Sunday 11 December 2016

Daredevil: Daredevil

"...Or you'd kill him. Which would probably have the same effect on someone as Catholic as you are."

The finale finds time to begin with the funeral of Ben Urich, a good man in a bad world, and it's lovely to see the widowed Doris Urich flat out refusing to blame Karen for his death. It's not lovely for Matt, though; a good man has died, as he see it, because he failed. Fisk has to be stopped now. And so the rest of the episode shows us how the house of cards can fall down very, very quickly.

 It all unravels because of a piece of hubris from an angry Fisk. And that, it seems is a weakness; he angrily kills the traitorous Leland even though said turncoat has an insurance policy in the person of Detective Hoffman. Remember him? That probably wasn't a clever thing to do. Now all Matt has to do is find Hoffman, keep him safe and get him to make a statement to the police.

He and Foggy are making a serious effort to reconcile, but Matt very quickly sets out to find Hoffman and use him to bring Fisk down. And then Fisk falls, very suddenly, to the strains of Nessun Dorma. It's a glorious sequence. And Fisk, heartbreakingly, tries to propose to Vanessa during his arrest but isn't given time. And Matt, Foggy and Karen get to celebrate.

It doesn't last. Fisk is extracted by his underlings and is soon on the run.But Matt has paid a visit to his friend Melvin Potter and we see- after soooo long- the red costume and billy club we've been waiting for. It's not Matt Murdock in a simple black outfit; this is Daredevil. Where has he been?

Daredevil gets his bloody, one-on-one showdown with a desperate Fisk. At last Fisk is finally brought down. We see a bereft Vanessa, a jailbird Fisk, and Daredevil surveys his city from a rooftop. What an episode. What a season. What a programme. After the much-mocked 2003 film at last we have a screen Daredevil to be proud of, with writing and acting of the first rank. Roll on Season Two.


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