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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
There’s an old saying
that the night is darkest just before the dawn.
That certainly holds true with the final few episodes of Daredevil
season 1. “The Path of the Righteous”
(1x11) is—if possible—even more tragic and isolating for the protagonist and
antagonist than the previous episode, “Nelson v. Murdock” (1x10), which saw
Foggy and Matt go through a serious split and cracks begin to form in Fisk’s
tenuous confederacy. By the end of the
episode, it looks like the season is going to end with both Matt and Fisk left
completely alone.
The episode picks up
right after “Nelson v. Murdock” left off, with Fisk, Wesley, and Owlsley
rushing into Metro-General Hospital and causing a huge commotion. Fisk carries Vanessa in his arms and sets her
down on the gurney that is quickly rolled over to him. Evidently at this point she has been
unconscious for 20 minutes. The staff
immediately starts rolling her into the Emergency Room. Fisk demands to go in with her, but one of
the nurses blocks him. “Do you know who
I am?” he demands. “It doesn’t matter”
comes the curt reply. This is the first
obstacle Fisk has faced in the series which he could not solve either with
money or with terror. This is the first
time we’ve seen him helpless. Vincent
D’Onofrio’s performance as Fisk has been one of the highlights of the series, and
he really shines in this episode. When
he was first cast I didn’t think I’d be able to see Fisk in him; I thought he
would always be Detective Goren. Now,
however, I can’t think of him apart from Wilson Fisk!
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Incredibly, Fisk
spends the entire rest of the episode either in the hall just outside Vanessa’s
recovery room or inside her room. He
attempts to figure out who was responsible for the poisoning, and immediately
suspects Madame Gao’s words from the last episode about “fate” deciding which
part of him would win out as being a hint that she might target Vanessa—or
himself—to force him to choose. To allay
those fears, Wesley instructs Owlsley to talk to Gao and find out if she had
anything to do with the poisoning (which she of course denies). Fisk next instructs Wesley to make
arrangements to get Vanessa out of the country and away from him for her own
safety, suspecting that her proximity to himself was the cause for her
poisoning. The bulk of Fisk’s remaining
screen time comes as he is sitting by Vanessa’s bed and talking about faith—or
rather about his lack of faith. He
confesses that he cannot pray; his parents were never religious, and though he
has tried to mimic prayer and faith in the past, he recognizes such mimicry as
being false. So instead of praying for
her, “All I can do is make you a promise, one that not even God—if there is
such a thing—can prevent me from keeping:
the people who did this to you, they will suffer… they will
suffer.” This whole scene seems so
appropriate for this character—and the delivery is absolutely terrifying,
especially since we know exactly what he is capable of!
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| Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
The majority of the
“villain time” in the episode is devoted to Wesley (which probably should have
been a warning; the only other non-Fisk-centric villain episodes have ended
with the villain in question dying in creative fashion!). While Fisk is indisposed due to his worry
about Vanessa, Wesley takes a leading role in giving out instructions to
Owlsley, working to find out who was responsible for the attempt on Fisk’s
life, calling in the doctors and specialists to tend to Vanessa, and seeing to
Fisk’s security when he seems uninterested in it himself. The devotion he shows to Fisk is actually
touching; up until this point we’ve only seen a few bits and pieces to show him
as more than Fisk’s assistant—and those have involved him threatening people as
often as not. Wesley really comes across
as someone who cares about Fisk as more than just a boss but as a friend. When Fisk asks Wesley to call his mother,
Wesley does so and finds out that Karen and Ben had gone to see her. Not wanting to see Fisk upset by a further
blow on top of Vanessa, Wesley takes a handgun and keys from Francis (their
security chief) to track down Karen and bully her into backing off of the
investigation, though he refuses to take a bodyguard along, ordering that
instead they keep as many men around Fisk as possible.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Karen has an
interesting story arc in this episode also, perhaps the biggest one she has
gotten in the season. We first see Karen
visiting Matt at his apartment trying to find out what’s going on since she
can’t get a hold of Foggy. Matt deflects
her questions, but it is obvious that he is still emotionally bruised from his
bout with Foggy is “Nelson v. Murdock.”
She tells him about her fieldtrip with Ben and her discovery that Fisk’s
mother is alive and Fisk killed his father.
Matt is immediately worried for her (foreshadowing) and warns her to be
careful before telling her to let Foggy know what she found. Before leaving, Karen gives Matt a balloon
that she brought—the shot of Matt sitting dejectedly on the arm of his chair
and holding a balloon is quite comical—or at least it is to me. Karen goes from Matt’s apartment to meet Ben
by the river, and he is about ready to give up on the story—after all, after
the poisoning at the fundraiser, it’s possible that Fisk’s enemies (or
associates who don’t like his new public persona) are trying to finish him
off. Karen tells him that they need to
keep going with the story to make sure that Fisk doesn’t win. Karen’s next appearance is that night with
Foggy, who’s been trying various coping mechanisms to get over his split with
Matt—first sleeping with his ex-girlfriend Marci (the Landman and Zack associate),
and then working his way through a bottle at Josie’s Bar. Karen presses him to tell her what happened
between him and Matt and why things seem to be falling apart, but he refuses to
tell her. I really like this for her
character. At this point she’s the
cheerleader; she’s trying to bring the group back together, but she is
failing. Matt and Foggy are not speaking
to each other just as much at the end of the episode as they were at the
beginning. This feels natural: it feels like this is the way the situation
would go in real life, as opposed to a movie where they would need to get back
together at this point due to time constraints.
Because there are still 2 episodes left, they can afford to let the good
guys drift apart a while longer, and while they drift apart Karen is torn up
because it feels as though her world—her motivator since she left Union
Allied—is falling apart. I think this
really drove her actions with Wesley.
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| Image Courtesy www.themarysue.com |
When Wesley abducted
her, I was expecting him to kill her.
Instead, he offers to let her live as long as she tells Ben (and Matt
and Foggy) that she was wrong about Fisk and that he is actually a good
man. Wesley tells her that Fisk is a
good man who loves New York City—and Hell’s Kitchen in particular—on a deep
level. He wants her to “spread the
Gospel” that Fisk is the savior who will save the city. And in exchange, he won’t kill Ben, Foggy,
Matt, Karen’s family and friends, and finally Karen herself. However, his phone rings just at that moment,
Karen grabs the gun off the table, and she empties the magazine into him. We find out quickly that Fisk was the one
calling because he was concerned about Wesley.
Ironically, his care for Wesley distracted him and got him killed. Karen is terrified by what she did and runs
away, taking the gun with her and wiping away any possible fingerprints. If she thought her world was falling apart
before that, it disintegrated when she pulled the trigger. I like Deborah Ann Woll’s performance in this
episode; she makes me believe that she is confused and terrified by what is
happening.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
The only other thing
to talk about is Matt’s story in this episode.
After Karen leaves, Claire comes over to check on his cuts and scold him
for opening them up again. She is worried
that if he doesn’t make some changes or slow down, he’s going to get himself
killed. She tells him that he needs to
look into body armor or something, to which he agrees. Then she tells him she’s leaving the city for
a while, which upsets him because he still has some feelings for her. She acknowledges that she had feelings for
him also, but that she can’t be with him while he is still a vigilante, and he
can’t stop (this sounds like Rachel from The Dark Knight). Further, she tells him that she thinks he’s
“the man this city created.” In the end
she says that she will always be there to patch him up, but that’s it. Just before leaving she comments that he is
on the same path as the biblical martyrs, all of whom died bloody and alone.
Evidently this had an
effect on him, because from there he went over to the church, where Father
Lantom came in to talk to him. I love
all of their conversations, and the subtle hints the Father gives to nudge Matt
in the right direction. In the season,
Father Lantom is actually the only person to guess that Matt is the vigilante
without actually seeing him in his suit without the mask. Matt asks him if he believes that Matt was
made this way for a purpose, which the Father confirms. Then Matt demands to know why God would have
put the devil in him. The Father’s
response is awesome: Nothing drives
people to the church faster than feeling the devil at their heels. This is what drives Matt to embrace the
“Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” moniker and work it into his suit design. I find all of the religious imagery in this
series to be absolutely fascinating—and appropriate for a character whose name
and costume are inspired by the Devil.
In contrast to Matt’s devout Catholicism and multiple conversations with
Father Lantom, Fisk is on his own and unable to pray, yet both are profoundly
affected by religious imagery and metaphors.
We get a chance to see
his meditation healing at work (to some degree) right before he suits up and
goes out to find out about Fisk’s armored suits. He finds Turk Barrett and “persuades” him to
point him towards Melvin Potter, Fisk’s armor-maker. Matt finds Potter and looks around his
workshop. When Potter returns, the two
of them fight until Matt discovers that Potter is being forced to work for
Fisk—if he doesn’t, Fisk will hurt Betsy (who is Melvin Potter’s therapist and
later wife in the comics). Matt promises
that if Potter helps him, he will make sure that Fisk can’t hurt anyone
again. Matt asks him to make him “a
symbol.” For as much as I like this
explanation for Matt’s stylized suit, I can’t help but think of Batman. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing;
the two characters have a ton of similarities (there’s even an argument that
Daredevil has more right to the “Batman” name than Batman himself). However, I do think they need to avoid
turning Daredevil into a Batman clone.
In the end, this
episode does a very good job of setting up the conflicts in the final two
episodes. It also gives us more
character development for some of the minor characters, particularly with
Karen. Long story short, it really makes
me want to keep watching and see how Fisk will react when he discovers that
Wesley is dead.
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