This week’s episode of Daredevil: Born Again, “Gloves Off”, achieved something that I could not have expected. It was already, by a mile, my favorite episode of the season so far, as I relished in Dexter Poindexter / Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) using random diner objects to mow down AVTF agents, and every word that came out of the mouth of Mr. Charles (Matthew Lillard)
But it was the episode’s final moments that surprised me the most… in part because they elicited a sort of atypical feeling in me. The episode culminated at Mayor Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) “charity” boxing match: an already-odd thing for the mayor of a major metropolitan city to do, doubly so because he was holding it at the childhood ring of Matt Murdock / Daredevil (Charlie Cox). Justifiably worried that Bullseye would try to attack the match and “make a martyr” out of Fisk, Matt suited up and a confrontation ensued. By the end of it, Bullseye used a piece of glass from a “Mayor Fisk” paperweight from the fight’s memorabilia stand to throw a seemingly deadly blow at Fisk’s wife, Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer). The episode ended with Fisk standing over his wife, blood seeping from the gash in the side of her head and onto the boxing ring.
