Vanessa is in bad shape at the hospital at the start of Episode 5 of Daredevil: Born Again Season 2. Fisk is anxious as he waits for news. Officer Powell shows up with bad news: neither Daredevil nor Bullseye has been found. In response, Fisk gives the Task Force full power to bring them in, but only if they are both captured alive. This order makes Powell and his team work harder to find what they’re looking for.
BB comes to the hospital looking for information, but Daniel tells her to leave. She seems more interested in getting information about Vanessa’s condition for her own sake than for Vanessa’s. After a while of thinking about it, Daniel finally admits that Vanessa is still in a bad way.
Dr. Arash Merati tells Fisk that Vanessa’s condition is very bad inside the ward. He tells Fisk that everything possible will be done to save her, even though the situation is bad. He is cautiously hopeful.
Daredevil catches Dex somewhere else and takes him to a basement where the Task Force can’t get to him. When Foggy is brought up, it brings back memories of Matt’s past. One person is focused on Vanessa at her gallery, sure that the right buyer will eventually get what she wants. The other one goes back to Matt and Foggy before they started their own company.
In the past, the two were a man named Ray, whom Foggy knew when he was a child. Ray is afraid that going to prison would be like getting a death sentence. Jeff Levine, their boss, scolds them for not being able to get a plea deal and gives them a lot of work to do over the weekend. Foggy finds a big mistake in the warrant that was used to search Ray’s apartment while going over the papers. The address on the warrant is wrong. This mistake makes the evidence unusable, which gives Ray a legal way out.
This discovery makes Matt and Foggy have a moral argument about what is right and what is legal. A big question is whether doing the right thing is the same as following the law.
Vanessa’s surgery seems to have gone well in the present. In the meantime, Buck takes Daniel out to eat, but the trip quickly becomes uncomfortable. Buck talks about a leak in the office while they are driving. Daniel, who is already nervous, thinks he is being watched. When Buck drives them to a secluded wooded area, shows them a body in the trunk, and asks Daniel to help bury it, things get worse.
Matt and Dex face off at a church and have a tense talk about right and wrong, morality, and what is good and evil. There are flashbacks of Foggy secretly giving Ray money and convincing him to leave and start over in between these scenes. Matt later understands why Foggy did what he did. They make up and have a drink together, which strengthens their bond even though they don’t agree on morals.
The Task Force gets to the church in the present timeline and starts a sweep. Matt has a tough choice to make because Bullseye looks like he’s ready to give up. In the end, Matt decides to protect him, which lets both of them get away. They go to Frank’s house, where Karen is training again. This time, she’s becoming more of an action-oriented character.
Vanessa wakes up in the hospital, and Fisk is overcome with emotion. She asks him to tell her how they first met, thinking about what she calls a “grand design.” But then her health suddenly gets worse, and she dies, leaving Fisk heartbroken.
Review of the Episode
This episode does a good job of using flashbacks to go deeper into its themes of morality and character motivation. The scenes from Vanessa’s past don’t add much to the story, but the one about Foggy stands out because it shows how hard it is to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Karen’s short appearance reinforces her ongoing shift toward a more physically capable role, but her growth feels a little bit like it has been done before.
The editing is the best part of the episode because it smoothly combines past and present storylines. This structure makes the story more emotional and shows how Matt’s past choices are similar to the problems he is having now.
In general, Episode 5 is a good continuation of the season. The series seems to be getting better after a shaky start, which opens up interesting possibilities for the episodes to come.
