Main cast: Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin), Margarita Levieva (Heather Glenn), Zabryna Guevara (Sheila Rivera), Nikki M James (Kirsten Mcduffie), Genneya Walton (BB Urich), Arty Froushan (Buck Cashman), Clark Johnson (Cherry), Michael Gandolfini (Daniel Blake), Kamar de los Reyes (Hector Ayala/White Tiger), and Ayelet Zurer (Vanessa Fisk)
Director: Michael Cuesta
Ah, The Hollow of His Hand, otherwise known as The Hollow of My Patience.
This entire episode is one long, tedious court procedural with all the nuance and excitement of watching paint dry… if that paint were also lecturing you about systemic oppression in the most ham-fisted way possible. The “POC martyr versus the cartoonishly evil cops” trope is back in full force, except now it’s stretched across an entire episode with no attempt to make it fresh, interesting, or remotely engaging.
Matt is still defending Hector Ayala, our resident White Tiger, who continues to prove himself as the most incompetent vigilante this side of a CW crossover episode. The courtroom drama hinges on finding the key witness—the man Ayala rescued from the hilariously corrupt police officers—but since Matt has his trusty super-hearing, the entire process boils down to him standing around until someone conveniently blabs loud enough for him to go, “Aha! Case solved!”
No tension, no suspense, just another example of the MCU’s new favorite pastime: removing stakes and making sure their heroes never actually struggle for anything.
Meanwhile, Fisk’s wife is whispering in his ear, urging him to return to his old, brutal self. Because clearly, being allowed to live in peace while cheating on her husband isn’t exciting enough. Fisk, for his part, is still in his “patience, young grasshopper” phase, sitting around being all ominous and brooding.
Of course, by the end of the episode, he inevitably snaps back into Kingpin mode, because the show can’t resist a bit of fan service to keep the few remaining viewers awake.
Oh, and just when you thought the show couldn’t fumble its handling of established Marvel characters any worse, we get the big twist: the Punisher is apparently a villain now? Because what’s more terrifying than a rogue vigilante? A white rogue vigilante, obviously. Maybe this is some kind of misdirect, or maybe next episode they’ll just pretend it never happened and move on like the MCU has done with countless abandoned subplots before. Either way, it’s not exactly filling anyone with confidence.
Then there’s Hector, who continues to be a walking PSA on why untrained civilians should not moonlight as superheroes. The guy has the situational awareness of a potted plant. Every time he appears on screen, one can’t help but think, “Maybe should have just let an actual professional handle this?”
This episode highlights one of the MCU’s biggest current problems: they have no idea what they’re actually good at anymore. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law tried to be a lighthearted legal comedy and ended up as an unfunny mess that couldn’t even land its own jokes. Here, Daredevil: Born Again wants to be a gritty courtroom and crime drama, but the writing is so watered down and sanitized that it feels like a bad imitation of much better shows. There’s no real tension, no urgency, no sense of actual risk; just a series of predictable events unfolding while the audience checks their phone.
And even if you happen to agree with the show’s progressive messaging, you have to admit that they are terrible at delivering it in an engaging way. The themes are obvious, the execution is clumsy, and the storytelling is so by-the-numbers that it feels like an AI-generated Prestige Drama Template 101.
At this point, boredom is setting in, but hey, hope is perhaps on the horizon. Coming soon is the back half of the season was supposedly rewritten and reshot after Disney realized even their most loyal test audience found the original version unbearable. Maybe things will improve? Until then, I guess I’ll just keep watching for Charlie Cox’s pretty face, since that’s the only thing holding my interest throughout this episode.
