Born Again Episodes 1 & 2 Recap

This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again Episodes 1 & 2

Daredevil: Born Again is here and that officially means that the Man Without Fear is now part of the broader MCU. He joins Kingpin (aka Wilson Fisk) who joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe back when Hawkeye hit Disney+ a few years ago. Now that Daredevil is back and patrolling Hell’s Kitchen again, the show made sure to explode onto the scene.

While Daredevil: Born Again is divided into two episodes at the start, it is essentially two parts of the same story. The first is the official return of Matt Murdock, Karen Page and Foggy Nelson to the airwaves. It’s also the official return of Kingpin to his own little section of the Marvel universe. “Heaven’s Half Hour” establishes how everyone is going to go into their separate corners and sets up the rest of the series. Episode 2, “Optics” more clearly lays out the prevailing storylines for the rest of the nine-episode first season.

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What happens in Daredevil: Born Again Episodes 1 & 2?

“Heaven’s Half Hour” starts off on an upbeat note as Foggy, Matt, and Karen are back together, celebrating and having a good time at Josie’s bar in Hell’s Kitchen as a new character, Cherry retires from the police force. However, the fun and frivolity come to an end quickly when Foggy gets a call from a client and it appears there are people coming for this client. Matt puts on the Daredevil costume and goes to help the caller while Karen and Foggy stay behind. However, it turns out the call was all a ruse to get Matt away from his friends by Bullseye, the villain that was at the center of the action in the final season of the original Netflix series.

Bullseye Returns

• Bullseye was paralyzed in the final episode of the original Daredevil series.
• The Hand performed surgery that fixed his spine and gave him special powers and made him especially hard to kill.
• Being sent to prison, it’s a sure bet he’ll come back later in the season.

And it’s here, less than 10 minutes into Daredevil: Born Again where the first big twist and and the first big death occurs. Bullseye shoots Foggy from a rooftop right through the heart and the rest of the scene has Daredevil chasing and fighting Bullseye as he keeps one ear on Foggy’s heartbeat, hoping that help will arrive before he passes, but it doesn’t, and in a fit of rage and pain and heartbreak, the hero of Hell’s Kitchen throws Bullseye off the roof, seemingly killing him, though as it turns out, he survived thanks to a procedure he went through at the end of Daredevil Season 3 by The Hand.

Just like that, the upbeat tone of Daredevil: Born Again goes away and the show comes closer to mirroring the original series. It doesn’t appear that “happiness” is a thing that really exists in the world of Matt Murdock. While he can find moments of laughter and light, the show continues to mostly be about a darker, grittier part of the MCU.

The episode then gets a time jump. Karen and Matt had gone their separate ways but are coming back together for the sentencing of Bullseye as well as a memorial for Foggy. Its shown that Matt has now hung up his baton and crime fighter outfit. At the same time, Wilson Fisk officially makes his return, and his demise and injury in Hawkeye is referenced as to what he is returning from. However, while he makes his debut as a crimelord, reuniting with his wife, Vanessa, he too, wants to leave his old life behind, it seems and runs for mayor.

That run is eventually successful thanks in large part to a field of more than 16 candidates and a city that seems confused about who and what Kingpin really is seven years after the end of Daredevil. And for a while, it appears that he really is going clean. He even has a conversation with Matt Murdock where the two tell each other that as long as each are walking the straight and narrow, they’ll have no problem with one another.

Murdock continues to show that he is trying to leave his vigilante life behind him and throwing himself into his lawyerly career, picking up a client in Hector Ayala (aka The White Tiger) who saved a man being beaten by two assailants in a subway, one of the two attackers is thrown in front of an oncoming train, killing him instantly and it turns out that Ayala’s opponents were police officers.

Meanwhile, Fisk is running into opposition to his new administration from the police commissioner, who attempts to resign, but the Kingpin of Crime shows that a leopard can’t change his spots and gets the commissioner to stay in his job by having his henchmen go and take a picture of what is apparently a secret child. Just how much Fisk will continue to bend or break the law as Mayor of New York is yet to be seen.

How Does Daredevil: Born Again Episode 2 End?

Twisted Cops Offer New Challenge for Matt Murdock

Having won a minor victory in court defending White Tiger, Murdock is looking for the man that Hector saved in the subway, who seems to know that the people attacking him were cops and has gone into hiding. Using his Daredevil powers, he does indeed find Nicky Torres but so have the cops who have come to kill the witness.

Murdock has Nicky escape out a window in his apartment and then allows the police into the apartment, eventually getting into a confrontation with the police officers who are decidedly corrupt. One of the men has a Punisher tattoo on his wrist, possibly foreshadowing something about what they were up to in the subway. Just before the cops shoot Murdock in the head, his Daredevil persona resurfaces and he easily dispatches the two cops, screaming in rage and frustration, realizing that he now has to be Daredevil again.

Not Everything Is Okay With Wilson Fisk

While Matt Murdock is busy trying to help his client, it’s clear from the outset that while Kingpin is back, not everything is perfectly fine with him and his wife. The couple begin undergoing marriage counseling and talking about how long he was gone.

Of course, it’s almost certainly not a coincidence that the counselor Fisk has chosen to talk to is also the woman Matt Murdock is dating. One thing the original Daredevil show did was make it clear that Kingpin always thinks several moves ahead and that coincidental events are not all that coincidental. It stands to reason that would be the case in this show as well.

Daredevil: Born Again is available to stream on Disney Plus.

Daredevil: Born Again

Release Date

March 4, 2025

Showrunner

Chris Ord

Directors

Michael Cuesta, Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Writers

Chris Ord

• 

  Charlie Cox

  Matt Murdock / Daredevil

• 

  Vincent D’Onofrio

  Wilson Fisk / Kingpin

• 

  Deborah Ann Woll

  Karen Page

• 

  Elden Henson

  Foggy Nelson

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