Since the very first season of Marvel’s Daredevil back in 2015, Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) has been a key player and a bit of a Lady Macbeth in the brutal conflict between Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio). She is the first person we meet who accepts the Kingpin for what he is, without intimidation and free of deception or artifice, and that support pushes Wilson to become more confident and assured in his own monstrous nature. It was inevitable then that her eventual husband’s monstrousness would rub off on her — as it did over the course of three seasons of the original Netflix show. There, we watched Vanessa become more and more entrenched in Wilson’s criminal empire, with their brief, forced separations doing little to quell their desire to remake New York City as they see fit. And now, in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 4, “Gloves Off,” Vanessa’s arc could be morphing into a story straight from a very specific comic book storyline. Spoilers ahead.
Two seasons into the revival series Daredevil: Born Again, Vanessa has established herself as a shrewd and ruthless White Queen in her own right, having kept the peace between NYC’s five criminal families in her husband’s absence and even siccing the mentally unstable assassin Bullseye on Foggy Nelson to cover up her illicit dealings regarding the Red Hook Freeport. But it seems the seeds of her labor have blossomed into bitter fruit – as of last night’s episode, Vanessa might pay the ultimate price for her relationship with Kingpin, with her left in dire straits after another assassination attempt from Bullseye. Going back to the source material, this isn’t the first time Vanessa Fisk has found herself nearing the end of her life, and that same storyline might provide a clue as to where Born Again might go next.
