Daredevil: Born Again S01 Finale Review: Boardwalk Empire Strikes Back

Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, Review, TV | Tagged: daredevil, daredevil: born again

Daredevil: Born Again S01 Finale Review: Boardwalk Empire Strikes Back

The finale to Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 ups the stakes higher than the franchise has gone before with a little help from Matt's friends.

Published Thu, 17 Apr 2025 15:37:07 -0500
by Tom Chang
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With season one in the books for Daredevil: Born Again, the season finale "Straight to Hell" follows the direct aftermath of "Isle of Joy" that saw Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) take a bullet for his arch nemesis Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) as Benjamin "Dex" Pointdexter (Wilson Bethel) tried to assassinate him at an event. In perhaps one of the grossest miscalculations by our hero, aka Daredevil, decides to swap dancing partners from his girlfriend Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) to Kingpin's wife, Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) and tells her he knows she put out a hit on his best friend, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). The following contains minor spoilers.

Daredevil: Born Again Has Its 'Empire Strikes Back' Moment to Close Season One

At the start of "Straight to Hell," we get a flashback to a year ago when Vanessa visited Dex in prison and offered him a second chance with paperwork on hand on the condition that he Bullseye's again. Fast-forwarding to the present day, the Fisks find their hands forced, and extreme measures are taken. What follows is no doubt triggering, especially in the uncertain times we live in now. While we're used to seeing this in fiction, regardless of timing, it feels far more poignant now. It's not the kind of chaos as say a Martin Scorsese crime drama, but it's probably as dark as it gets for Disney+.

We get a couple of big returns, the most prominent one being Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle doing what he does best, and fuck shit up. He and Cox put on another clinic against Fisk's task force, marked full of Punisher branding, which sickens Frank. Anyone expecting a "you and me against the world" scenario or Avengers-level type reunion of the former Netflix stars will be disappointed, and I'm more than happy with that.

The people who needed to tell this story are those who were there from day one, from the original Netflix series cast and the new Disney+ Born Again additions. It also didn't take away from what was built. Was it predictable? Sure. The only thing that surprised me was that there wasn't some major body count to thin the cast, which I was fine with either way. Much of the series has been about "playing the long game," and showrunner Dario Scardapane and co-creators Matt Corman and Chris Ord do a wonderful job of making the series far more narrative-driven than just trauma-driven. I only wish we saw more of the original cast from Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, and Bernthal in the season.

Daredevil: Born Again is unique to the MCU in that it doesn't atypically fit the mold of when the hero needs to emerge. Daredevil was never designed to put out fires in the way that Spider-Man is, which is funny considering both exist in the same universe, live in the same city, but Peter Parker can just ignore what Fisk is doing all this time. That's a story for another day for those anal retentive enough for continuity and obviously, Sony isn't going to just "lend" the character for a Disney+ series.

Directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson and written by Heather Bellson and Scardapane, not a single person is wasted in "Straight to Hell", everyone in the cast was allowed to shine in their own way. Action was tip-top, and the only thing I felt missing in the final sequence was the Beach Boys' God Only Knows playing in the background as it played out of something from Paul Thomas Anderson. There wasn't a sense of urgency to where it was, either everything or nothing. Probably the reassurance of season two certainly didn't hurt, either. Sometimes, the lack of shocks and big surprises isn't everything. It's all in the execution.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Finale: "Straight to Hell"

Review by Tom Chang

9.5/10

Arguably one of the most anticipated MCU season finales of the Disney+ era, the wrap up to Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 did not disappoint. The finale thankfully didn't have to sell its soul for some cheap cameos to take away from the existing cast and what they've built. Everything was kept in house featuring a couple of welcome returns and a sweet poignant moment between stars of the original Netflix series. Nothing is rushed - and while predictable at spots, everything was executed to near perfection. Kudos to Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Deborah Ann Woll, the stunt team, and others for putting together one of the streamer's finer showings.

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