Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Episode 4 Review – Gloves Off

This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 4.

Finally, in the fourth episode of its second season, Daredevil starts to find redemption. No, not Matt Murdock himself, obviously. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen remains just as mired in guilt as ever, especially as his no-kill rule continues to drive a wedge between Karen Page and himself. Rather, the show Born Again finally finds its feet in a brutal manner, paying off dangling plot threads with a Bullseye kill spree, Fisk showing off his physical might, and the death of a major character.

The appropriately-named “Gloves Off,” written by Chantelle M. Wells and directed by Solvan “Slick” Naim marks a shift from the political maneuvering and legal thumb waddling that has mired Daredevil since he left Netflix and arrived on Disney+. But is this embrace of superhero action enough to atone for the show’s past sins, particularly its dullness?

Let’s start by unpacking the opening scene, a bravado bit of supervillainy that has been a long time coming. Even more than Wilson Fisk, Bullseye is Daredevil’s arch-enemy, an amoral killer with all of the acumen of Matt Murdock and absolutely none of the guilt. He played a key role in Frank Miller‘s reinvention of Daredevil in the 1980s, famously killing Elektra in 1982’s Daredevil #181 and has been a favorite of writers ever since. So it was a bit odd when the Netflix series introduced Wilson Bethel as “Dex” Pointdexter, an FBI agent with the same power set as Bullseye, but not the name, costume, or attitude. Season 1 of Born Again pointed him closer in the right direction, having him kill Foggy Nelson and then go rogue, but he did not fully arrive until the opening of “Gloves Off.”

And what an arrival it is. The scene gestures toward the sweetheart with a psychopath’s mind that Bethel’s been playing since the Netflix days, as Dex walks into a diner, orders a milkshake, and enjoys the pleasant music floating through the air—before gleefully murdering the AVTF thugs who arrive in response to his distress call.

The sequence feels like a release: for Bethel, for the show, and for the audience. Naim indulges in the novelty of Bullseye, who murders people with spit wads, silver wear, and lunch trays. The camera whips around the room with no regard for realism or even proper filmic composition, highlighting the uncanny sensation of Bullseye transforming a Normal Rockwell diner into a killing field. Throughout it all, Bethel maintains a sense of aw-shucks innocence that recalls Tim O’Kelly’s performance in the Peter Bogdanovich movie Targets, an all-American boy committing all-American murder.

The opening scene offers a clean break from the previous episodes of Born Again, in both seasons. While we haven’t completely left behind the political and legal wrangling that has driven the series so far, we now have a proper supervillain for our superhero to fight.

In fact, “Gloves Off” gives us two supervillains, transforming Mayor Fisk back into the Kingpin, the brutish leader who conquered the underworld. This episode climaxes with a much-hyped boxing match between Fisk and some random fighter, a guy who is named and presented as a challenge, but merely exists to get pummeled. And pummeled he is.

Although not quite as ecstatic as Bullseye’s rampage, the boxing match does look incredible (there’s a reason Disney has included it in Born Again‘s marketing). However, the real pleasure comes from the break it provides for Kingpin as a character. For too long, he’s felt caged by his suit and his position, maneuvered into office by his wife Vanessa instead of any genuine desires on his part, outside of the need to win and to impress her. As soon as Fisk enters the ring, he’s back on his terms, all fists and anger.

Which makes the climax of the fight so poignant, and turns the show’s shift into superhero action more than just a descent to base violence. Even more so than in the comics, Vanessa has been Fisk’s connection to polite society. She saw him as something more than a brute, even if she was willing to use his tendencies to advance her own social standing. The joy of Vincent D’Onofrio‘s take on Fisk has been the way he so desperately wanted to believe her vision of him, even if it felt wrong.

When Vanessa turns toward Wilson to reveal the fatal wound, Fisk’s worst fears are confirmed. It’s not just that he’s losing his wife (and that the show is losing a fine performance by Ayelet Zurer). Rather, it’s that the violence of his world overcame the sophistication of hers, killing her in the process.

The fact that Vanessa dies in a morass that involved Fisk at his most violent and the interjection of Daredevil and Bullseye gives Kingpin new motivation for his vendetta against them, in terms that are more clear than they were at the end of last season. In his mind, Daredevil and Bullseye want only destruction, and he’s now ready to give it to them.

That character turn gives “Gloves Off” a clarity that’s been missing from Born Again. However, it remains to be seen if the show will carry this momentum through the political and legal storylines that were set up earlier in the season, or if Daredevil will backslide into the middling TV that it has been so far.

Daredevil: Born Again season 2 streams new episodes each Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.