Daredevil: Born Again Finally Brings Back A Fan Favorite Anti-Hero
Welcome back, Frank Castle.
Daredevil: Born Again is exactly what it says on the tin: a new era for Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock, and a return to his gritty, grounded corner of New York City. Its past four episodes have more than delivered on the revival that Daredevil fans have been holding out for, plus a little extra. Aside from a few hiccups, Born Again is the perfect marriage of the original Netflix series and Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Matt’s New York feels just the same as it did almost a decade ago, but it’s now populated with familiar characters and somewhat larger stakes.
For all the novelty inherent in that concept, there’s one familiar face we’ve been anticipating about as much as — if not more than — Cox himself. After all, it’s hard to think of Daredevil without his dark foil in Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, and Born Again won a lot of fans over with the promise to bring Frank back into the fold. It’s taken a few weeks for the series to make good on that, though its third episode did kick the door wide open for the Punisher’s return. Now, Episode 4 capitalizes on that potential with gusto, reuniting two beloved anti-heroes and reviving what might be the greatest part of the original series.
Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again Episode 4.
Matt and Frank aren’t exactly on the same team yet, but their face-off in Daredevil: Born Again has been a long time coming.
Born Again Episode 4 picks up right where Episode 3 left off, in the aftermath of Hector Ayala’s (Kamar de los Reyes) blindsiding murder. While his family grieves and the city grapples with the loss of a hero, Matt works to find Hector’s attacker. While NYPD forensics failed to recover any evidence of the weapon used, Matt finds a bullet casing at the scene of the crime. The shell is embossed with a skull — the same logo tattooed on the corrupt cops we’ve met in past episodes. This clue takes Matt right to Frank’s doorstep, bringing the characters face-to-face for the first time since Daredevil Season 2. He doesn’t accuse Frank of murdering Hector, but he does let him know that a few errant criminals may be co-opting the Punisher brand.
Weirdly, Frank doesn’t seem to care much about the “fanboys” using his iconography to attack other vigilantes — at least, not as much as Matt would have hoped. But his indifference holds up a mirror to Matt’s own unwillingness to renew his crusade as Daredevil. Frank knows all about Foggy’s death and Bullseye’s incarceration; naturally, he thinks Matt is a coward for “letting the system handle it” instead of avenging Foggy himself. What Frank may not realize is that Matt already tried to slay Bullseye — and the moment he did, he knew he wasn’t fit to be Daredevil anymore. To give into those baser instincts would turn him into a different kind of anti-hero: as Frank once told him in Daredevil, “You’re one bad day away from being me.”
Matt’s face-off with Frank feels like the culmination of years of careful development. Both characters have evolved (or maybe devolved) from their last on-screen appearances, and though they’re no closer to settling old arguments from Daredevil, their conflict takes on an exhilarating new life in Born Again. It might even be the thing that drives Matt back to into a life of crime-fighting: after sparring with Frank, he heads off to his Devil Cave, which holds his Daredevil costume and an assortment of weapons. We could finally see our hero back in the suit before long — and hopefully, this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Punisher, either.
