Daredevil: The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

 "Matty, I'm proud of you."

Wow. That's how to do a penultimate episode.

I especially love how there are two parallel narratives, with both Matt and Karen cast very clearly as equally heroic. Karen gets a further sequence, despite her very human exhaustion and despair, of journalistic awesomeness as she interviews the Colonel from Castle's trial... only for the rather brilliant revelation to hit her that he is, in fact, the Blacksmith. Even more of a shock is to see how she's saved by Frank. This whole sequence is full of shocks, yes, but also with superb acting from Deborah Ann Woll, John Bernthal and Clancy Brown who, I should have realised, is not the sort of actor you get in for a bit part.

Then we have the sequences of Elektra's childhood with Stick, the relevance of which hits us towards the end. But first we have Stick Kidnapped and tortured by the Hand, with both Matt and Elektra on their trail, but there's still time for a poignant scene between Matt and Foggy, who can't seem to resurrect their friendship.

There's lots of cool, well-directed action as Matt fights loads of ninjas until we get to the really big revelation... the Hand's big scary weapon, the Black Sky... is Elektra! And we end with a flurry of activity and confused motives leading us into a much-anticipated finale.

If that's not enough, you have to admire the parallel revelation, Black Star and the Blacksmith, and with the long-buried past coming back, gothic-style, to horrify everyone...

Wow. Just wow.

Daredevil: Kinbaku

 "German beer. Tastes like piss..."

This is a fascinating change of pace. The Punisher is gone, for now, but not forgotten: Karen is chasing up the mystery of why the circumstances of his family's deaths are being hushed up, possibly because of the DA's political ambitions- and she's gunning for all vigilantes, with Jessica Jones being named as well as Ol' Hornhead. This is big stuff.

But that's not what the episode is about; it's abut Matt, his demons, and his complex relationships with two women who know him very well in very different ways. There's Elektra, rich, spoiled and a fighter, the tempting, sexy bad girl. The girl you want to shag. But then there's Karen. Kind, decent, of modest means, clever without arrogance. The girl you want to marry. A girl you could really feel in love with, as opposed to just wanting her body.

The plot structure deliberately contrasts Elektra, whom we get to know a bit via flashback. Both are perceptive and extremely clever, but Elektra is amoral and her love is scary, with her big romantic gesture being to deliver your father's killer to you so you can kill him. You can't survive that sort of love for too long. The Karens of this world may seem less interesting at first, but we know Karen is far more three dimensional and real than Elektra and her ilk. This is all really good characterisation. It is also, in an episode both written and directed by women, interestingly flipping the genders in the old trope of a woman  being torn between the cliche of the bad boy and the Mr Darcy. Sometimes it happens to us blokes too. 

I was expecting, withn the Punisher seemingly gone, that this episode would disappoint. Far from it. The season continues to dazzle.