REVIEW: Daredevil: Born Again – Season 1, Episode 3, “The Hollow of His Hand”

Television Reviews

“The Hollow of His Hand” encapsulates some of the biggest problems with Daredevil: Born Again, telling a story that should’ve been allowed to breathe in as short a time as possible and feeling weightless as a result. This is not the ever-unfolding story of Matt Murdock so much as seeing what Matt will do this week. There are a few good scenes, and I like seeing so much of Matt in the courtroom, but it feels like tuning in to an episode of Law and Order rather than the excellent series that spawned this one.

Matt defends Hector Ayala in court while the corrupt cops take measures to ensure his star witness doesn’t testify. The power vacuum led by Wilson Fisk’s career change leads to violence in the streets and territorial disputes, while the tension between Fisk and Vanessa intensifies.

Matt begins “The Hollow of His Hand” by sitting in Hector Ayala’s jail cell and telling him he’s going to set him free. It’s a quick, simple scene, and to be honest, Hector’s dialogue is a bit rote (he remembers a beach because freedom), but the point of it isn’t so much the actual trial as it is Matt’s transition from protecting the innocent as Daredevil to doing so as a crusading lawyer. This is the struggle he’s feeling, and what seems to be the main theme of Daredevil: Born Again; Matt knows Hector is innocent, just as he knows the two cops Hector encountered are crooked, and while he slipped a bit when he used his martial arts moves on them (although it’s not like it was his fault), he’s now on the path he chose, the path of the courtroom rather than the rooftop. The rest of the episode will see him try to win this battle in a business suit, doing it the way he went to law school to learn how to do it.

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As such, there is a decided lack of action in “The Hollow of His Hand,” and that’s by design; when the witness is delayed, and the bad cops go hunting for him, you expect Matt to ask for a recess, the judge to give him a ticking clock, and Matt to run out the back door of the courthouse and put on his Daredevil costume to go kick some punk ass. But he doesn’t; he simply waits, having gamed out a shell game to keep the cops busy while Cherry brings in the witness. Matt has put Daredevil away, and he’s stopped refusing to rely on others for help. In fact, his entire case is predicated on the notion of ending a vigilante’s career; when the witness gets cold feet and perjures himself, Matt throws a Hail Mary (I think he’d appreciate that reference) and outs Hector as the White Tiger, effectively making the trial a referendum on street heroes while ensuring Hector has to hang up his costume. It’s Matt’s acknowledgment of his past, coming to terms with it while putting it behind him, and using Hector as the vessel for his therapy.

However, it’s not as simple as that. Matt meets with Hector after he reveals his superhero identity and assures him that quitting the vigilante lifestyle is easier than he thinks, but Hector isn’t so sure. This is a calling for him, as it is for Matt, but unlike Matt, Hector won’t let an accidental killing (or a premeditated almost-killing, in Matt’s case) force him to hang up his tights. Nothing but death will deter Hector, and when he’s acquitted, he goes right back to being the White Tiger because, as he says in the trial, it’s the right thing to do. Matt, meanwhile, allows himself to talk about Foggy in Heather’s presence, and it becomes clear that rejecting Daredevil and embracing the law isn’t just his atonement for almost killing Bullseye; it’s Matt’s way of honoring Foggy. But “The Hollow of His Hand” assures us that Matt hasn’t lost his desire to take it to the streets completely; just as he heard the hymns in the church calling him last week, he now sits in court, takes out the Daredevil horn Karen handed him, and rolls it in his hand the way he would a Rosary. You can tell he knows what Hector told him is true: it isn’t something you can just give up when it burns in your blood, when it’s part of who you are, and despite his resolve to retire, Matt’s better angels are leading him back to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

Once more, Wilson Fisk’s storyline mirrors Matt’s, with the former Kingpin continuing to embrace his role as the mayor rather than as a crime lord. Vanessa tells him that the other factions are fighting for control of each other’s territory now that he has left the underworld, and Fisk doesn’t care because he has higher ideals to concern himself with, just as Matt does. As Hector has taken up Daredevil’s mantle, Vanessa will take up that of the Kingpin, and she sends Fisk’s new lieutenant to settle a dispute between rival crime rings. But, once again, an inferior placeholder is doing what the real hero and villain should be doing; White Tiger winds up dead at the end of the episode (and no, I don’t think that was the real Punisher), and Vanessa’s emissary has to pretend he represents Fisk to get the gangsters to obey him. New York needs Daredevil and the Kingpin, not pretenders to their respective thrones, and more people are going to die until both men realize this.

That analysis is the frustration I have with Daredevil: Born Again – there’s good stuff here, and a better show would make this resonate much more than Born Again does. But this series feels so haphazardly conceived and put together, with rushed storytelling and tissue-thin characters, that it’s difficult to care about what’s happening. For example, if it had taken its time, we would have seen White Tiger in action before Hector gets in legal trouble so that we’d have a connection to him and his life as a superhero. When Matt keeps talking about his “magical necklace,” it’s like he’s reading off a sheet of paper because we’ve never seen Hector use it; it’s meaningless because it’s a line of dialogue rather than an important element of a character we’ve embraced. In court, Matt and Kirsten read off some of White Tiger’s heroic actions as witnesses recount being saved by him, but again, these are empty because we have no real connection to White Tiger. In the abstract, we know he’s a good guy, and we hope he doesn’t go to jail, but it’s criminal that we weren’t made to feel it. The same goes for Matt’s transformation from superhero to full-time lawyer or Wilson Fisk wanting to run for mayor rather than control organized crime. Foggy died (also with no build or storytelling, so it felt like a stunt), and then it skipped through all of Matt’s mourning and contemplation of his future. Fisk apparently spent a few months detoxing from whatever Echo did to him, and suddenly, he wants to run for mayor – and then he wins without us really seeing how. And in place of departed characters like Karen and Foggy are people the show has no interest in making three-dimensional or even just likable. We have no reason to care about Kirsten Mcduffie or Cherry (although I did chuckle when a junkie called him “Cherry Cola”). Even Heather, who I like more than the other newbies, is just kind of there. Netflix’s Daredevil would have executed all of this much better, and I think it’s perfectly fair to compare the two series since this is a continuation of it, and it’s absolutely counting on the viewer’s love of the previous show to skate on its poor storytelling. Daredevil: Born Again isn’t horrible, and it probably is the best Disney+ Marvel show (which I think is also allowing it to get away with murder in the eyes of some desperate fans), but it could – and should – be so much better.

Let us know what you thought of “The Hollow of His Hand” in the comments!

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