Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 Review

The second half of the Daredevil Disney+ revival goes deeper into the battle between Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk and Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock aka Daredevil.

But more so, it offers a chilling look into the cost of a personal crusade against others and the cost of whether it's worth taking a side in battles that will ultimately destroy you and those around you.

As the first season ended, Fisk had taken the mayoral office in New York and was in the process of extending martial law and expanding his Anti Vigilante Task Force to ensure law and order in the city. However, when Daredevil discovers a shipment of arms on a boat heading into the city, it sets in motion a chain of explosive events and personal showdowns as the battle between Fisk and Murdock intensifies.

There's a brooding malevolence to Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 - and while the idea of task forces seizing "illegals" off the streets isn't the stuff of fiction anymore, the timeliness as ICE raids happen in the US and a former New York boss wields ultimate power in the White House, the fact the series expands and deepens the world makes for this feeling like a natural progression of events, rather than a timely cash-in.

Once again, the action in Hell's Kitchen is bone-crunchingly violent, brisk and brutally effective but it's in the story's quieter moments and psychological edges that Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 feels like it's matured.

There's less of the legal edges of the first season, and while this is in many ways a continuation of the story that began with the death of Murdock's friend Foggy, it gives everyone a chance to breathe and their characters arcs to invest in. (Though, it has to be said, Matthew Lillard's character feels like an important addition to begin with, before falling off to the wayside.)

From Michael Gandolfini's adviser to the Mayor who is having doubts about which side to be on to Deborah Ann Woll's Karen who leads the resistance against both the mayor and Murdock's ideology, there's much Shakespearean tragedy to be wrought from the story.

But central to all of this is the push-and-pull relationship between Fisk and Murdock. There's a quiet intensity to how it plays out and measured performances from both Cox and D'Onofrio make their clashes a bittersweet and brutal tete-a-tete. Both seize on every opportunity they're gifted and it makes for genuinely unsettling viewing as it plays out - a final sequence in episode 8 alone is just horrific.

Ultimately, Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 is a sterling accomplishment from all involved. Its darker edges and its tale of the cost of pursuing one's own vendetta aren't exactly new to the Marvel genre, but with an elegant approach and an excellently executed run of episodes, this is the kind of gritty TV you shouldn't be without.

All eight episodes of Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 were viewed for the purposes of this review.
Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 begins streaming on Disney+ from Wednesday, March 25.