understand the TVA in that movie. Like that's okay. Or something like Definitely not. Agatha all along which like

would prefer you watched WandaVision, but I think kind of successfully told its own story inside of that. No question. Yeah. This is, you know, and what we have coming up, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, those are like, Thunderbolts has ties to a lot of stuff. A lot. Yeah. We'll see how they navigate that. Fantastic Four, Fresh Slate, you know, sort of prospect. So it's, I really like you identifying it as sort of like an IP issue where it feels like

It's definitely not just a Marvel issue. It's definitely not just a Disney property issue, but it's sort of like a recent... Yeah, era of streaming TV. It's like I... We were fine with like, oh, it's a new Spider-Man. Oh, it's a new Batman. Like that's something we did for years. Yes, for sure. And that was fine, you know? Like I love IP, genuinely. It's a huge part of my life. But I do think if we just... And I don't want to enter into a new version of comparing everything to Andor. I don't think comparing things to Severance is...

clearly one of the best shows on television in the last decade is going to do any other property many favors. But it strikes me as a really notable contrast where like if you heard in the last many years, three years, your friends say to you, gosh, I got severance. You had nine episodes of television to watch and then you were ready to fucking roll. If you want to do the supplemental homework.

If you want to pick up the George Saunders text, I got so I meant to text you and Rob last night because I was listening driving home. And by the time I got home, I was in a brain fog and forgot to text you. But as you mentioned, Syracuse professor and one of my dearest friends somehow got one of the like 15 spots in his creative writing class. And it was literally like the best experience of her entire life, as you might imagine. Of course. Sounds like he's just an angel and a gem and a prince among men. I subscribe to a sub stack. That's not the same as getting a seminar, but pretty good.

Anyone could do it, but I do it. So, you know. Joe, anything else on the like opening snapshot front, big picture thoughts before we get to the deep dive? Yeah, I think you make a really good point. And I really want to, this is why I love podcasting with you because you always incurred, like hold me accountable for my opinions. And I love that about you is like,

I really want to make sure that I'm not just default saying, well, this isn't like it was before and therefore is bad. That's not an argument I ever want to make. I think it's really fine, especially sort of situationally with Matt Murdock, this concept of born again. Yes. This is a different era in his life when he was like... Stole his impeccable... Stubble. Just unbelievable scruff, though. That is eternal. New glasses. But like, you know... Karen had a lot of feedback. A lot of things to say about that. But like...

Especially like when you take someone like Charlie Cox, who was like not like a baby when he did the first season of Daredevil, but like he's lived some life. When you think about that, Matt Murdock, who along with Karen and Foggy, they were like three young people in the city just starting their adult life together. That's a different phase in a person's life. I've seen so much shit ever.

And now I'm I think he's supposed to be in his 40s. Right. Charlie Cox certainly is like, you know, what that time of life is like. So like there are ways in which the differences can thematically be very interesting. Yeah. They just have to intentionally find them. Yeah. Yeah. So they have to track and make sense and still feel like character on an arc versus, oh, wait, are we in a different continuity? Yeah.

Can I just say that, like, someone recently stopped me who likes our podcast and was like... It's a shadow character on an arc? It's like, love House of R, we love a character on an arc. And I'm like, is that a House of R catchphrase? I mean, I know it is, but like...

To be shouted on the street, I was just like, wow, that's exciting. Put it on the merch. Because I feel like for a while it was like, damn me, you know, like, God's be good. God's be good. Working title for quite a while there. Yeah. But we love a character on an arc. What a catchphrase. Love that. Oh, man. That's great. I'm honored. Honestly. Deep dive? Let's do it. Joanna, we are broadly going to go chronologically through the episodes for the deep dive. Deep, deep, deep. But...

In a couple places, we'll go slightly out of order just to avoid a constant like... Back and forth. And particularly in episode two. I have not gotten very much sleep. I was going to say week, but let's just change it to year. Oh, year. I'd like you to join me on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. Delighted to be in Hell's Kitchen. Well, you're going to get to be there very briefly. 51st and 10th.

One year ago, sirens blaring, people walking, meat roasting. Sure. And from a door under a sign that says Nelson Murdoch, our three friends will emerge. What do you think happened to Karen's journalism career? They followed through on the promise of new napkin. They did it. Nelson Murdoch would be their investigator. Yeah. So I think she became their investigator. Did she have to give up the bulletin office? Oh, yeah. And it was a bloodbath over who got that after her.

Maybe Bebe is sitting there now, but... Oh, my God. Here they are, Jo. Meat roasting on the street. Very New York. Would you ever eat meat from the street? I am not a big street meat person. Not because I don't think it smells delicious and tastes delicious. I just am like...

Yeah, if I'm going about my day, it's just I have to be a little more strategic than that. You know, than like, what if you knew you were heading home before getting on the subway? What if you knew you're heading right home? How long is the commute? Joe, our three pals talk not only about gastrointestinal distress, but about...

Well, I don't know. What was the quality of the food at Becky's? They seemed to miss it. So I guess things went fine there. 30% of the police force having retired in the last two years. Karen's like, don't try to fact check me. My numbers are always right. They start going through some of the things that have changed in the neighborhood. They're taking us through this evolution. And then we get a very meta foggy line in response to Karen calling out the nostalgia. He says, not nostalgia.

reverence for the past yet hope for the future my observation is that this is the kind of line that can be like this beautiful acknowledgement of the thing that we all know we are doing which is entering a new era together or a big fuck you if you get it wrong so how did it feel to you

I mean, I have hope for the future of this show and hope for the future of the MCU. They have not killed my hopes yet. That's great. Yeah. Do you think Kevin Feige has had this printed on a banner and it's in his office? Not nostalgia reference for the past, hope for the future? Maybe. Speaking of journalism, have I ever told you about the time I worked at Vanity Fair? And it was like my first year there. And the then editor-in-chief had a big sign made that said, think like a startup company.

No. You have not told me that. And we had no idea what that meant. Was it next to a giant monitor showing you like a heat map on chart, on chart beat? It was just like huge and on a wall and nobody knew what it meant. And we would just say it to each other. Like, because it meant literally nothing. Think like a startup. So. Was it on. Reverse for the past, yet hope for the future. Was it on like notepads? Marvel Studios? Koozies? Sweatshirts? Yeah. Sweatshirts? The baseball tees? No. Well, but missed opportunity. Missed opportunity.

Joe, we're heading to Josie's. We are heading there for the retirement party for a character we do not know. Cherry. Tough one. I thought this was, again, I thought they weren't even broadly enjoyed the first two episodes. I mean, I

I didn't actually say this. I just felt so good being back with Matt and Fisk mostly and like that diner scene, which I'm excited to talk about. I really, really loved. And I was entertained and engaged and I'm excited to see where the story goes, even though the first two were a little uneven. This was such a weird way to start the show to me. Like, of course, you're putting us with the people that we know and this trio that we are so attached to.

But then we're spending all of this time in this sequence. Yeah. Meeting these new people. Yeah.

Kirsten McDuffie is here. I think Kirsten, I think Foggy flirting with Kirsten was sort of the most successful version of that. We were robbed. We were robbed of seeing that through. But like the most successful version of like, let's take a new character and integrate them into the previous. Yeah, sort of. What did you think about our time with Karen and Matt? They're like listening to Foggy try to work his game, right? They're making fun of him. But then Karen's also like, we could just get out of here. It gives Matt the eyes. Are these two at this point in time fucking? Occasionally. Yeah.

I do think they are occasionally slipping. Like, slipping, like, right in? Yeah, just slipping right in. Yeah, get that devil horn in there. Thank you. I do. I think they are sometimes occasionally. Because when they invoke the friend code, that was more about staying to support Foggy. Not about, like, we're in a friend zone with each other. Maybe. Or it's just sort of like, we're friends. Like, we said we would be friends. But then sometimes I think they slip up and they fuck. And...

I know how you feel about Karen, but I will say for me, this I think actually did a huge disservice to the love story that they try to sell later because I actually do think that Debra Ann Wall and Charlie Cox have like electric chemistry. Oh, incredible. And so them flirting here is I think 10 times sexier than anything we get. Yeah, this was like electric. Yeah, definitely. So unfortunately, yeah.

So you're shipping Matt and Heather hard is what I'm hearing. Unfortunately for Heather Glenn, like this is, you know, compare this to like the coffee shop meet cute or whatever. It's like you're not vibing with Matt and Heather.

I like her. Mother Coral. One of the worst characters in the history of us podcasting together. When I told you about that, I was astonished. I didn't know. I know. You like froze. I was like, what are you talking about?

The actress who plays Heather on the show played Mother Coral on Acolyte. One of our least favorite characters we've ever encountered. It was after you had said that to me, but also the only thing Arjuna initially texted me about Daredevil was, I can't wait for your Mother Coral takes. And I was like,

Thank God I have at that point was emotionally prepared to receive the text after confronting this shocking news. I think she's I think she's perfectly great in this. I actually just skip ahead. I'm kind of excited for the like Tony Soprano. Oh, my God. Fisk marriage counseling stuff like, yeah, I love the Sopranos. You know, we have a Gandolfini in the show. So we do. We do. We do. So.

So all of that is interesting to me. I just don't think, I don't think they spark. And it's shocking because Charlie Cox sparks with everything. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a person. Everything. Matt Murdock. Think about him with Jennifer Walters. I would love to. The Matt Murdock we have spent time with could soak a piece of sandpaper. Let's do a social breakout right now. That's how it starts. What goes next?

I'm so sorry to our new friends who are here with us today. I'm not. Someone should have warned you. This is what we do. Okay. How are we going to follow that up for a 90-second package that Jomie can put on the socials? So on the it is working front, before we mourn, can we talk about Foggy's beard for a minute? Speaking of soaking sandpaper, I suppose. This was sensational. As you know, I love a bearded man.

Thought this was wonderful. How do you feel about Eldon has like sort of grown out the beard a bit more? So in the like more recent interviews that he's been given, it's like a more like mountain man sort of thing. I think it's fantastic. Fantastic. I love it. You, though, of course, are a long hair Foggy season one enthusiast. Any thoughts on should we be fortunate enough to see Foggy in memories and flashbacks and or?

As you mentioned, it's a possibility before we hopped on Mike. In the multiverse? Everything's possible in the multiverse. It's all possible in the multiverse. What sort of hair do you want Foggy rocking then? Yeah, the long hair. This looks great though. I think the short crop with the beard looks great. It does. It's a fantastic look. If you're going to dye, might as well dye looking sharp. Joe. Yeah. When Foggy is trying to pick up McDuffie,

She's like, why are you in the shitty storefront? You gave up the riches of big law. And he says, calls it an MMP. And Matt and Karen very sweetly and cutely like mock him for this. Do you think Foggy loves Mad Men? No question. Absolutely zero question in my mind. The only question is who is his favorite Mad Men character? Peggy? Oh, totally. Yeah, I think so too. Peggy Gage.

I think so, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Two of the greats.

He's like, it's real because it's real. That's why I do it. That's why I'm here. That's why we're taking on the cases we're taking on. That's why I'm doing this with my friends. That's why we're in this little hole in the wall. And I just like, before I knew what was about to happen, it made me so happy to be back with Foggy because he has had his, Matt, we talk a lot with Matt with the Catholicism and the character in general and this duality and dissonance inside of him about, we talked about this a ton on our Primer Pod. It's one of the things we both love about the character. Doubt, shaken faith, competing impulses.

One of the things that was great about the Netflix series is that Matt was not the only one who faced tested faith. Like Foggy in his own way, Karen in her own way repeatedly faced their versions of that. And sometimes it was in the nature of their relationships that they could trust in. Sometimes it was what the system could afford. I thought of you when we have that like, I mean, all the time I think of you, but we had that really dramatic pan into the Dex sentencing scene. And I was like,

I almost reflexively recoiled because he looked so scary and I was like, Joe's going to love this. I did love it. Oh my God. Great stuff. We're going to talk about White Tiger more in the second episode, but... Can I just say quickly? Yes, please. Foggy, last we saw him... Foggy. Foggy. Foggy. Last we saw him in the Netflix series was engaged. Was he not?

Okay, so what do we make of Marcy just like is gone? No mention. I think they just did not want to have to also cast her as like a mourner. To then be like, sorry, he's gone. Yeah. So they were just sort of like, let's just kill that. We can't kill Foggy off screen. Let's kill his relationship off screen so we don't have to hire that actress to mourn him. I think I'm okay with it because I like to think of that relationship as one where they're like on and off.

Even when he's like, let's get married, they have falling outs, but then they find their way back to each other. They fuck and she's like, you're great in bed. And that's their story. And it works. I mean, not anymore because he's dead. But for a while it works. Yeah. There's...

There are some things even the most resilient situationship cannot withstand, and it would be bleeding out on the sidewalk. Bullseye shooting you in the heart. Yeah. Yeah, tough. We'll talk about White Tiger in episode two, but we are introduced to him here because on the television, we see this, you know, just honestly, with love and respect to everyone who works really hard, embarrassing. Yeah.

It's news footage that is playing. The news is playing surveillance footage. And this is like, it's obviously not the same as when we saw Kingpin introduced into the MCU in a tiny pixelated text message photo because Kingpin just matters so much that it's like, wait, what? That's how you're doing it? But in terms of how goofy it looked, very reminiscent. Very strange. Tough. Yeah.

Tougher than having your nickname be dumb Benny? I think, yeah, that's tough. I think especially because White Tiger's costume in the grand scheme of things is not the goofiest thing we've seen in the MCU and like whatever. I don't hate it. In the world of Daredevil, it's high on the goof meter because Daredevil has been such, previously had been such a like street level thing.

I wear cherry red tactical armor, sure. But like, you know, that sort of stuff. Mostly I prefer my black under armor. Yeah. And so do you. And so do I. Dumb Benny. Dumb Benny. Sad, sad. Calls Foggy. Yeah. Dumb Benny. It's tough. More on Mal. It took me a while to shake it. You know, Dumb Benny is just... Let me ask you a question. Foggy takes the call. He goes outside and we get this like treatment. People love this. How did you feel about it? I was...

I remain undecided. I remain undecided. I kind of liked...

Maybe it's like a first time, but not an every time. Yeah, I liked reorienting us. Okay, Matt, right, the super heightened hearing and the way that the camera moved into like the, you can imagine the like funnel of, I don't know how to, sound waves. I don't really know how any of that works, but I liked what the visual effect conveyed in terms of like taking us into that experience for Matt. Yeah.

But it's used repeatedly throughout these two episodes. You didn't like it? I didn't really love it. I guess it's a way to do it visually rather than like having him explain his sort of world on fire sort of approach as we got in the Netflix show. But a lot of people seemed to really like it. To me, it felt like, I don't know, a little over much. Yeah. I thought it was like decently inventive. I'm curious to see if it feels like overbearing or distracting at a certain point.

And then the most important thing that could ever happen happens. So take me through your response because someone, Benny's scared. Someone is coming. And here's how we find out who it is, Joanna. There is a fly on a light bulb and a paper clip is wielded with such precision that it spears and kills this fly. And I said, that's my man. And then you said what? That's my man. And then after that you said? I can fix it. Correct.

I sent you like nine I can fix him texts. I'm concerned at this point. Yeah, you also put one in the doc. Your belief in Benjamin Poindexter is inspiring, albeit alarming. So Dex is not after Benny because we learn that Foggy has stashed Dex.

Benny at his apartment and Matt asks Foggy, why didn't you tell me that Benny was receiving threats and was scared? And Foggy says, I'm sorry, maybe I didn't want to give you an excuse. And this will be the last thing that these characters ever say to each other. This is fascinating. And like, I hope we come back to this perhaps in a season two flashback or something like that, because I don't,

Don't know what's going on in their relationship right now. Or I don't know what kind of daredevil Matt is right now before he hangs it up before presumably he takes it back up again. But like I...

What does that mean? Maybe I didn't want to give you an excuse. Is Matt on the... Has he been reckless lately? What's going on inside of their relationship? They really felt like they had found some harmonious moment at the end of the Netflix show. So what's going on here? It would almost be more... I agree. I really hope we get the answer to that. It's almost more interesting to me if provided that we then get time via flashback or whatever with Matt and Foggy to explore this. Foggy, Foggy. When Matt's phone...

you know, announced that Heather was calling and announced that Cherry was calling. I had told you before and on the last pod that Adam just genuinely loves the foggy, foggy, foggy and says it all the time. And, uh,

Like, we looked to each other and realized that we would never hear Foggy, Foggy, Foggy again. It was sad. You know how sometimes little things like that really kind of cement that a character has died? It was like, oh my God, you're never going to hear Foggy, Foggy, Foggy again. How sad. Everything's possible in the multiverse. It is. Matt's ringtone can go on in the multiverse. I would be almost more interested if, like, it was less that Matt...

were behaving recklessly or constantly on the brink of doing something that leads to him saying things like he's going to say later in this episode. You know, I felt like I had lost the privilege. And more that he was towing whatever line he needed to tow and Foggy always still had that little tug.

of, like, this isn't... Should you be doing this? What does it mean that you do this? Like, you're supposed to be a lawyer. You're supposed to operate in the court of law and pursue justice through the structures of society. And every night you take it upon yourself to go do it differently. And, like, that was just such a fascinating part of their dynamic. And frankly, you know, we're about to get to his death. It's on my mind with, like, why did they do this? And...

There's a part of me that... Why did they kill Foggy? Kill Foggy. Like, there's a part of me that wonders if they felt like that well was dry. That, like, how many times can you put those two characters in the same... And I'm not saying I feel that way, but in that same situation of, like, wait. I think by the time we got to season three, there was, like, a bit of, like, a how many times can we go around this particular thing. As you know, I think Nelson V. Murdoch, a season one episode of the original Daredevil, is one of the...

Best episodes of television ever. It's going to be such great avocados. The best avocados the city has ever seen, Jo. Guacamole. Smashed avocado toast. It's not great. Speaking of not great. Tell me. Take me through it. The Daredevil versus Bullseye fight. Swing us right into this scene.

Here's the thing. I think we've made plenty of excuses for shoddy CGI work from Marvel over the years. We've been understanding of like how budgets are stretched thin and VFX houses are overworked and all this other stuff like that. But I'm just like astonished that literally like 10 years after Daredevil appeared on Netflix and we just rewatched it and just got to see how amazing it looks.

that they would serve us something that looks this bad as our introduction to the action for Matt Murdock. The digital double swinging through looked so video game-y, gumbified, like looked so horrible to me. And like, this is, you know...

re-watching the action scenes in She-Hulk and in Echo, I can see how some of the twirlier, high-kickier Matt Murdock stuff was already on their mind in those shows. This is something that they were sort of away from the sort of like Batlin' Jack bruiser Daredevil more towards the he's almost a Spider-Man-esque figure so we give him this grappling hook so he can swing in.

There is a shot where I do not know what the grappling hook is connected to because it's like from thin air. Yeah, that was weird. So this is like the Spider-Manification, I would say, of Matt Murdock, which don't at me, I understand is like from comic book origins, right? Right.

I we talked about this on our rewatch. I love you talked about how he heals a bit faster than the normal guy. His his senses are heightened, but he's just a guy. And I loved that he was like just a guide. He would just put his like just a guy body on the line to defend the city. And he would just sort of stagger around.

And we see some staggering from both him and definitely from Dex in the stairwell. Dex is going through it. Matt has like 97 knives sticking out of him. And it's like slightly labored breathing. So I just I found this really tough. Did you find the to jump ahead a bit the fight that ended episode two? Better. Much better. Much better. Much better. And that was like, I mean, first of all.

on the is Disney Plus going to be as violent as a daredevil? Kill those guys? I mean, one of the lids on his neck. You can only smash a skull.

Into a table, a freezer, and the fucking floor so many times. The snapped arm. The snapped arm. Yeah, which to me, that's super strength, right? You can't just snap an arm. I guess if you have the right leverage, you can. How brittle is that cop's bones? Anyway, point being, I thought the CGI looked deeply terrible. Yeah, just distractingly so. Yeah.

My guy Dex rolls up. Yeah. Looking great. Kid it out. Like he's got. He's got bullseye gloves. He has consulted a branding expert. Yeah. She's foggy. Says, hello, Karen. Hello, Karen. Boy, really takes you back to. In season three. I do want to talk a bit about sort of like the why of this, because this is what Matt wants to know when he's on the roof. He's like, why? Why? You know, get the great Dex grin. Yeah.

I have seen they have this fight in the bar. We get this is this is the one. Right. And this is the problem is like they're trying to give us a classic Daredevil one. And the bar is so high on those three fight scenes. No question. The one from season one of the Netflix version, which I told you was like you have like top five superhero moment for me.

The stairwell fight where, as you pointed out, he definitely kills a bunch of dudes. Serial killing at that point. The prison escape, which is the longest of them all and deeply impressive. Not my favorite, but still deeply impressive. And all sort of physical stunt work. You can see stuntmen staggering out of frame and then Charlie Cox crawling back into frame. We know that that's working, but it's not...

digitized in a way that this is so synthetic. We've got the synthetic CGI fog. We've got the moment when he like turns the lights out, which should be cool. And we've seen Matt do something like that before, but not in this sort of like night vision kind of way. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's just, um,

And so I've seen online a couple of our brilliant colleagues break down the fight and break down all the details of the fight. And those are really fun to watch. But I would argue it is too chaotic. Yeah. It is not shot in a way that I can cleanly track all of that action and all the character beats inside of the action of like the way in which Dex is like just like,

tossing multiple cue balls at a given time to like ricochet them off things or whatever like all of it is cool in concept and i think quite poorly executed the part that i found in obviously non uh stupefying cgi division the part that i found most confounding in terms of just the choreography and sequencing of the fight was matt letting dex get so far ahead of him on the stairs yeah

thus killing additional people because she's just like alone what was going on there there's one shot on the stairs that I really liked which is like decks up against the wall and it's like his eyes are really wide that looks like almost like a comic book like to me like I thought that was really cool and I think conceptually again the idea of Matt trying to execute this fight while hearing to foggy foggy heartbeat slow yeah I think it's actually is really cool and

I'm going to credit the Redditors for this because I was like sort of as I like to do reading the Reddit boards. Like I saw a couple people suggested, I don't know who did it first.

Would it have been cooler if instead of like the score which we hear is going, if we just heard Foggy's heartbeat, like to – that's the soundtrack of this fight and to hear it slow and slow and then silence. And then all you have is Matt's scream at the end. Yeah. I'm like, ooh, that's really cool. That's not fair. That's like Monday morning quarterbacking. But like I think that, yeah. Look at you. But this was just like –

This put a huge damper on my whole experience. Yeah, because it's the opening note. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. And yeah, to your point, I did think the fight at the end of episode two was much better. Yeah. And so it makes me hopeful for the future. And I know that they actually hired the same fight coordinator in the revamp. They hired the same fight coordinator who worked on the original Daredevil series.

But that means that that person put this sequence together. And I don't know what to say about that. On the first viewing, because I was genuinely astonished that Foggy was about to die. Yeah. Like flabbergasted. I was like, I actually can't believe this is happening. Yeah.

My heart was like pounding and I was, but then on second viewing and I was talking to one of our colleagues who had a similar experience. You know what's going to happen. So then you're more just like watching the scene. And I was like, oh boy, oh no. But I did love the astonishingly violent kitchen fight in episode two. Here's what happens here. Yeah. Matt hears Foggy take his final breath. And then he,

pushes Dex off the roof and Dex goes splat. I had already sent you like three I can fix them texts while I was watching it and then I was like, oh no.

It was fun to get those in real time, actually. Weirdly, that was how I realized how long the opening scene was. I was like, this is an 18-minute opening. Huh. Interesting. Matt drops the mask. That was like the visual in the trailers. You know, they were kind of building marketing around that. And Matt saying like a line had been crossed to Fisk in the diner. So I want to talk about two things here. One, we see Dex, you know, his eyes open. We'll explain why. He's alive.

I would posit that that is not relevant. It's relevant for the story moving forward, but it is not relevant in terms of assessing what Matt Murdock does here. He intended to kill him. Which is the one line. We talked about this a lot in our primer pod. I find it hysterical that he's constantly like, the one thing I want to do is kill people and then like just hanging guys by metal chains and dropping them down stairwells. But this has been like a defining. I won't. Yeah.

cross that threshold. Like, that's the thing I can't come back from. And losing Foggy is what pushes Matt to do that thing. And we lost Foggy. Yep. And we should talk about, we already have a little bit, but like, how that makes us feel and what that means and why it happened. So, take me through your thoughts and feelings about all of this. On the one hand, like,

I mean, it's devastating. But for the show that they wanted to do, I understand why you can't have Foggy or Karen there necessarily. I mean, it seems like Karen will probably come back from San Francisco. But, like, if they wanted to do Matt Murdock reinvents himself as a slicker Manhattanite lawyer, like...

You can't have Foggy necessarily in the mix there. And if they wanted to salvage, like sort of just I understand logistically why this was the only move they had when they decided. And to your point, I'm kind of like, I'm glad we got any Foggy because originally we weren't going to get any. That would have been. But again, for people who don't know anything about the knots and the seams in the back of the tapestry, like for them, they're just like, oh, my God, you killed Foggy, you bastards. Yeah.

I love Foggy. And we talked about this on our rewatch, how even higher we estimated Foggy upon the rewatch. Huge riser, yeah. And so the – I don't know. It's really – I don't want to be negative about everything, obviously. We got this really interesting email from Brendan who said –

It zips ahead a little bit in what happens, but he says,

Karen disappearing after his death, except for one extremely awkward and silly conversation with Matt. The amount of time we're spending with Fisk and talking about political maneuvering, et cetera, all seem like bad signs. So once again, this is Brendan sort of saying, hey, this isn't like the daredevil that I know. And even though they spent much of season three apart and Foggy was kind of forever quitting the law firm, like that core three. Yeah.

Did feel like it was the perhaps Cognum enhanced spine of the original series. Gives us that durability. But...

Yeah, so I think it'll all depend on how it goes forward. I will deeply miss him. Me too. Brad Winterbaum has said they're going to use him in season two, so we don't know if that's flashbacks or, as we've mentioned a couple times, everything's possible in the multiverse. But how did you feel about it? Sad. Really sad. Yeah, it really... I was like, what? Yeah. And I think part of me, like, kind of...

If this was going to be part of the show, part of me kind of admires doing it right at the jump like this. You know, you just throw us so fully and deeply right away into Matt's state of despair where we are going to meet him. It's like a little cruel to remind us of...

that relationship and then take it away. But I often really like stories that make me super sad and like remind me if I can feel that deeply about losing someone, it reminds me of the investment I had in the first place that the characters had in each other. So I'm like, actually, I'm very sad. I think I am okay with the decision. I'm really aligned with what you're saying. Like I, there's a part of me that thinks, okay, yes, undeniably, like you're saying,

Nelson and Murdoch, Nelson and Murdoch page, that's the through line, right? That's the, like, Blair of red that always bathes the city in the show. It's just you can't escape it. It's always going to be there. In Hell's Kitchen. Yes, in Hell's Kitchen. In this scene. Yeah. The...

There's a part of me that is like, okay, but life is not just one or two relationships. I'm thinking about this now because of what you were saying earlier about finding Matt in this different place in life later in life and meeting new people and seeing how Matt forges new relationships. Part of actually what made their dynamic as a trio so interesting is that Matt and Foggy went so much further back than Foggy and Karen or Matt and Karen. It was watching that

acceleration of one person inside of this thing that was like... Existent dynamic? Yeah, exactly. So seeing Matt... And we both really lamented in the primer pod killing...

Father Lantum. I'm like, why do that? And I think you really felt that again right away here. Hugely. I just, this, this. I really missed the Father Lantum or even Sister Maggie stuff. Like not having any, any of that in here. We need a conversation on a bench in front of a church. Looking at a church door. Yeah. You know, I have this mark for later, but I'll say it now, like to yes and what you're saying. I think

In a sense, this is honoring the Born Again comic book storyline, which is about Wilson Fisk sort of systematically. It's like a Job story, essentially. It's about Wilson Fisk systematically stripping Matt Murdock of his law practice, of his relationship with Foggy. Karen starts in a bad place in that comic. We don't need to repeat that for Karen, but like.

Yeah, to the point where Matt can't even trust that the thing that he thought he knew to be true before was even real. Right, so he loses his mind in Born Again because he's stripped of all of these things that were sort of shoring him up. And so there's a way in which

No Father Lantum, no Sister Maggie, no Hell's Kitchen, no, like, even Let's Go Over to Josie's, no Karen, no Foggy. That gives us, like, a daredevil alone in the world. And what a dangerous thing that might be. You know that concept? Unfortunately, that's so juicy to me. Unfortunately...

the show sort of immediately, because this was the original plan, sort of like fills in those holes with Kirsten and Cherry. That's the thing. But fails to flesh those characters out in the way that Karen and Foggy were fleshed out. Yeah. In... There's some good... I like Cherry generally as like a character and Kirsten and I would like to see more from, but like...

I was thinking about this, like thinking about Karen and Foggy in the first few episodes of the Netflix series. They're given their own side quests. Yeah. Like what are they doing when Matt's not there is a constant thing in Daredevil. Right.

We get like a scene of Kirsten and Cherry, like, you know. Yeah, yeah. But that's about finding a suit in a box. It's not about like... Very easy. How do those characters... Right. What are their relationships? How do they interact in the world? So they're not fully formed characters. So the relationship then is...

Matt and Fisk. Yeah. And that's not uninteresting. No. It's very interesting to me, but it has to always be balanced against the thing with Matt and Fisk that was, I mean, everything with the two of them in the first three seasons of the Netflix show was electric, but always there was the sense that Foggy and Karen were embroiled in that. Yeah. Right? That they were like sucked up in that jello mold that was expanding around them and became these little pieces of bobbing fruit in a thing that they didn't want to be a part of. But also it was like equally important, like Fisk had his

Vanessa. Like his home life, important, that fleshes him out as a character, relationships. And it was important that Matt had his on this side. And that's what makes the Netflix series so juicy and satisfying is like these are real, fully formed people. And like we're coasting. I feel like in these two episodes, and again, I'm open-minded.

to have my mind changed, we're coasting on a bit of fumes, especially for Matt, I would say. When we get shots of him in the street, sorry, I know I'm zooming all over the place, but we get shots of him in the street lit with the red light, you know, sort of looking up. That's us sort of like filling in a lot of gaps for a character that the show is not

giving us a full rounded version of. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think the thing I was lowest on across the two episodes was Matt and McDuffie and Matt and Cherry. Yeah. Because it... Again, like I am interested actually in saying a person later, a few years later in their life that when you were last with them would have new relationships and new people and what are those dynamics like and a new girlfriend. You and I only became friends a few years ago. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I could be your Cherry. I mean...

Cherry has not come close to earning that. Great. Not come fucking close to earning that. But I think in part because McDuffie literally is the new law partner. So how can we not think of Foggy? Yeah. And then Cherry, Matt's using him as this investigator. He saw Matt without his mask at the top. So like then when we catch up with him a year later, he knows the truth. Matt's like, you know, I know he's telling the truth about Hector. Yeah.

But Cherry has like, and I thought this was interesting. We get to hear him call him Maddie. You had made the beautiful point on the primer pod about what it tells us about relationships. He calls him Matthew. He calls him Matt. That's a very like paternal thing for Cherry to do. So that obviously is different than Foggy. But emotionally and thematically, Cherry's role in these two episodes was at the retirement party to voice a sense of woe about the changing nature of New York.

what hold do vigilantes have over people, right? And then to say to Matt, by the water, et cetera, like, I like this version of you. You're doing some good. Are you sure you want to be that guy? Yeah. Are you only thinking this about Hector because of the mask you used to wear? And that is just... That's what Foggy used to do. So if you get rid of Foggy... I'm open to new relationships. I'm open even to losing Foggy. Genuinely. But if you get rid of Foggy and then the two...

two of the three main new relationships, because obviously Heather is the other big one, are kind of doing foggy stuff, then I'm like less clear on how that's going to work. So they have time to make it work. They have time. They have so much time and they had to cram a bunch of extra show that wasn't previously there into the show. So what did they cut and that sort of stuff. But like, what's Cherry's life like at home? What's Kirsten's life like at home? You know,

Like, what's... Well, Heather has a book signing. Heather, they do, like, a bit more, like, work on. But I'm just sort of like, what was Cherry's decision like? He retires and then he becomes Matt's investigator. Right. Why? Right. You know, and I'm, you know, I'm open to being told later, but those are just things that, like...

The other shows and specifically Daredevil and Netflix did a better job of sort of helping us understand earlier. Yeah. To play devil's advocate with the devil of Hell's Kitchen, I think if we had gotten scenes in these two episodes, I think you're undeniably right. But that also if we had gotten scenes in these two episodes where we just went home with Cherry, we would have been like, we do not know or care about this person. We don't need to go home with Cherry. They need to give it to us eventually. Let's talk about like Ben Urich in the first season of Daredevil and Netflix.

Has his whole side plot with his wife. Yeah. That gets seeded from the jump. Yeah. There are mentions of his wife and what is going on in his mind at all times he's trying to navigate these things. So that's just like, that's just like a slightly more sophisticated, like all of this just feels like a slightly flatter, less visually appealing version of,

Of a story that was told by people who were just thinking a few levels deeper on character and spirituality and all these other things that we really responded to. A striking lack of Catholic guilt and doubt in this episode. Where's my gothic? Yeah, we get like three mad as a Catholic beats, but they're perfect.

pretty muted. That's interesting. I wonder if that will change. I hope that changes. That's a, that's a really, on the tapestry front, you kind of can't make the Daredevil tapestry without that. We zoomed past this, but I had a couple people text me and ask me, so we should just say this on the podcast. The reason that Daredevil, that, that,

Dex survives the fall from the building is that at the end of season three of Netflix's Daredevil he gets his back broken by Fisk and then we see him in surgery getting special metal not adamantium sort of

inserted onto his spine. And it seemed almost like it was like his skull as well in that fall and stuff like that. But like in the fall and in this episode, it seemed like maybe there was like metal on his skull as well anyway. So he's like not...

more machine than man now, but, you know, a bit more machine than man. So that's why he was able to survive a fall that definitely should have killed him. He went splat. And to your point, Matt definitely intended to kill him. No question. No question! And we got one of those primal screams that we got, that we talked about a lot in Daredevil season.

We got a couple primal screams from Matt in these to open the series and then to the closed episode two, I believe, right? Yes, correct. In the kitchen. Probably murdered some of those people. Speaking of murderers, let's go to Kingpin and Queenpin. Vanessa. Thrill of my life to be here with you and your Vanessa impression. Joe.

We go, this is where we're going slightly out of order. We go straight from like Matt is watching the news. We're hearing about the mayoral race, 15 candidates. Okay, we know where we're going here. We obviously had seen at the end of Echo of Fisk watching the news on his plane. And we know what his intention is. He has his eye on the office. We caught right to Fisk at breakfast. And we have to, I mean, yeah, Foggy died and that's a big deal. But the single biggest thing that happens in these two episodes is that the classic signature iconic Fisk omelet is

Has been swapped out. He's cut out yolks. For egg whites. Yeah. And one stalk of asparagus. I miss the old omelet. I miss the ritual of him making the omelet. The ritual of it. Yeah. Yeah.

He's living an egg white kind of life. Speaking of change. He's an older man. It's true. He's watching his clothes roll. I respect that. I miss the ritual of watching him make the omelet with the chives. He goes to his suits. We had this like shot of Matt, you know, feeling the edge of all his suits and then Fisk kind of mirrors that like looking at his outfits and he does not. He lingers on the white for a second and then doesn't pick it.

This is, of course, for the character. Like, I have to show the people that I am not the kingpin of crime. I am a mayoral candidate and I will wear this gray suit. For us, it is a nice way to be like, remember in season one when Fisk wore gray suits a lot? So that was exciting. The Fitz. Wonderful. Take me into this scene with Vanessa. Queenpin. Vanessa's meeting with the five families and she's, like, handling shit. She has that entire room. We are inside a...

What looks kind of like a storage locker. I have some questions about where they're meeting. Somewhere in Red Hook. People do store art.

In those spaces, right? So like she's got a lot of art there. She's a lot of art. We don't need to go into specifics of what the art is, but just to know that they are renowned paintings. And it's a lot of like women in peril slash thrall and devil figures and stuff like that. That's interesting. To me, the most important part of those paintings being there is that they are not women.

made up paintings those are real expensive paintings and so vanessa ever the art collector is like still on her art collection yeah uh bullshit but um i loved the moment later when fisk was like asking about the desk and he's like vanessa would know on sight you know that was a great moment i loved that um oh man red hook gets mentioned four times in this episode so yeah a lot of red hook

Yeah. Red Hook, New York, I should say, is a lovely place. I went there for the first time this last fall. Did you run into any members of the tracksuit mafia? Alas, no. But one of our listeners actually took me to his comic book shop in Red Hook. Shout out Mega Brain Comics. Delightful. I don't know what horrors await us in Red Hook, as it's been mentioned several times in this episode. But if you're in Red Hook. Yeah.

No free ads except for this. Mega brain comics. Go Vincent. There you go. Yeah. How did you feel to be back with the tracksuit mafia? There's a little bit of a, a little bicker fest between characters named Luca and Victor. Do you wish it were Kazi? Well, of course. From Hawkeye. I mourn still and I always will. But like death doesn't really matter. That's true. In a Marvel show. Kingpin got shot in the eye. That's true. They solved that one. They solved that one. Uh, uh,

Of course makes us think of, you know, Hawkeye and not just the tracksuit mafia, but the way Kingpin was undeployed in that show and everything that... Bro. How do you think Lucky's doing right now? Our beloved pizza dog? Oh, the pizza dog? I'm just living life. Miss him. Yeah. As you noted, Vanessa just in complete command of the room and then meeting interrupted, Kingpin enters. And he says, Vanessa!

Yeah. Could you have been more thrilled that this was the first thing he uttered? I'm not not in love with my own Vanessa, but I gotta say the Midnight Boys really crushed their Kingpin says Vanessa impressions. Really good stuff. They've got that bass register. I can't do it at all. Vanessa. Vanessa. Vanessa. Everyone's like, whoa. Wilson Fisk is in the doorway. They're shocked. Luca, are you?

our tracksuit guy, I would say the camera lingered on him staring for a beat longer than he should have. So he's going to be a problem at some point. Yeah. He's like, I respect women in power, not you. Yeah, Luca had strong down with the patriarchy energy. Definitely. That's what the tracksuit mafia is known for. Joe, we go right into scenes from a marriage. Hmm.

Vanessa's pissed. And we learned, she's like, I sat by your bedside and then you fucking ghosted. You left. Yeah. And not just that. You left to go be in a bad show that no one liked. Of all the things to leave for. Also, there was that phase where you started wearing Hawaiian shirts that I didn't enjoy. Oh my God. So like, we are made to understand here that during the events, presumably of Hawkeye and Echo. Yeah.

They're not in touch. It seems like they are estranged. She is. He's like, you're doing a good job with the business. And she mentions how the profit that they stay loyal because I make the money profit keeps you loyal. And he said, loyal. Yeah, right. And the camera was like the reflection of his wedding ring on the table. Did you perceive that as as we will later learn? He knows that she has been engaging in an extramarital affair with a gentleman named Adam.

And that is... He knows that here already. Okay. She asks how long he's going to be around. Steve, can we hear this clip? As long as you'll have me, Vanessa, I was broken, shattered. For months, I had to put myself back together. And as I did, two things shone bright and clear inside me. Beacons of who I was and who we could be. The first was my undying love for you. And the second...

What we could do for this city. Vanessa. Okay, can I just say? Yeah. I know I've been like largely quite critical of, I don't know, the scene and a half we've managed to cover so far. Yeah, we're making great time. But getting to listen to Vincent D'Onofrio do Wilson Fisk is a joy and a delight. I loved pretty much every Kingpin moment, I think, across the...

Across the two episodes. I'm out on Daniel Blake personally. So a lot of that stuff was not working for me, but everything else. Yeah, absolutely. He got to say fucking in the MCU though. And then Heather said fuck later. Two fucks in these episodes. A guy in the street says fuck yeah when he's fixing a hole in the... We had to wait. We had to wait.

A decade plus. A decade and a half for the F word in Guardians 3, and now here it is. An embarrassment of a choice. Reckless abandon. So, you know, obviously when we were first introduced to the relationship between Wilson and Vanessa, like that love and passion that he had for her was inextricable immediately from the man he wanted to be for the city, for her and the city. So this has always been the nature of their relationship, and it was interesting to kind of, even though they are in such a different place, return to that emotion.

that entwine nature. And she's the one who told him to get out in front of... He was sort of from the shadowing this. It was like a shadow...

agenda and she's just like no you gotta put yourself out there be that guy this was what I was alluding to earlier and I was like how would you have understood what was happening here if you hadn't because everything that all of this like you were gone where did you go if you didn't watch Hawkeye and Echo I just don't know what do you maybe think this is about him being in prison at the end of season 3 like what I mean they do mention they do mention later that he got shot in the eye right but like he got shot in the eye yeah

And then he was like chakra healed by Echo. And then had some new tech. What? Yeah, it's all. Yeah, we've got some questions still. Certainly. I don't know that that was supposed to like take him inside of his childhood self and heal something in him. And has it done anything to him?

Or are we all pretending that Ethel doesn't exist? But then why, like, allude to the events of it so many times? That's what's interesting. Because there was a version of this where they could have...

Not, I guess, literally ignored that because it, you know, those are two shows that he was in, but picked up more, tried to establish more connective tissue to you sent me to prison and we made a bargain, which does also come up. Like in the diner scene when Fisk says, I didn't do that to Foggy. I kept my promise. Like that's the moment that he's

Because it just doesn't make sense. Yeah, unfortunately. That was messy, for sure. He tells her he's going to run for mayor, got to step back from doing anything illegal, and she's like, fuck off. I made this business bulletproof when you were gone. You don't need to tell me any of this.

And of course, at the end of season three, when they reunited and she came back from being in hiding, she was like, I want to be a part of all of this. She's like, girl boss. Exactly. And she's doing great. And now she doesn't want him. She has missed him, as we'll hear many times, genuinely missed him. And obviously we know that she loves him, but is conflicted that he has returned, which is, I think, really interesting. I'm excited to see what they do with all of that.

Less exciting is that we have some new spaces to discuss. I don't quite know what to make of this. Murdoch and McDuffie, a new era has begun. We're introduced to two new spaces. We briefly get to glimpse Matt's new apartment here. This is...

Not okay. This apartment looks nice, but where's the... What? This is devastating. Max Loft is like, he's Daredevil. The way... I don't remember if we talked about this. I think we must have. I know you talked about how much you love that Loft. You were like, it's another... It's own character. Yeah.

The way that those windows were like basically eyes, like it was just like this whole thing. And yes, he's not in Hell's Kitchen. He's reinvented himself. It's just like a dramatically uninspired apartment. It's just like really quite boring. And that's fine because why, what does he care about interior design necessarily? And I did like this scene when he was just like working in the dark because like why would you turn on the lights? Like I thought that was good, but it's just like,

the opportunity for like a cool this is just such an uninspired set as is the law firm an uninspired set that like again takes us away from like the rich drama the like

gothic noir, operatic almost sort of setting of the original series. Yeah, for sure. And I think, again, this is similar in a different context, like a point you were making earlier where there's a version of this that is interesting thematically because that apartment was like Matt... Hell's Kitchen was not just a place Matt lived. It was...

the essence of like life to him and the thing that drove him to do this, a thing that he genuinely felt he needed to protect as fully and deeply as any person with a heartbeat. Right. And,

To have Matt go to kind of like faceless, generic, cookie cutter, shiny, I'm a rich guy now apartment in New York. Like actually, like there's a version of that where it's like, yeah, he doesn't, he's lost that tether. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much like in the opposite way, the law firm going from, do we have any food here? To they're in this like,

beautiful windows and sunlight and brick and look at not just how big and clearly expensive the space is, but how many people are working for them. This is a serious law firm. I think weirdly more than even the physical space, I was struck later when Matt's like, this client of yours is like a moron. And she's like, well, McDuffie's like, he's rich. So we call him a savant. And they both laugh. I'm like, oh, right. It's just a different era of Matt Murdock lawyer. Right. And that

tells us something he's distancing himself yeah he's weirdly distancing himself from what he had with Foggy almost by doing the thing that Foggy wanted and Matt didn't right so that's like very sad but you gotta mine it a little more actively for us to feel it I agree maybe they will maybe they will what did you think of Matt's musical choice here

I don't believe in an interventionist God. This is into my arms. And this, the grace and retribution quote that opened the episode and then Matt hearing the sermon as he passes the church. That was like kind of it for Catholicism Corner. We get a couple shots of in the...

storage container storage space where they were meeting we do get like haloed images of Fisk and Vanessa also we should mention that first shot of Fisk

From like a visual excitement sort of point of view, that upside down shot of him and the skyline also upside down. Very like, you know, into the Spider-Verse sort of thing. Yeah, for sure. That looked cool. And we did mention that I think the opening credits are cool. The opening credits were really cool. Like a cool spin on the original. And also, yeah, exactly. That felt like a nice way to do something that is new but clearly connected to the thing that came before. Yeah. Yeah.

Out of many windows across the two episodes, we see the Chrysler building a lot. It's mentioned. I would say that is the most frequently used New York landmark. One thing I wanted to ask you about. So in this stretch here, when we're first with Matt in his apartment, he picks up this

card for Foggy's memorial. Yeah. There was a part of me when I saw this for the first time that I was like, oh, it was the memorial that day. Then we realized he's going to Dexter's sentencing. But then later when he's about to go out on a date with Heather, he picks it up and takes it with him again. Like, do you think he is carrying this with him every single day? Every day.

Guilt is good, as we learned in the original Daredevil series. Yeah, it's kind of... Why that sad? It's kind of careworn. It's sort of, like, rubbed on the edges and, like, a little sort of, like, dingy in the way that, like, yeah, I think he puts it in his breast pocket every single day. That's really...

Oh, my God. Yeah. Joanna, take me to the sentencing. Take me through the sentencing for your boyfriend. First and foremost, I can fix him. Just wanted you to know that. He seems like he's in the kind of place where, yeah, just needs a couple. A great mental health space. Yeah. When he was sort of like laughing maniacally on the roof before he got splatted. Great stuff. Yeah.

They have, like, really made sure that he cannot fling a single thing. There's, like, bags on his hands. That was good. He's, like, majorly cuffed. Yeah, that was good. That costume design, I liked that. Here's what Matt says. He's there to speak. Kirsten had made sure Matt was okay. She's like, are you ready for this? This can be hard. Also asked if you, like, have you heard from her, priming us that he and Karen were not speaking. Matt says from the stand...

Justice will not be served today. It won't be served because whatever sentence is passed, Foggy Nelson, only his mother called him Franklin.

will still be dead. And I thought this was fascinating because in the same stretch, Matt, he does advocate for punishment. He's like, well, the best we can do, the closest we can get is this punishment. And then when the judge reveals the consecutive life sentences, Matt's cheering. He's like, OK. That was a weird moment. I rewound it like four different times. It's like a very like, you know, intense moment. Yeah, there was like something almost manic about it. But what he's saying here, like he does not, the Matt Murdock that we are with in this moment, believe that

that the legal system can deliver true, full justice. And that is a big deal. But he's not vigilant in either. Right. So then where is he getting that sense of some sort of justice issue? No peace. No justice in the world, not unless you make it. Well, he's not making it. And then he hears some footsteps. My question is, does he smell some curry as well? You know, or what other meal Karen had had in the last few days? Yes.

This is a reference to our last pod where we talked at length about the fact that Matt told Karen that he could smell the curry on her lips from the meal she had previously. So disturbing from a character we genuinely think is super hot and cool. Tremendous restraint from Van on the Midnight Boys talking about

Matt Murdock's he was like he was talking about smelling pheromones and I was like that's not what Mal would have said yeah if Mal were talking they were well behaved they were well behaved Matt Murdock

So we get, yeah, the Matt and Karen hallway. I mean, my beloved Dex is going away for consecutive life sentences. Tough. Sounds like a perfect place to fix him, though. Yeah, you can visit him. Yeah. Perhaps conjurally. Well, do you think this is actually the end of Dex in this season? No, it can't be. No. We have to find out why he targeted Fonzie. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, Karen on this bench. I loved this physical setting and the framing of this scene, because first of all, in a little reminiscent of when we see Vanessa and Wilson in marriage counseling, like they're not near each other. They're as far apart. There's a distance that is physical and emotional between these characters in this moment. Yeah.

It could not be a less comfortable place to sit, right? And of course, that's like deliberate, right? Discomfort in the face of justice, stiff back, you can't really ease in. But just these two characters confronting each other again in like the halls of justice when Karen's, you know, that's how Karen came into their lives, right? They were representing her. And...

The number of times in a courthouse or a lawyer office, like, these characters had a meaningful moment together or a falling out together, thinking, of course, most powerfully of Matt just ghosting them for Elektra in season two during the trial of the century. Speaking of ghosting. Yes. This is what happened here. Yes. Mutual ghosting, essentially. And...

Foggy's not there to help them find each other again. And like, he would have been the one to do that before and that's devastating. This gave me kind of... Did it turn you around on Karen Page? I like talking with Karen in these episodes. Yeah. What about... And now she's in San Francisco. Yeah.

If when she comes back? I would actually like Karen to be back sooner rather than later. Me too. I think that Matt having no interaction with those people from his past would feel really weird and wrong. And, like, I think these two are life rafts for each other. And I hope they have the opportunity to be that. Also, if we're going to get Punisher stuff, depending on how much we get it, like, Karen's such a huge... Karen. Gotta have it. Have to have it. When she was like, yeah, I needed you and you were gone. And Matt's like, I was...

I was going through it. I needed a minute. And then when I needed you, you were gone. Did it make you think of Hank and Hope? Pim? Because.

Because, like, obviously we learned that Hank was actually up to something there. But that, like, that root of... I lost someone, too. We both lost this person. And obviously you were going through it. But I needed you and you weren't there. Such an interesting aspect of a relationship to me. I'm always fascinated by that. I haven't thought about Hank and Hope in a long time. Though we get Pim Van Dyne merch in this show. Yeah, it's true. What other aspects of this exchange struck you? Um...

I don't know. I thought this was actually quite lovely. Yeah. Though, like, I felt like I could feel the sweat a little bit of, like, how do we justify that Karen just leaves? You know? For sure. But I do think the act of her giving the physical totem of, like, here's the devil horn. Yeah. And then the fact that we see him sort of fondling it. Fingering it. Say it. Yep. Yeah. Clutching it. Later, like...

That's really effective, I think. This little totem. It's like we're in an inception. That's why I said totem. I'm ready for my life to change. ABC Sunday, American Idol returns. Give it your all. Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket. Let's hear it. This is a man's world.

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I really like, you know, the fact that Karen gives him the little devil horn and then we later see him sort of fondling it. Yeah, fingering it. Sure. Holding it. It's a really good, like, physical representation of we know what he's thinking about. Yes. He's thinking about Foggy, he's thinking about Karen, and he's thinking about, is it time to...

How long am I going to make a wait? How long can I handle just this tip? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long do you think we have to wait? For Karen? No, for... Well, for the suit to come back on. Oh. I'm going to say episode... It's a nine-episode season. We're already two in.

I am going to say episode... I mean, at the end of episode two, it seemed like he was ready to put it back on, honestly. So you think episode three... But three feels still maybe soon because Matt is all about the turmoil. Five? Episode five? Episode four? Loves the turmoil. What about you? What do you think? You think there's a chance we don't get it to like episode nine or you think we get it sooner? Yeah. That actually feels like more the Daredevil way. So...

I think that's what my head tells me is end of season. He puts it back on and then he is born again. Yeah, let's go with that. That seems right. That just obviously seems right. If he wants to like wear a scarf in the meantime, I support him. But yeah, yeah. I thought when Karen was like, it's just, you know, yeah, I'm like happy you're doing so well. And Matt just very quietly said, great, thanks. Like,

That was so sad. Like, this person that is so close to him, how could you think, even if you're kind of saying it to be a dick because they're mad at each other, you know I'm not doing well. You know I'm broken and shattered and I need you. And I have failed you too, and so you're not ready to give me that. But, like, even when she was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go to coffee. And he's like, I know I can tell you're lying. I just don't know if it's to me or to yourself. Yeah. Oh, man. These two have some stuff to work through. I thought it was also really interesting when Matt said that he refused to let a tragedy destroy everything because...

He did exactly that in season three. You know, when we meet Matt, he is processing the events of a television show called The Defenders. The Def... Def... Defondus? And the loss of a great love in that story. Electra. Yeah, and he...

allowed Foggy and Karen to think he was dead for multiple episodes as a result of it. He was like, Matt Murdock is dead. That's, of course, one of the really interesting things about... We're going to hear this clip right now, but Matt is in a place that feels familiar to us where we've seen him before navigate this one part of myself I need to leave behind and let go. Kill the devil, let the man be born. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. How many times have we mentioned Thrones or alluded to Thrones today already? Not enough. Not enough, I agree. The...

The fact that now he's like, Matt Murdock is all I am and the devil has to go is an interesting twist on a familiar experience. And the maturation emotionally to say like, okay, yeah, I know what it's like actually to think that losing somebody means you have to lose everything else. I'm not going to do that again is progress. And yet he...

cannot get Karen to speak to him and he was not there for her and they're in a really tough spot. So I hope these two figure it out from across the country. Steve, Karen asks, I just thought, frankly, far too loudly. Like everyone in that courthouse should know right now that Matt is Daredevil after this. So what are you going to do about being Daredevil? Huh? Your anti-Karen agenda continues. I enjoyed my time with Karen in this episode.

I would love to hear this clip, Steve, if we can. What does Matt say? I made a promise to myself. I've let the system handle it. All of it. Besides, I'm not him anymore. And I won't let myself be. And you think that that will help? I don't know. It doesn't make it worse. And I won't let myself be. Spoiler alert. He definitely will.

This is interesting, too, that I don't know. Like, Matt is really in a place across these two episodes where he doesn't, you know, this isn't justice, but it's the next best thing. Is this going to help? I don't know. If the city wants to elect Fisk, they deserve him. That's really cynical. Maybe I've just wised up. He's like a Matt who is settling for something that he knows is not good enough. And that was not

He's suppressing part of himself. The math that we know. We know that later that Kirsten sets him up with Heather, like, sort of romantically, but, like, should he maybe not also be in therapy? That was so, yeah, it's so top of mind because, of course, he thinks she needs legal representation. Very amusing. She has been told that he needs therapy, which he would benefit from greatly. And she's like, how about instead I date you? I mean, that's, obviously, that was a romantic setup, but I'm just sort of, like, her being, like,

ah, so you're fucked up and need therapy. Also, should we date? That's two scenes from now. We basically just talked about it. But right before we get there, Fisk does officially launch his campaign. Matt finds this out while chopping vegetables. Sexily. I was riveted watching him chop those vegetables. My God, could he chop those vegetables, Joanna? Holy shit. What was he chopping? Which vegetables was he chopping? Look, it was a very dark scene. You kind of hate to see a vegetable coming, though.

I love a vegetable. I love a vegetable. I just also love a lot of really unhealthy processed sugars and really like a lot of fried food and fatty food and I love cheese. But I do like vegetables too. Okay. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen you eat a vegetable, but like probably you have. And definitely mushrooms. I love mushrooms. I love vegetables dipped in hummus. I actually love a salad.

Would I, if left to my own devices, have like fried chicken eight nights in a row? Yeah. But then on the ninth night, I would be like, I need a salad. And I would think it tasted good. And then after I would be hungry and then I would need a pint of ice cream. But I also have the pint of ice cream on the nights with the fried chicken. So yeah, the vegetables. Anyway, he hears Fisk is going to run. He can't believe it. And we meet Fisk's team, Jo.

These were not the most impressive character debuts. Let's just say it. Sheila, Buck and Daniel Blake. Sheila, a non-entity as far as I'm concerned. Yes. Daniel Blake, deeply annoying. I'm watching the socials and everyone's talking about you, but your most quotable character. You just quoted him to me while we took a break on this podcast. You love him. You love Daniel Blake. You're a big fan.

I was actually pretty disturbed. Genuinely, it's like it was an uncomfortable experience because the Trump energy around all of this, obviously the entire like. The Fisk and Fixit. Yeah, Fisk and Fixit, the whole campaign. This idea of like, well, you're winning, you're popular on social, like you did it for yourself, you can do it, you're a criminal, but you can be our leader. But like this, the stuff that Daniel Blake is saying is just so Trumpy. It's very Trumpy. And I will say that like,

On the one hand, it's Trumpy in a way that I just don't feel like is very...

where I'm like, I get it. On the other hand, it does give them nice cover because I can't sit here and be like, how on earth could someone like Fisk become mayor of New York? I know. Because I'm like, well. Yeah. Yep. Totally. Okay, so. How did you enjoy your time with Buck Cashman? I kind of enjoyed Buck Cashman. What a name! Buck Cashman! He's a comic book character. Yeah. I kind of enjoyed him. He was such a dick to Sheila. You and I...

No, I don't enjoy him as like a real person. No, of course. As a character. You and I both made notes about James Wesley. Yes. As someone we sort of were really missing in this moment. Yeah. And I felt with Daniel that the way Fisk is gravitating toward him and taking a shine to him across the two episodes is like...

He's so clearly still trying to fill the Wesley void. But Daniel's not like Wesley at all. At all. No, to me, it sort of felt like he saw himself in, you know, in this kid. And he's so young, also like a little bit of Maya in a way, right? Like he has the conversation, like, I know I had tried to mentor someone.

The closest I got was trying to mentor someone. I kind of feel like Michael Gandolfini and his sort of stature and the way he's dressed felt like kidpin to me. Good old kidpin. Yeah. Okay, so your favorite character out of the two-part premiere is Buck Cashman. Got it.

It's not Matt. It's Dex. You can fix him. I am very loyal. You can fix him. We already talked about the meet cute. Anything else that you want to say about Kirsten setting Matt up with Mother Coral, about Matt and Mother Coral meeting at the coffee shop? I did enjoy how, and Matt has to own it, incredibly rude he is. And then he's like, sorry, I'm such a dickhead. Don't you like to sit down and have some coffee?

Let me creepily. Well, welcome to Accent Corner, Matt Murdock. Yeah. Okay. I actually have a note about this. Obviously, joining you on Accent Corner is welcome and wonderful. It's a passion of yours and through you of mine.

I would never do it to a person in real life. I just think Matt's being kind of reckless with his powers. Like he's. Because then later he's like, I heard someone. I heard in the bar that Fisk won the election by 53%. Are you worried that it's going to be dangerous? Then he swoops her up on the sidewalk and she's like. That was a, that was a, a human could do that spin.

Could a human have anticipated exactly... I mean, he is a human, but like, I don't know. It's just he's too... Are you worried that Heather is going to

figure it out. Well, she does at her book event say like, my next book will be on projected personas. So obviously she's super interested in the vigilante era, what it means to put on a mask and go do these things. But is she pro or anti? And if she's anti, what will that do to their relationship? And this incredibly important relationship that I deeply, emotionally invested in. And Fisk is her client now. So, and like, we'll talk about

who's at her book event, who we think is at her book event. Let's just do it right now. Let's go out of order. Well, Buck Gashman is there. Buck Gashman is there. Was your read on that that he's like scouting her to be the therapist? Yeah, but also I think he knows that she's dating Matt Murdock. Okay, so this is, then what, like, does Fisk know that? Yes. And so he wants to be

He needs a therapist and he's like, I will learn about Matt through you. What does he think his therapist is going to tell him about her relationship? Or just have his little claws in her. Yeah. We pan to a young man in the crowd.

Then he comes to get his book signed. His name is Bastion. And he's like, I really need help. Will you help me? Are you taking on any more clients? To be clear, do not know that this is true. The identity of the performer playing Muse has not been revealed. I would say it seems clear from this moment that this is Muse. Yeah. Right? Do you want to tell people who Muse is? So...

If you've watched the trailers for the season and you've seen the white mask with the black, that's Muse. So Muse is going to be one of the main villains of the season. And is... Muse makes murals with people's body parts. Maybe we shouldn't say that. I don't know. Should we not say that? Is that a spoiler? You said Kylie Quickstuff is...

True. You're right. You're right. There are murals referenced many times and painted. We see someone at the end making a kingpin mural. A split. That is probably Muse, who's probably also this kid, played by, I think it's Hunter Doohan, I think is how you say his last name, who was, this is the real spoiler alert, spoiler alert for Wednesday. I have not seen Wednesday. Okay.

Go ahead. Not a good guy on Wednesday. I see. So I feel like this is like spoiler casting. Got it. It's like on Law & Order. Like sometimes you have spoiler casting on Law & Order. That's the bad guy. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Well, he was given, this is probably Muse energy here for sure. Heather, meet cute, book signing. Anything else on either of those? Other dates.

She's like, you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders. I know this from 48 Hours. I thought that was extremely stupid. Very dumb. Here's what I did like. At the table when she's like, you know, they're just, where should we go? What should we do? Sharon in a fantasy. And she's like, you know, I have like a double fist of Mai Tai.

Hard to double fist a Mai Tai if you've got Daredevil's dick in one of your hands, you know? She's like, I'm going to go give you a taste later. And then when he takes the phone call. That was such a stretch. It's hard to double fist a Mai Tai. They're talking about sex repeatedly. I love this. I was like, this is where you felt a little bit...

You're not feeling the chemistry, but a little bit. I'm like, are we going to get a sex scene as soon as episode three? I mean, they're definitely going to like... I mean, he's like, I gotta go. But... She's like, you'll make it up to me later. Have you never talked about double-fishing in like a non... I know. I know. Yes. Of course. Euphemistically sort of way. Of course. Yeah. But they're having... They're making multiple sex comments on this. You've been known to like double-fist caffeinated beverages. It's true. I routinely get two cold brews at once. But I am also, when I do that, sadly, lamentably, not on a date with Matt Murdock. Yeah.

Yet. Yet. Matt and Cherry.

Cherry's got some intel. Half the cops hate Fisk. Half of them love him. The campaign is buttoned up. He calls Vanessa an investment sorceress, as I thought people described her. That was pretty funny. I want that on my business cards. Investment sorceress? We can make that happen. Yeah, why not? Yeah. I don't know anything about investing, but sure. Maybe we should sub the first word out. You could be a sorceress of anything. Okay, great. Podcast sorceress? Sure. Great. Let's talk about the best scene of the two episodes.

Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. This is the best scene. I will say, I don't... I just don't think one should ever say, we were doing the diner scene from Heat, which is what Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio have said in press. And I'm just sort of like, don't do that to yourself. What will Chris Ryan say about that? Just don't do that to yourself. But this is definitely the best scene in the episodes. This is a scene that was added. And it seems that...

Of all the like sort of competing factions of who's deciding what story goes where in this show, it seems like Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio have their own opinions and their own sway in this. Right. Because it seems like they said, hey, you know, you don't have a scene with us. Right. For a little while if we don't figure something out. Well, good note from them if that's how it transpired. So they put this scene in. Yeah. And I agree. It's the best. It's the most

meatiest like interaction that we got. I really loved it. I loved, you know, we opened the episode with it. I thought almost every moment in the scene was like great. I thought even just what we lead, you know, we lead into it with we're hearing a little snippet from the debate and, uh,

Cresna's shit in the bed. Fisk is like, you just want superheroes to be registered. I think they're a cancer and we need to treat that. Like he wants to eradicate them. This is obviously, you know, Mayor Fisk in general pings Devil's Reign on the comic book front. But this aspect of like Fisk treating

trying to shut down superhero activity in New York really pings Devil's Reign as unsurprisingly an arc that we will likely be pulling from in this season of television. I thought this was really good. This is very much like they might as well have guns aimed at each other underneath the table, sort of like you step out of line, you step out of line, I'm coming for you, but we've got this uneasy detente. All of that works for me

Perhaps we're not, for me, just seeing the season three finale. Uh-huh. Where, to refresh people if they didn't know, Matt Murdock screams, you don't get to destroy who I am. You'll go back to prison and you'll live the rest of your miserable life in a cage knowing you never have Vanessa, that the city rejects you. It beat you. I beat you. Yeah. So am I confused about how Kingpin is out on the street going,

doing crimes again and getting elected mayor? No. Right. We know from our own real world that just sort of like that amount of money. That's sadly believable. And he had gotten out of prison before. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. That's fine. But Matt not acknowledging it. It was doing crimes, doing a crime or two. Yes. Leading a criminal organization through Hawkeye, through Echo, stuff like that. So the whole proposition at the end of season three of Daredevil on Netflix was like, you fuck up. Yeah.

I'm coming for Vanessa. Right. You know? Yeah. And then it just seems like he just said, JK, I'm not going to do that. Is it that we don't get any acknowledgement from Matt? Like, is there something that we could have gotten from Matt that would have smoothed that over, you think? Or is it just like there is actually no explaining it? And so they hope that by, yeah, it's better maybe not to try. Not that that's a great explanation, but I agree with you. I thought I loved the scene, but that lack of a clear explanation

from this essential moment shared between the characters was quite odd. Again, if this were a reboot and this is a different Matt Murdock and a different Wilson Fisk and they were like, I know who you are, but I'll let you get away with this for right now, that'll make sense. And in the comics, we were so used to like,

heroes and villains meeting again and meeting again and meeting again and sort of like going after each other anew. Especially though, I will say like the nature of this conversation, we're going to hear some of it in a second here, like you have children. There probably was a way to be like, Fisk is like, I kept my promise. Yeah. And he could have even been like,

You know, you didn't actually. You did not. And I appreciated that. There would have been a way inside of this scene maybe to account for those events. So that's odd. I liked visually, you know, we talked about how we initially see Kingpin. I liked kind of sweeping into the diner, the mirror up top. We talked a lot in the primer pod about how these two are so effective as dark mirrors, much like Matt and Frank. But I liked that it was not just

Fisk and Matt as dark mirrors to each other, but the mirrors that they have with other versions of themselves, you know, they're each trying to leave a self behind. For Fisk, it's, I'm not Kingpin anymore. I'm not the crime lord.

I, a rich man, only serves himself in his own interest. The mayor serves his city. And Matt's like, okay. And then Matt, of course, is trying to leave the devil behind. I'm going to threaten someone with some blackmail photos, but I'm definitely not. This cheese stick was disgusting. I'm definitely not the kingpin. And they're both repeatedly throughout this conversation saying, that's not true. Both of them. Kingpin's like, I wonder what...

You know, the darker half would think of this. And Matt's like, give me one reason to believe you. And so neither of them is going to let the other off the hook, which is quite interesting. Steve, can we hear the opening of this diner scene? Well, I'll admit it's not entirely unpleasant to see you again. It's been a long time. Life has happened. You have children? No. You? I don't know. I tried to mentor someone, but...

Well, that's the closest I've come. Didn't she shoot you in the face? Yeah. Younger generation, what can we do? So, honestly, like, I thought this was...

Really great. And like, could that real estate have been better spent catching us up on what happened after season three rather than on Hawkeye and Echo? Maybe. But there was something about, you know, when you get that feeling, we talk a lot about the peril of continuing, including on this episode, of continuing to want to play in the same sandbox and never being ready or willing to like move on and let a character or a world or a slice of the universe really truly properly conclude. Yeah.

That the other side of it is like that feeling you get when you're like, I'm back with these people I love. And just like watch like that, that chuckle. Didn't she shoot you in the face?

Obviously hilarious. And then that laugh and obviously just like it's not entirely unpleasant to see you again, that meta aspect of like us being back. And the way it felt for us to see these two together, I was just like, yeah. There are ways in which this works so well. And I think there's ways in which, and again, the Midnight Boys talked about this a little bit, like sort of in the Batman Joker dynamic of like, in a way, no one will understand me the way that you understand me. You know what I mean? Like you and I talked about...

In the original Daredevil, the moment when Matt says to Kingpin, we're nothing alike. And he says, that's what you'll tell yourself. Impossible not to think about that throughout this entire conversation. Absolutely. So like, there's something really believable about that. And I think probably I just need to like, let go of some of the continuity issues that I'm having between the Netflix series and this series. Because again, it was like,

originally created to not be that but it is just that like I beat you this city rejected you and for Matt to be like well this city gets the mayor that it deserves and maybe that's just to speak to how disappointed he is in the city he's trying to foggy's dead and if foggy's dead then what's what's the use of having standards anymore right you know what I mean yeah yeah and also like I protected you from this guy and now you chose him

Yeah. Why bother? Tough. Like, genuinely, why bother? I could see how that would be so deflating and make him feel so defeated. Yeah. They debate the term vigilante. This was interesting. And when Fisk brings up Foggy and Dex and talks about what it felt like for Matt to be up there, that was obviously really interesting and, like...

It was painful to hear Matt say, like, I felt like I lost the privilege. I lost the privilege to wear those horns. I lost the privilege to fight on behalf of this city. Like, he doesn't trust himself anymore to know where the line is or to walk it. That's, like, some of the critique I've seen of this show that I don't think is fair is, like, some people are being, like,

We were talking about it earlier. Like, Matt doesn't murder. Matt would never throw Dex off the roof. But, like, that's the point is, like, he threw someone off the roof and that was like, oh, shit. Right. Yeah. That's what losing Foggy meant to him. I can't do this anymore. I don't have the brakes. The brakes have been cut and I can't even start. Like in Shana's minivan. Yep. Sometimes they just wear out. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I was thinking about Sean this morning. Yes, of course. Anything else about the opening exchange that we heard today that you want to talk about? It's hard. It's hard to come to terms with the violent nature, hating the power that it has over us. And then Matt replying, I was raised to believe in grace and then building toward, but I was also raised to believe in retribution. That gave me a chill. Hearing him say that was like,

Ugh. And that just felt... It felt like for both of them there, it hit something. It pinged something vintage about their individual pursuits and their shared dynamic. Like, you...

When Kingpin looks at Matt and talks about those similarities, he admires him, but also thinks he's like ashamed of him, that he doesn't know how to make the decisions that Kingpin thinks he would make. And of course, for Matt, as we talked about, it's like the there but for the grace, like this is what could happen to me. And then he did a thing that Kingpin would do. And Kingpin is the one sitting here saying, I don't do that anymore. I think what's also true, what I really like, and we've always talked about this, both sides of Matt Murdock and stuff like that, like thinking about the fact that this is someone who was raised by

Batlin Jack and his mother is a nun. And so this idea of like grace got in front of our eyeballs more lessons from Father Lantern, but like this idea of like grace and all of that, like we had literal conversations about that in the original series, but then also like Batlin Jack and or stick and what it means to sort of like

fight with your whole body, with your fists, with like, you know, everything, like what that means and the inherent, the constant inherent contradiction inside of Matt Murdock. Right. Distilled and crystallized here. So, yeah. I love it. Great stuff. Fisk wins the election. Big surprise. He did it at the end of episode one.

Very short campaign. Would you like to have seen more of that campaign? Yes, if it means more Buck Cashman. No, if it means more Daniel Blake. I'm a little torn on this. Like, it is almost distracting how quickly we get to that point. And it was part of what made it feel like, oh, you feel how this went through the edit sausage machine. But...

I don't know if it positions us then to have a smoother rest of season run. I don't know if I mind it. Like, maybe Fisk needs to be here in this position by episode two of this, so everything else that needs to happen can happen in the remaining episodes. I actually have a different... I'm fine with him winning the mayoral race this quickly. Again, these things happen in our lifetime, but like...

I kind of wish that we were left more in doubt as to whether or not he was actually reformed in some way or another. Do you know? To see him grappling with that. Because I think watching him later than, like, Blackmail the Commissioner is like, this is a gangster mayor, which is just sort of like, you know, like, I think it would be interesting to watch these dark mirrors of each other grapple with, like,

do I embrace my darkness or can I cling to some lightness? You know what I mean? Versus. Yeah. And I guess both of them are pulled back in by episode two. I wonder if that will then become a full return or just a dalliance or yeah. And then like, if they're, if they're both in a engaged in an internal battle of tug of war, I keep like Fisk is up on the roof with Vanessa. He's, I know about Adam. She's like, please don't kill him. He's like, I'm not that man anymore. Um,

He's trying to convince himself as much as her, but we see his knuckles. His knuckles are all battered and bruised. Yeah. And we're like, hmm. Yeah. Adam, are you okay, dude? Who do you think Adam is? In the marriage counseling sequence, she has that comment about the relationship between...

labor and management like is is he one of her employees is he a member of the one of the five families what did you i bet he was like an artist i bet he's like so different from fisk you know what i mean and that's what really hurts that would be good i if we did like the painting plot from billions that would be good i was thinking of the like frank gorilla photographer plot from house of cards but whatever it takes there you go there you go um

Anything else from that rooftop conversation with Fisk and Vanessa or Matt looking up bathed in red or Fisk looking down Homelander style from the roof on his city that you want to hit? Okay, let's go into episode two then. The work of running New York begins immediately. Makeup artist wants to touch up the eye. He's like, no, I'm good. Right. That was kind of interesting. He's like, no, I got shot in the eye and then shocker healed. And it is important that people remember that. So all of his speeches across the episodes are the same.

I'm going to save this city, right? It's been destroyed by vigilante justice. Also these fat cats up in the tower with their orange wine. Their orange wine! Boids! We get some fun Easter eggs here. We don't need a gun-toting vigilante who wears a skull on his chest or a man who dresses in a spider outfit or a guy who wears devil horns to save us. Of all the, I felt like the Matt listening in across multiple scenes on the thoughts and feelings of the masses in New York were like,

didn't work super well for me mostly because I frankly don't believe that that many people in New York would be talking about the mayoral election at any or results at any given moment in time that just doesn't seem likely um but I was quite amused by the overhearing that what are you gonna do move to Boston you ate the Celtics that was great great stuff um

Vanessa's an issue. Yes. Is something we should raise here, right? And so like... With the traditional voters. Right. He's being sort of advised to get his wife in line. She's not enough of a... She's not present enough in the narrative. Yeah. And this, I have to imagine, is something of a Melania commentary. But also, yeah, this is like, once again, pressing on Vanessa. Like, Vanessa is like, I'm...

I've built a career for myself. Right. And he's like, I'm not your prop. He's like, yeah, cool. I've on a whim decided to be mayor. So that means you got to tank all of that stuff so that you can be my arm candy essentially for my campaign and my career. What do you think? Where is this heading? Like if Vanessa, because Bebe will also bring up Vanessa later and Fisk is like interview over.

If Vanessa starts to really emerge as a political problem for him, what choice is he going to make? And then perhaps Vanessa. That's certainly what every moment we've spent with him to this point would train us to expect. Perhaps that's not what she is going to want.

Which is very interesting. I mean, this is such a huge change for Vanessa. A Vanessa who steps out on him, a Vanessa who is like not wholeheartedly supporting him in everything that he does. That's very different. Also very different was Fisk getting out of the limo in front of a sinkhole and after he was like,

No, I want to target on my back targets. They they they draw attention to problems, just goes to the form and he's like, fuck your red tape, fill this hole now. And he says out loud as everyone films him filling a hole like this. It's not rocket science. And it's like that is actual science.

Civil engineering. And it is science. And Wilson Fisk doesn't know how to do it. I thought that was all really silly. That was very Trumpy. Totally. To show up, know nothing about the like actual labor practice that are happening. Of course, and be like, I solved it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like. And be like, both be like, both like in a weird way belittle what these like working class people are doing. Yeah. And win their desperate love and approval. Yes, absolutely. We did get another gem from your guy Daniel in that stretch.

Because Fisk is like, why do I need a key to Brooklyn? Your guy, Daniel, not mine. I love him. I love Buck Cashman. You do love Buck Cashman. Fisk is like, why do I need a key to Brooklyn? And then Daniel's like, because we learned the Outer Boroughs, Joe. They're his base. You got Staten. Don't need Manhattan.

You love Daniel Blake. I found him amusing. I was very embarrassed for him. A lot of secondhand embarrassment when BB came for the interview and he's like, oh, you gave me your number because you want to talk to my boss, the mayor of New York, not because you are sexually interested in me. And that's tough. And she's like, we can be friends with political benefits. I'll give you all the info on the under 30s and you can give me time with the mayor. That was very amusing. Yeah.

Let's talk about White Tiger. Let's talk about Hector, right? Yes. So, Camar de los Reyes is the actor who plays Hector in the episode Open and Loving Memory. This actor has passed away from, I believe, cancer since he filmed this. I thought he was, like, really magnetic. Yeah, he was great. I thought he was wonderful. I thought this scene in the subway was great. I thought the...

Subway treatment Subway moving behind him real green screen energy real shitty but the fight was cool the fight was cool and him like him showing up with like the bouquet of flowers that's like a good character touch yeah and like especially because when we meet his wife she's like he's not the man I married yeah clearly not into him being a white tiger yeah so I thought all of that stuff was really good and I thought Matt the meet between him and Matt is really good it's a very Karen Page uh

season one episode one Daredevil. I know you're innocent, yeah. But I also know you're holding something back. Yeah. And I, I like this. Again, this was the original design of the series. This was to be like

case of the week or every other week or something like this. So this is like Matt Murdock defending another vigilante. So jumping ahead to later in the episode after Cherry and Kirsten go to Hector's home to meet with his wife, it takes Cherry two seconds to find... Medallion and suit. Yeah, the suit and the amulet under the bed. Matt used to keep his suit in the closet, but like he wasn't sharing his home with other people. This just seems sloppy. Anyway, um,

Matt confronts Hector and he's like, how could you not tell me about this? What did you make of that? Did that feel like in line with this kind of like tortured, slightly hypocritical intentionally place we find Matt or like an odd character beat? Because there is literally no one alive who would understand as well as Matt Murdock why you would keep something like that secret and why you wouldn't be ready to share that with someone who canonically established in this episode you've spoken to for mere hours. Yeah.

I thought that was kind of odd. Where is Matt on vigilante justice? Yeah, and that part of this I did like, that Hector, when he's like, well, Daredevil's gone, like the city needs a hero. He sounds more like Matt than Matt does. And that's obviously something that not only we have to confront, but Matt has to confront. And then Matt manages to compel the judge who was like, we're not, no bail. This is shut down.

to not bring White Tiger into the case. Now, we have seen across many seasons of Daredevil that these juries are vulnerable to outside influence. So...

Who knows what's going to happen there? Probably nothing good. This is also apparently like a good legal move to be like, hey, we've got this damning evidence. I'm going to bring... You know, because the prosecution didn't know about the white tiger. Yeah. What do you think? Same actor. John Benjamin Hickey. He was in Jessica Jones. I... Playing a different character. A different character. Yes. I love John Benjamin Hickey. He is... I've seen him...

on stage a couple times in addition to like all this other stuff. I just think he's like such a good actor. Yeah. I hope this is like a big courtroom speech coming for our guy Hawk. Cool role for him. Well, we know he's one of the people. I've been fooled by this before in a

In Hawkeye, when I'm like, oh, it's a stage actor I love. That's true. Surely he's got something cool to do, and then he didn't. Here's what gives me hope. Not only that he's going head-to-head with Matt in the White Tiger case, but he was one of the figures listed along with the fire commissioner and police commissioner Gallo, who gets many scenes in this second episode. You gotta have... Fisk is like, I would like to not have any of these meetings and just talk to you about this desk and how my father really loved LaGuardia. LaGuardia. Yeah.

A great airport. Sheila's like... Genuinely a great airport. I used to enjoy my food options at LaGuardia, and it's definitely easier to get in and out than JFK, for sure. Sheila's like, you got to get these people all hate you. You got to go work the room. So Hawk is in the courtroom against Matt, but he's a foe for this. Here's my concern about my guy, John Benjamin Hickey, a.k.a. Hawk.

Is he going to be a victim of like editing out the sort of like this is a courtroom drama show, you know? Yeah. Entirely possible. Okay. That would be sad. Not edited out of these episodes of television where the

Myriad interstitials that we got. Different aspect ratio and visual style for the BB report. Much like Daniel Blake, BB is here to be the resident young. It's simply a no for me, personally. Yeah. But some people seem to really like this stuff. And it reminded me a lot of the first season of Sex and the City. I don't know if you remember that. They used to do a lot of man on the street stuff and that. That reminds me. I did think...

You know, all the prompts like jail is a revolving door in crime and where's Daredevil? He's been gone so long, all that, whatever. But we got a couple very amusing. Like, is it the Strong's obligation to protect the weak? Sure. But like, they're pretty whiny about it. And of course, the high comedy of Fisk annihilated like a melon, a person's head.

And the people of New York are like, was that bad or was that cool? He also killed the shit out of Bebe's uncle. So this is my question for you, because Fisk asks her, is Bebe short for anything? And he compliments Ben York's journalistic prowess. I mean, he's no Karen Page. And does Bebe know? Like, is Bebe there because she knows that Fisk...

in some ways responsible for killing Ben? Or do you think that she has no clue? I think she might find out. And we'll find out over the course of this proximity to him. Yeah. And we should say that, like, in the Daredevil born again storyline, Ben is very important. Yes. But obviously Ben is very dead in this continuity. So we've got a young and spunky BB. Yeah.

Very plucky. Fisk is like, she's obviously like, I need this information and this access. She's thinking practically about her reporting. And Fisk is like, we can use that too, right? So everybody's trading favors. Everybody's thinking about what they can gain out of a relationship. And Fisk has always had, like, friends in the media that he's sought to manipulate. A notable contrast, I would say, to Commissioner Gallo, who...

Could not care less. Welcome to hashtag the resistance, Commissioner Gallup. What Wilson Fisk thinks of him. You're a whiny kid who wants everyone to love him, a monster trying to rewrite his legacy. Here's the thing. If you want Wilson Fisk on your side, you can't use the word monster. It's a real trigger for him, Jo. Or kid, I think, also. That's the other thing. It's like, did he watch the origin story episode? Does he know Kid Pin?

Did he watch Kid Pin kill his father with a hammer? Fisk went to, I thought, amusing lengths to not just gain intel, but like really embarrass Gallo. Oh, there's theater involved. He's like, we got to get a cheesesteak for this. Has the whole desk prepared? Yeah.

Sent your guy Buck Cashman. Give me a cheesesteak. It has to be DeAngelis. He needs to know I found his mistress and his secret child. Make sure the cheese is as congealed as possible. What's your feeling on a cheesesteak? I dislike a cheesesteak. Oh, I love that. Why? Any kind of preparation? The whiz or the provolone? You don't like either? No. Geez. I think they're great. Okay. Fisk is with you. To be clear. One of the many things you have in common, you know? You guys are out on cheesesteaks.

You're out of cheese takes, but you love Buck Cashman. And these are my end decks. These are my priorities in life. I only had a cheese take for the first time a couple of years ago. Where was it? It was here in L.A., so maybe that's the problem. There's obviously decent ones here, but... I think it was like Fat Sal's perhaps? Oh, okay. Yeah, we're going to... We're going to do better? Okay. File this one away. Okay.

I didn't understand this. I don't want to sound like an idiot, but I actually did not understand this plot line. I think I do. Like, walk me through the logic here. Gallo is going to, as BB informs Fisk, retire. He is beloved. He is a beloved commissioner. Replacing him is going to be a challenge because of keeping the force happy because he's so beloved. But also there's this implication there and from Gallo that all of these cops are like going to leave and follow him. I'm like, what? I didn't understand that.

Fisk is manipulating through this reveal, this photo, Gallo into staying. Why is Wilson Fisk, a character we have seen across 40 hours of television previously... Mm-hmm.

Who is, I would say, the most adept of anyone in this slice of the universe at winning people to his side. Maybe I'm answering my own question, but like my point is like he could just go find other people who can help him. Why does he want to keep this guy who's constantly saying out loud to his face, I fucking hate you. You're a joke. I think it makes sense to me. And Gallo says like, careful what you wish for. But I don't understand what Fisk's play is here.

It's a slight contortion, but I think there is an explanation that makes sense to me in terms of like politically, which is not something that Fisk has ever really tried to do before, which is politics. He feels like he needs to like

That for his, for the optics. It is called optics. It is better for him to have a beloved season commissioner than to, as say, our current president has decided to do sort of clean house and instill toadies and lick spittles. You know what I mean? It's just sort of like it, it, it.

codifies him in a way into this position of power. Yeah, I get that. I guess I think that this feels to me like a mistake Fisk wouldn't make. Like, he says in, you know, when he was shitting on the cheesesteak, men are weak. Like, you can win them over with a piece of paper. You can manipulate them with a piece of paper. But,

he's like, here are all the things I'm not going to give you. He's not actually trying to build an alliance. No, he's not. He's just trying to control him and make him his pawn. And I think Gallo is making it clear. I guess I'm like, do I believe that he cares that much about the wife and kid? Kingpin wasn't threatening to kill them. He was just threatening to reveal they existed. That matters more than all of the principles. Again, we don't know these characters well enough. It just felt like

I don't know that Fisk would talk himself into believing that outcome. There's also just like a lot of, I mean, I think it kind of makes sense, but there's also just like a lot of interesting cop stuff brewing, obviously, to pave the way for Frank, you know. Yes, absolutely. To show up and...

Before we get our... Hopefully make fun of a bunch of cops for their Punisher tattoos. Yes. Before we get to that final stretch with the dirty cops, we have the marriage counseling. We've talked about this already, basically, but is there anything else that you would like to say on this front about what we hear from Vanessa and Wilson or Heather? No, I just think it's potentially rich, but we'll see how they handle it. I'm excited about this. They both looked so, so sad. Ugh. All right, dirty cops.

We're back at the old Waterside chat spot. Please tell the people what you've titled this section of our notes. The Devil Pokes a Horn Through. If they're watching, you can probably see that on a graphic. So that's exciting. That's exciting. Is that where the graphic goes? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Kind of. Well, I don't know. It's not sure, actually.

We talked about the exchange that Cherry and Matt have here already. You know, the I like this Matt. He's doing some good, Matty. Matty. Matt passes the church. He hears the behold the Lamb of God stretch. And then he makes his move. Stake out the cop. It's just such a like weirdly faint echo to have him like eavesdrop on his sermon versus have a meaningful conversation with a religious leader. Hopefully he can find a new conversation mate. What's his mom up to?

Is she in this show? Do we know? Boy. It's going to be tough if, I guess it could just be one new relationship yet again. He's got to have someone to talk about this stuff with. Absolutely has to. It's imperative. Powell. Matt's taking him out, following him. Here's the call that leads him to Nikki. This is who Cherry had been

on Matt's orders, trying but failing to find, hard to find a ghost, the guy who ran, who White Tiger saved, who Hector saved. And Matt makes it there first, but by a mere second. So he's like, I got a guy waiting to pick you up. Head out the fire escape. And then only Matt is there when Powell and his fellow dirty cop punish her tattoo on the wrist, arrive. So this is like...

Obviously not something that Frank Castle would support. What we can assume is that much like in horrifying real life circumstances that this is engaging with, they have taken on this symbol. They have misunderstood. And misunderstood it. Yeah. Completely. Fundamentally. Yeah. And I think the Punisher tattoo on Powell's wrist also has like a blue line flag on like part as part of it. Our listener AJ wrote in just to refresh people in case they did not rewatch the Punisher series. Yeah.

AJ says, last we saw Frank and Punisher, he was still off the grid doing whatever Frank Castle does.

Fisk knows about him, but beyond that, it's unclear where he fits into all of this. The premiere sets up a clear Mayor Fisk versus the vigilantes conflict. So it's possible Frank gets roped into that somehow. Maybe Fisk finds a way to get him locked up too, though can't pin down how Frank enters on the scene. Quite possibly a Karen in need, maybe to help Matt arc to bring Frank in. Interesting. You know, when do you, when do you want? As soon as possible. And as much as possible?

Yeah. Okay. I just, I love the character. I love the performance. I will say the trailers didn't give me high hopes that he was going to be like a high volume player in the season. And just going off the trailers again, we have not watched the head. We don't know. But if I'm remembering correctly, like Matt is Frank seems out of it. Matt's like,

frank it's me matt and has to kind of almost draw him back in to like the present moment and then frank's like banging on the locker behind matt's head so i wonder if we're gonna find frank in a uh not a sound state um but that would seem to indicate matt seeking him out can't wait to find out i don't know if these uh dirty cops will get to find out because like you like you observed it seems like they're dead i mean they're not but it seems like they're dead do you think they're not dead

It would be interesting if Matt was like, I had to give up being Daredevil because I tried to kill a guy and then just immediately that kills two people. You know what I really did like about the sequence in addition to we get some of that Charlie Cox charm. You know, listen, man, I'm visually impaired. I'd love to help. I love it when he does that shit. Great stuff. And he's letting them beat on him and beat on him. Eventually he has to act. Please don't do this. He doesn't want. He does not want to do the thing. You don't want to do this.

But what's so great about that is like, it's ultimately, I mean, he's got a gun to his head. So he has to act to avoid being shot in the head and killed.

But that don't do this, you don't want to do this framing is always me. It always pushes the agency to the other person. You don't want to do this to you. You don't want to. Yeah. Which I love. And I loved in this sequence, like the film, the filming, the drop of blood hitting the floor. And even though we then get the gun, it felt like that, like the scent of blood in the air just activated. Yeah. And he was almost like feral. Anything else from these two episodes that we didn't cover?

Any other thoughts on Buck Cashman that you feel like you haven't gotten to share today? I hope nothing but the best for him. No, he seems like a real piece of shit. I love a snooty lackey in general. And then he seems... You think Adam's dead? You think we're going to find him tied up somewhere? He's either dead. Yeah. And Vanessa's going to be like, you said you wouldn't do this. Or he's in captivity and constantly being pummeled on. Yeah. Tough for that guy.

Personally, I would not get anywhere near Vanessa Fisk. Boy, no. Knowing their relationship. So, yeah. On the Vanessa front or the Fisk front, any... I feel like we've talked about, we normally do an Easter egg section, almost all of them. Are there any other Easter eggs that you wanted to call out as a favorite or a highlight from these two episodes? I don't know about favorite or highlight, but we mentioned that we got four Red Hook mentions. Yeah. We also got the word punish six times. Yeah.

That's promising. I'm just on punish count. How did you feel to once again see Rogers the musical on the billboards? It felt like a weird time warp. Like I could barely remember. Also sort of the Pim Van Dyne stuff. I'm like, oh yeah. Yeah. It's been a minute. We're in the MCU now. Yeah. There's no mistaking it. No mistaking it. We did it. We talked about two episodes of Daredevil Born Again.

I am excited for more. Yeah. I'm excited to watch more. I'm excited to talk about it with you.

And we will be back next week to do exactly that. We'll be back to do a deep dive into episode three. And again, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com if you guys loved the show and want to sort of defend it or talk about it. I would love to hear some sort of counters to things that I said. I always love it when it's like a conversation, you know? Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know what accent that was, but I... Maybe dabbling with the Oscob a little bit still. Okay. Perhaps. Boys. Boys.

Thank you. Thank you to Steve Allman. Yeah. As always for producing this episode. Thank you to Jonathan Freyas for joining us today, helping us.

The old, yeah, sure, I'll help. And then four hours later, here you still are, you know? Thank you, Jonathan. Careful what you say yes to. Thank you to Arjuna Ramgopal, as always, for his production supervision. And thank you to Jomia Deneron for his work on the socials for House of R. Joanna, may you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you're dead.