Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 8 Review – “The Southern Cross”

Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season has been a strange amalgamation of the old and new – and although it has been a more coherent attempt to revive and evolve the voice and stylings of the original series, the abrupt, unsatisfying “The Southern Cross” bears the brunt of Born Again‘s foundational flaws as it tries to bring an incredibly busy eight-episode arc to a coherent close. The result is a season finale lacking any sort of interiority, throwing out plot points and evocative images in a compulsive attempt to cover up for an uninspiring lack of direction, and a sense that Born Again not only bit off more than it could chew, but screwed up the fundamental emotional and narrative components that once made this series so unique and entertaining.

Though an incredibly busy season finale, most of “The Southern Cross” happens in a single location, as everyone in Hell’s Kitchen descends upon Fisk’s kangaroo vigilante court for the conclusion of the trial of Karen Page – which, as multiple characters note, ceased to be a case about her alleged crimes about two seconds after the trial began. It’s an unfortunate way to open the episode, because it pushes Born Again directly onto two of the show’s weakest points: its inability to make the “hearts and minds” of New York feel like anything more than an invisible plot device, and the revival’s proclivity towards performative, superficial nods towards a substantive exploration of its many supposed themes, from vigilantism and the power of public opinion, to the overt, though lifeless parallels it explicitly draws between Fisk’s rise and the vigilante-tinged riots and the fascism of our own real world.

Karen’s case really feels like a metaphor for her entire presence this season: a performative gesture of bringing back an old fan favorite character, in what only amounts to an imitative, one-dimensional attempt to conjure goodwill from a frustrated audience. Karen’s entire character has been thoroughly co-opted by Born Again, reducing her to the woman on Matt’s arm who gets stashed inside Matt’s hiding place for the entire season, until she’s paraded out as something to dangle between Matt and Fisk for a few episodes. Save for a scene or two where her violent persuasions to deal with Fisk clash with Matt’s incoherent moralism, Karen isn’t given much to do this season – so it’s really no surprise to see Matt and Born Again use her as nothing but a bridge to more of Matt and Fisk posturing and monologuing at each other, which unsurprisingly ends up being the only interesting part of “The Southern Cross”, the one moment where it felt like there was still a drama about the conflict between their competing, equally broken visions of justice and destiny, and the state’s equally twisted version of both.

Instead, it becomes a bit posturing moment for Born Again, as Matt decides to reveal his identity to the court and all of New York, outing himself as Daredevil as a way to compel Fisk’s judges to finally turn the court back to what it “should” be (which, in Born Again‘s world, is an amorphous vehicle that occasionally holds bad people to justice, but often becomes a vehicle for the agenda of the police… but that’s besides the point). After five seasons, Matt finally decides to unveil himself as a way to provide his testimony as to what Fisk was doing with the free port, and to put the whole concept of vigilantism on trial.

Except “The Southern Cross” doesn’t really do that, at all: instead, we get some monologuing by both Murdock and Fisk, as season two rushes to bring their external conflict to a close. Fisk’s obsession with Daredevil and power, Matt’s views of grace and redemption… none of that really comes through though, as Born Again‘s season finale quickly rushes from contemplative to performative, with Matt trying to get Fisk charged with crimes by the judges in front of them, turning the entire scene into chaos – and apparently the entire city, though that all really amounts to Matt saying “the city is picking sides” and cutting to a bunch of people, led by White Tiger 2.0 and some faceless randos in front of city hall, presumably ready to fight with a passion for the vigilante the city’s spent years being openly ambivalent about.

While I appreciate what Daredevil: Born Again is going for here, it’s attempts to build thoughtful material out of the siege on city hall feels incredibly one-dimensional; one can see the parallels it tries to draw between anti-fascist in its world and fascist actions in the real world – but it is something that rings as hollow as the random ten-second scene where Karen walks into frame to knock out a fully-armored AVTF officer in two punches. And it makes for incredibly frustrating television, the buildup of Matt and Fisk brutally fighting their way to meet in front of New York’s faceless on the steps of city hall; it’s a moment that should feel brutal and chaotic, passionately violent and unwieldly – and yet, “The Southern Cross” cuts back and forth between Fisk and Murdock’s sequences with a deafening detachment: though Fisk’s ability to brutalize and kill when angry remains a visceral force in Daredevil and Daredevil: Born Again, there’s a weightlessness to his actions that pairs with Daredevil’s – and when they finally do meet, and Matt tries to bargain with Kingpin for the umpteenth time, it feels like Born Again somehow running out of gas on a story that it barely scratched the surface of.

After that, “The Southern Cross” has nothing left to do but MCU-itself into nothingness, with a series of reveals and teases that undercut most of the logic remaining in the series, but also lay bare how unsatisfying a season finale it is. Daniel’s death ends up meaning absolutely nothing to anyone, as Buck just continues on with his work and BB gets the most obvious, unearned ending to her story (she takes a job at the Bulletin, based on…. the videos she makes asking people how they feel about Fisk?); and by the same token, Vanessa’s death ends up holding little meaning to anything in the finale, as Fisk is dumped onto a beach in the middle of nowhere, and Bullseye exists in precisely two scenes: to set up a gun to… shoot Buck in the stomach once, and then he shows up on a plane with Mr. Charles, tying both of those characters off into the most random, pointless corner of Born Again‘s largely listless sophomore effort.

Anyone hoping the lessons of Foggy’s cameo would ring through the finale will be sorely disappointed; with Karen cordoned off into a role of being nothing but Matt’s sex object, the Nelson and Page portions of Daredevil feel excised from Born Again – and with Matt allowing himself to be arrested while Fisk roams free at the end of “The Southern Cross”, the series is already undercutting anything profound it might have to say about justice, redemption, or grace, completely upending the status quo of Daredevil‘s world for a pair of unsatisfying, thematically hollow codas to the central stories driving the series for its first five seasons.

So where does Daredevil: Born Again go from here? With the sudden re-emergence of Luke Cage (his work with Charles happens to end five seconds after everything goes down in NY, of course), it seems season three of Daredevil: Born Again is going to lean into a Greatest Hits approach to the revival’s third season. The Defenders are back in town, Matt will spend most of the season out of his suit (but not being a lawyer, leaving him in a much less interesting place), while Fisk goes on a journey of self-discovery and reassuming criminal power. We already know The Hand is returning to the MCU this summer, which means we’ll get both The Hand (aka Daredevil‘s first two seasons) and Lady Muse (Heather’s two scenes in the finale are her getting roasted in court and staring at a mirror while she puts on the Muse mask…. character development!)… add in Frank Castle and maybe a return of Elektra, and you’ve got the makings of a Daredevil season that is nothing but an imitation of itself, existing to churn out a few hours of content to keep elder Marvel audiences engaged for another year of Disney+ subscriptions.

It’s all kind of a giant bummer, from the nothingburger of entire plot arcs like Daniel, Buck and Bullseye, to seeing big moments like Vanessa’s death or Foggy’s flashback be twisted and morphed into something as undercooked and pandering as “The Southern Cross”. If anything, Born Again‘s second season has made me more nostalgic for the Netflix series – which always worked at a glacial pace, but filled its running time with so much personality that it allowed it so much more room to deal with its inherently goofy plot mechanics and the resulting uneven pacing. Born Again, at every opportunity, seeks a broader, simpler answer to the many profound questions Daredevil asks about religion, about the legal system, about the conflating good and evil contained in every human being… instead, all of that is tossed aside for superficial histrionics, in an hour-long season finale that feels more than a little rushed and undercooked.

Plot over personality is ultimately the fatal flaw of Born Again‘s second season: so desperate to appease, Born Again‘s second season feels like a lot of narrative spaghetti thrown at the wall without a lot of consideration as to what sticks and doesn’t; characters and plots appear and shift seemingly at whim, every conversation exists to serve nothing but plot and the most basic, surface-level motivation – and at every opportunity, Born Again pushes away opportunities for interiority, instead offering melodramatic images and non-twists as ineffective punctuation for an incredibly disappointing season finale.

Other thoughts/observations:

• Well… that’s a wrap on season two! I will be back in 2027 for season three, though I’m keeping my hopes low. In the mean time, maybe you’ll join me for the Daredevil Second Look that begins Friday, May 22nd? If you’d like to join, bookmark the page, find us on Facebook – or sign up for the email newsletter! (I’ll also be back next week for a look at The Punisher: One Last Kill, of course).
  
• Wait… does this episode really not reveal if Buck lives or dies?
  
• All it took was one side punch to take out Powell, and yet he has run rampant through Born Again for two entire seasons? One of many lame moments in “The Southern Cross”.
  
• Heather punches the suddenly-suggestive DA in the throat before the siege on city hall… god, they really fumbled an opportunity to build a compelling villain for season three with her.
  
• Jessica Jones really serves no purpose in this episode, or this season. Why did they bring her back again? (we know the answer, but c’mon)
  
• Always fun to see Kingpin’s white suit covered in blood – but again, this is imagery we’ve done so many times at this point.
  
• Still can’t get over how goofy the scene of Karen taking out an AVTF officer is. It’s a ten-second shot that is completely divorced from anything that happens around it; it is like the Endgame “team up” moment, just so much worse.
  
• why did Matt get arrested at the end of this, if Fisk is allowed to just walk free, killing a dozen people moments after Karen’s case gets dismissed?
  
• Fisk’s comment about Matt’s views of retribution meaning nothing to him is a strong idea that is supported by absolutely nothing that happens this season. Another signal towards a greater, more complex story that the MCU just will not allow.
  
• I see a lot of people whining that Fisk doesn’t die this season; you can’t have a Daredevil series without Fisk in it somewhere, so killing him is a non-starter, and would just be the sign of a desperate, empty series.
  
• Love how the AVTF are pointing guns at people and being ordered to shoot, and the line of “protestors “is just standing there, watching?
  
• White Tiger 2.0 is such a non-character, it’s almost hilarious.
  
• Charlie Cox is so good at being lawyer Matt Murdock, it’s a shame we never get to see that side of his performance anymore.
  
• Mr. Charles is actually Mr. Robertson – which means what exactly?
  
• Radiohead? Again? Really? C’mon.

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