Though Daredevil: Born Again‘s flirted with both new tones and old in its first four hours, “With Interest” is the first episode of the series that feels entirely separated from the legacy, and voice, of the hours and seasons preceding it. And that’s not just because it’s a quasi-bottle/St. Patrick’s Day episode isolated from 95% of the season’s plots (Daredevil has tried its hand at this before, most notably in season three’s “Karen”); “With Interest” is the closest Born Again‘s felt to a traditional superhero comic book series – one whose dramatic tendencies, both violent and contemplative, have had their edges shaved off in favor of something more streamlined and externally focused, perhaps an inevitable byproduct of bringing the horned, eternally angsty vigilante into the MCU.
The MCU-ness of “With Interest” is most acutely felt in its premise, where a group of Irish gangsters (trying to pay back the debts forced on their gang in “The Hollow of His Hand”) rob the very bank Matt Murdock is trying – and failing – to get a business loan for his law firm from Ms. Marvel’s father, Yusuf Khan. Though this doesn’t snowball into a larger crossover of superhero cameos, the first five minutes feel like the most overt transmission of Matt Murdock from the gritty, reflective Netflix-verse to the sprawling, considerably lighter universe in which it existed mostly as a snow globe inside of (until Spider-Man: No Way Home, of course).
Thankfully, Yusuf’s kind demeanor and Matt’s responsiveness to it provide a pleasant avenue for “With Interest” to segue into its self-contained story, where an idiotic group of Irish dudes provide easy fodder for a (mostly) uncostumed Matt to contend with, as they try to rob a specific gem from a safety deposit box from within the bank. And from there, “With Interest” becomes an episode about a character named Matthew the Good, one who gives up his spot to freedom to a newly-married husband, jokes about Mass Messier signed pucks with one of the hostages, picks safes, and continuously shows his faith in ‘regular’ people to do helpful, righteous things around him.
(Side note: enough with that stupid fucking Funko Pop… please let this be the last time anyone mentions those thoughtless, soulless pieces of plastic trash in a piece of popular culture).
It’s an incredible shift for Daredevil: Born Again, and the clearest vision of what the original series was to look like under the original tutelage of its first co-showrunners; a series tied directly into the heart of the MCU, interacting on the fringes of other stories (there is a tease of Ms. Marvel being on the west coast, presumably recruiting for the New Avengers), where Daredevil becomes a slightly less conflicted character whose fight scenes are punctuated by quick cuts away from violence, rather than long, lingering glances looking inward and through the depths of its characters morality.
The pair of fight sequences is really the place where Daredevil: Born Again feels its newfound identity most acutely; though the choreography here is noticeably more coherent and realistic than the lame facsimiles of “Heaven’s Half Hour” and its big fight scenes. However, the action is noticeably more weightless with its more traditional framing and quick editing, trading in the weighty, complex choreography of the original series with much more stringent movements, focusing more on creating dynamic action through sound design than actual execution of on-screen action.
The action scenes aren’t bad here, per se, but there’s definitely something lacking – even when an angry Matt, nearly frothing at the mouth, chasing the red mask-adorned thug down the street, smashing his face on beer bottles and brutally snapping his leg on the pavement. These moments are quick and performative, grounded in the shock of the action unseen, rather than giving space to the performers to really express the brutality of Matt’s ‘re-becoming’ (to bastardize a phrase from Hannibal‘s memorable Red Dragon arc in its final season). Instead, Matt breaks his leg, we cut to a first-person shot of the thug taking Matt’s boot to the face, and then after a brief, The Departed-esque use of B-roll and Irish punk music, we’re cutting right into an MCU epilogue-esque ending where Matt and Yusuf effusively chuckle over candies (which Matt nipped back from the robber pretending to be an innocent hostage, leaving her with nothing but a butterscotch candy, of course).
Though “With Interest” is certainly the most tonally consistent episode of Daredevil: Born Again to date, its does so seemingly at the cost of its voice, where Matt’s existential and personal conflicts interact and coagulate with the ever-dangerous life of a vigilante. Matt’s push and pull within himself has driven the series from the beginning; the smirking, almost flirtatious Matthew we see in “With Interest” has none of that conflict driving him, even when he’s being delivered another no from yet another bank unwilling to take on the risk of his righteously driven, poorly conceived (and underbudgeted) law firm. Matt just smiles through it all; that peace would certainly be meaningful had the previous four episodes earned any of it, but “With Interest” just feels like it willingly ignores the rest of the city and series to show Matt doing hero shit for 30 or so minutes; which is fine, but again feels thoroughly disconnected from the four episodes (and the three-season series) preceding it.
That makes for fascinating discussion of the show’s formal approach – but unfortunately, it doesn’t exactly make for the most compelling, emotional version of its main character, and holds “With Interest” back from being more than an interesting, well-executed curiosity that raises more questions than it can answer. Same goes for Angie Kim thinking up an Irish joke on the spot to buy the hostages more time; an interesting idea for building out a character, in theory, but her sudden, seemingly random reappearance (first since the season premiere) underwhelms the dramatic propulsion of her scene, rendering it a rather cringeworthy attempt to build a character through one poor, long string of dialogue, rather than an illuminating moment about an important player establishing them in the fabric of Born Again‘s world.
I appreciate that “With Interest” is the first episode of Daredevil: Born Again that truly feels focused on its future – but what glimpses of the future we get, have me more concerned than ever for what stories the show’s set out for itself, be it Muse, the next White Tiger, or anything going on in Fisk’s neck of the woods (which is not even mentioned or really alluded to during the episode’s incredibly brisk 34-minute running time; how could it be?). And when the episode is moving, things mostly work – but as soon as you step back and look at the larger picture, both with the delivery of “With Interest”, and its place within the odd, Frankenstein structure of the first season’s rebuilt narrative, the cracks and cut corners start to become incredibly visible.