Characters / MCU: Benjamin Poindexter

Main Character Index > Villainous Organizations > Criminals & Terrorists | Criminal & Terrorist Organizations (Sharon Carter | Ulysses Klaue | Arthur Harrow) > New York-Based Criminals ((Fisk Crime Ring (Wilson Fisk | Benjamin Poindexter) | Stokes–Dillard Crime Ring | Vulture's Gang (Adrian Toomes))

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Special Agent Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter / Daredevil

"If I were wearing a mask, the press would be calling me a hero. Instead, I'm sitting in here with you trying to justify protecting myself!"

^{Click here to see him in his Daredevil costume}
"Hello Karen! It's nice to see you again."

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Lyndhurst Home for Boys (formerly), Riviera Psychiatric Institute (formerly), US Army (formerly), Brooklyn Suicide Prevention Center (formerly), FBI (formerly)

Portrayed By: Wilson Bethel, Conor Proft (teen), Cameron Mann (young)

Appearances: Daredevil | Daredevil Born Again

"FBI and the army before that, they helped keep me on the straight and narrow path. But now... without that it's all... I'm drowning in deep water and I don't know whether I'm swimming for the surface or the bottom."

An FBI agent with exceptional marksmanship skills on the detail protecting Wilson Fisk during his house arrest.

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A-D

• Abusive Parents: It's heavily implied his parents were this. Then again, from his point of view, the coach he killed was also abusive. Due to his disorder, his perception is skewed, to say the least.
• Accidental Murder: He accidentally kills Father Lantom with a Billy Club he threw at Karen because the priest stood in the way to protect her. This enrages Matt as he starts attacking Dex with increased ferocity.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Unlike his comic counterpart, he doesn't have a bullseye logo carved on his forehead and has a full set of teeth.
• Adaptational Curves: Inverted. He's a bit slimmer than his comic counterpart.
• Adaptational Dumbass: He isn't the Pragmatic Villain or Genius Bruiser his comics counterpart is known to be and is a lot easier to manipulate.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Comics Bullseye is actually blonde but it's not really paid attention to because he's bald. In the show, Dex is brown-haired. Also, while his comic counterpart's eyes are colored blue, Dex has hazel brown eyes.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: From being completely bald to having a full head of hair.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Bullseye was a Psycho for Hire from the off, never had any sort of career in law enforcement (though he potentially was an NSA contractor), and showed zero inner conflict, knowing precisely what an evil bastard he was and absolutely loving it. Here, Dex is an FBI agent (albeit a Cowboy Cop) and while he's most certainly still psychotic, he has a desire to fix it and takes steps to deal with his disorder, which causes him no shortage of pain, and is capable of genuine love and friendship, even if his version of them is twisted. And even when he does snap, he still shows restraint and is capable of mercy, even sparing some of his fellow FBI agents which his comics counterpart would never have done.
• Adaptational Job Change: Bullseye might have been a contractor for the National Security Agency in the comics assuming if he isn't lying about his past. The MCU version is instead an FBI agent.
• Adaptational Sympathy: Bullseye in the comics was simply an Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire whose childhood ambition was "to be the bad guy" and no clearly defined past aside from a few confirmed details. The show gives him a tragic backstory of losing his parents and being sent to an orphanage, not to mention that he tries to deal with his insanity by meeting with a psychologist.
• Adapted Out: Unlike his comics counterpart, his skeleton is not laced with Adamantium due to those rights being with Fox's X-Men Film Series at the time that Daredevil season 3 was filmed. Nevertheless The Stinger in the final episode shows him getting Cogmium steel reinforcements for his broken vertebrae.
• Adaptation Expansion: In the comics, Bullseye's past is shrouded in mystery and the truth behind most of the details that were revealed are questionable. Here, his backstory is told and expanded upon in the fourth episode he appears in.
• Adaptation Name Change: Comics Bullseye has no known real name; the closest we ever get is "Lester". And "Benjamin Poindexter" is just one of his preferred aliases, not his legal name. In the show, he uses the latter name, which was also the legal name in the Ultimate comics.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: While he's also sadistic, unstable, and sociopathic like in the comics, he is clearly tortured by his nature while his comics counterpart fully embraced and enjoyed it. He's also capable of genuine kindness and loving others, however unhealthy, and even at his worst, he's able to show mercy and restraint by sparing people rather than killing them, all things he would never be able to do in the comics.
• And I Must Scream: By the end of the season, he's had his spine broken and he's been left in the care of an unknown party that performs a surgical experiment on him. While he's conscious.
• Apologetic Attacker: While he doesn't go as far as apologizing, Dex empathizes with Ray's position and is reluctant to kill one of his only friends. Ray tries to appeal to him to turn on Fisk as they have both been manipulated by him, but unfortunately Dex feels he is better off under Fisk's thumb than he was before. Even once it becomes clear Dex isn't backing down, Ray still has to pull his own gun to force Dex to kill him.
• Arch-Enemy: Dex becomes this for Matt when Dex murders Father Lantom in front of him.
• Assassin Outclassin': Fisk sends him out to assassinate Karen Page for the murder of James Wesley, but he fails because not only does Matt arrives at the nick of time to stop him but Karen is the one who manages to take him out of the fight by swinging a large cross out of him that sends him flying.
• Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: Dex wears a replica of Matt's Daredevil costume which offers a lot of protection while Matt has to reuse his old outfit that offers minimal protection. It's the sole reason why his fights with Matt last as long as they do.
• Ax-Crazy: Not only does he have severe mental issues, but he also doesn't need much incentive to kill. Early on as a child, he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder with psychopathic tendencies, which is just about the most professional and clinical way of describing "batshit crazy."
• Badass Normal: He is a well-trained FBI Agent and expert marksman, but otherwise possesses no superpowers aside from his meticulous aim. Still, even though the Daredevil suit of armor accounts for most of it, going toe-to-toe with Matt many times shows he's slightly above average in this aspect.
• Bad Date: He gets a chance to have a date with Julie but screws it up by revealing he knows things about her that she never told him about, scaring her away.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: After finding out from Matt that Fisk had Julie killed, he takes out the corrupt FBI agents protecting Fisk in his wedding on his way to kill Fisk himself, unintentionally allowing Matt to get to Fisk without much effort. Of course, this is exactly what Matt wanted him to do all along. He knows that Dex is skilled enough to take out every FBI agent guarding Fisk. All he needs is to give him a reason to do so and it came in the form of learning that Fisk had Julie killed.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: He used to torture and kill animals as a kid.
• Bait the Dog: We get to see a seemingly likable side to him when he tells his FBI psychologist that he has a girlfriend named Julie with whom he opens up about his problems. Later, it's revealed that Julie's not his girlfriend, but a former co-worker he's been stalking ever since he fell in love with her while working at a suicide hotline center.
• Batman Gambit: On the receiving end of one. Matt reveals to him that Fisk had Julie killed, knowing that this will drive Dex angry enough to come after Fisk himself and take out everyone who gets in his way, giving Matt the opportunity to get to Fisk while Dex is busy fighting every FBI agent protecting Fisk. The plan almost fails when Dex successfully takes down every FBI agent and manages to arrive in the final battle to fight both Matt and Fisk himself, but gets taken out during the fight thanks to Fisk breaking his back.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: During the final showdown, he gives Lim a chance to walk away because he's been a good friend to him and isn't a corrupt agent like most of his colleagues. Even when Lim still decides to try and take him down, Dex subdues him non-lethally, which is a stark contrast to him killing or trying to kill every other FBI agent who get in his way to trying to kill Fisk and Vanessa.
• Being Evil Sucks: In contrast to the comics where he revels in his evil and sadism, Dex absolutely hates his sociopathic nature and takes active steps to overcome it, albeit sadly to no avail.
• Berserk Button:
  • Failing to carry out his job. Whether it be assassinating or simply finding someone, he has to carry it out successfully otherwise he becomes increasingly agitated and unhinged, and very quickly at that.
  • He takes being lied to very personally. Matt uses this to his advantage in the finale when he reveals to him that Fisk secretly had Julie killed and made it look like she cut him out of his life, leading Dex to turn on Fisk.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While he serves as The Dragon to Fisk throughout season three, once Dex finds out Fisk had Julie murdered he completely snaps and turns on him, becoming an independent threat for the finale. While Fisk and Matt's rivalry still has the spotlight, Matt is equally focused on stopping Dex from enacting his revenge.
• Boom, Headshot!: If he has a gun in his hands, chances are he'll do this to whoever he wants to shoot. Just ask Jasper Evans and Ray Nadeem.
• The Brute: Fisk corrupted him into his personal attack dog, which came back to bite Fisk in the ass in the season finale.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: During his first fight with Matt, he throws a projectile at Matt's hand when he picks up a ball-pen to try and use it on Dex. He later disarms Karen of her own handgun by throwing a projectile at it and later picks it up to shoot Jasper Evans in the head.
• Blood Knight: It's clear that when worked up, he loves a good fight when the opportunity arises.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He has little or no empathy and doesn't follow regular morals, being driven by an intense need for personal relationships instead. As such, his therapist tells him to get a job that gives him a rigid structure to keep him in line and a person with a good moral compass to hold him to it.
• Broken Ace: He's one of the best marksmen and hand-to-hand combatants the FBI has to offer, being able to take down a whole group of other FBI agents with his marksmanship during the final battle and in close-quarters combat during the Bulletin attack, but he's also an incredibly unstable man who's struggling to control his severe mental issues.
• Broken Pedestal: Fisk becomes this to him when he finds out from Matt that he had Julie killed to replace her as his North Star. Needless to say, he is livid and sets out to kill Fisk. He fails but Fisk does get arrested.
• Bulletproof Vest: Wears one when he's in the field with his fellow agents. His Daredevil outfit also has this.
• The Bully: Dex gets his kicks where he can get them, and that means lording whatever power he has over whoever has less. He even pettily torments Fisk while he's under house arrest by taking a bite out of Fisk's burger.
• The Bus Came Back: Six years after the cancellation of Daredevil, Dex makes his return in its revival show Daredevil: Born Again.
• Catchphrase: "That's hard. Really hard" is his go-to response whenever he's told about someone suffering, simply because he genuinely doesn't understand how he should react, but on the advice of his therapist has found a phrase that will let him (just about) function in society.
• Cathartic Scream: Fisk encourages him to belt out a "scream of primal rage" so he can let out all the anger he keeps inside of him, which he does. He lets another one out when he fails to assassinate Karen Page like Fisk ordered him to.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: His throwing power comes from an obsessive amount of practice since he was young. He fervently believed that if he could perfectly throw a baseball his parents would come back.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The fact that Dex wears an armored Daredevil suit when acting as Fisk's assassin, while Matt has gone back to his original off-the-shelf ski mask and black long sleeve shirt, significantly helps level the playing field between the two of them.
• Cold Sniper: He's an FBI sniper, although the only time he actually does any sniping for Fisk is when he attaches a scope to his handgun to try and kill Matt and Nadeem after they break into his apartment.
• Composite Character: Fisk manipulates Dex in ways that seem akin to how he manipulates Nuke in the "Born Again" story, especially with the speeches he gives about how Dex “sacrifices for his country” and “nobody appreciates him for it”. He also takes the role of the Daredevil imposter from the story.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: While official Netflix promotional materials do refer to him as "Bullseye" now and again, Dex never goes by that alias in the series proper, but we do see it alluded to twice: his baseball cap had a bullseye monogrammed on it when he was a child, and we see a "bullseye" in Dex's iris when he is being experimented on at the very end of the series.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • When finally joining Fisk, Dex becomes a complete contrast to James Wesley. Both served as chief enforcers to Fisk, with Dex even telling Vanessa to consider him "the new James Wesley" when they meet. However, Fisk and Wesley's friendship was entirely genuine on both sides, to the point that Fisk beat Francis to within an inch of his life for not being there to protect Wesley, and ordering a hit on Karen when he finds out, while Dex is merely a tool he is perfectly willing to manipulate and later discard like he would any other henchman. While Wesley is no physical threat and has others do Fisk's brute work, he is more mentally stable and competent in enforcing Fisk's demands, while Dex is more impulsive and becomes increasingly desperate and accident-prone as he struggles to gain Fisk's approval and avoid his wrath, which further leads to his downfall.
  • He's also unlike the other villains in the first two seasons, in that he has no background in organized crime prior to crossing paths with Fisk. Fisk himself was a powerful crime lord, Nobu and Madame Gao were part of an ancient criminal organization in which the former took part in human trafficking while the latter made and distributed heroin, and Colonel Schoonover was a powerful drug lord who killed people or had people killed to cover his tracks. Even some of his fellow FBI agents including his boss Tammy Hattley were forcibly under Fisk's thumb even before the season began.
• The Corruptible: Wilson Fisk exploits his need for recognition and a North Star to turn him into his crazed assassin.
• Costume Copycat: Fisk gives him a replica of the Daredevil suit and wear it while committing crimes to discredit the real Daredevil, Matt Murdock.
• Cowboy Cop: Dex is a bloodthirsty and sadistic man, and his badge gives him license to indulge in his violent tendencies. His appointed FBI therapist remarks that he's used lethal force before, but Dex is agitated that cops like him get condemned by the press for using self-defense whereas vigilantes like Daredevil get cheered on for doing the same.
  Dex: If I were wearing a mask, the press would be calling me a hero. Instead, I'm sitting in here with you trying to justify protecting myself!
• Creepy Child: He was a very unsettling little boy. He ultimately kills the one adult in his life who encouraged and mentored him, for essentially no reason... and subsequently showed zero remorse.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Dex's marksman skills are superb, as he can make any object, regardless of how harmless it is, into a lethal—or at the very least, painful—thrown weapon. However, while he is also pretty decent when it comes to his close-range hand to hand fighting skills, and his durability is impressive enough to enable him to survive hits from Matt and later Fisk, his actual moveset is limited and he has to resort to either finding a surrounding object to throw or wield or he can use or block the barrage of blows thrown his way.
• Crowbar Combatant: During the FBI's arrest of multiple crime lords, he picks up and throws a crowbar at one of the criminals resisting arrest, knocking him out.
• Curtains Match the Window: He has brown hair and brown eyes.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His parents died at a young age, and according to him, they were "always mad" before they died. He was then sent to an orphanage, spending much of his time entirely alone.
• Deadly Disc: He throws a collection plate at Matt during the church fight and during the final battle, he throws a plate at one of the FBI agents firing at him.
• Deadpan Snarker: To go along with his frequent bullying, Dex has one hell of snark storage capacity.
• Death from Above: During the final fight with Matt and Fisk, he tosses a metal stick at a chandelier to drop it on the two but Matt manages to kick Fisk out of the way and evade it himself.
• Death by Secret Identity: After the church fight, he kills two civilians who walk in on him wearing the Daredevil costume without his mask on.
• Decomposite Character: While Dex fulfills the role of Fisk's The Dragon and assassin and has the name Benjamin Poindexter (one of Bullseye's aliases in the comics), Bullseye's trademark ace of spades playing card, one of his calling cards in the comics, is given to the NYPD ESU sniper that attempts to assassinate Detective Blake in season 1.
• Despair Event Horizon: He crosses this when he's put on administrative leave by the FBI and he scared his North Star Julie away beforehand. He planned to commit suicide until Fisk calls him and gives him a new purpose.
• Desperately Craves Affection: As a result of being an orphan and losing his therapist, who was like a mother to him, in his teenage years, Dex has an unhealthy desire for love and belonging and will cling himself to anyone who gives him that. Fisk takes advantage of this by showering him with it and getting rid of anyone who gives him this and could serve as a positive role model to him like Julie.
• Destination Defenestration: During the final battle, Matt hits him with a glass stick so hard, he goes through a window out of the penthouse. Dex returns the favor by tossing him back into the penthouse through another window.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He killed his baseball coach for benching him, along with telling him a harsh truth that no amount of skill at the game would bring his parents back. He also wanted to kill his therapist for dying of cancer, as he saw it as her abandoning him.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": The written recordings of his therapy sessions with Eileen Mercer show that he doesn't like being called Benjamin and insists on being called Dex. He also lets Ray call him Ben, signifying that he was his closest friend in the FBI.
• The Dragon: Fisk crafts him into his personal enforcer and hitman, and he spends most of the season posing as Daredevil to tarnish Matt's reputation.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: During the final fight, he picks up a pistol from one of the agents he took down to shoot his boss Tammy Hattley. The first shot manages to hit her in the stomach, but when he's about to shoot her in the head, it turns out that the pistol is out of bullets. He then throws the gun at her while leaving the wedding hall, knocking her out but not killing her.
• The Dreaded: After his first real fight with him at the Bulletin, Matt dreads the idea of having to face him again, even openly panicking to Sister Maggie about how deadly he is. For the most part...Dex lives up to the dread in every subsequent encounter. It's telling that Matt never actually beats him. Karen takes him out in the church attack, while Fisk exploits a cheap opening and breaks his back in the final battle.
• Driven to Suicide: He's on the verge of doing this after he is made a scapegoat by the FBI when their investigation into his conduct in killing the Albanian hit squad after Fisk is leaked to the press (by Fisk) and he is put on administrative leave. Feeling betrayed, he plans on shooting himself on his kitchen table, only to get a phone call from Fisk, who has orchestrated Dex's suspension and has Felix Manning waiting outside Dex's apartment to take him to Melvin Potter's shop to be outfitted for a Daredevil costume, so he can carry out a job.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Fisk is able to get inside Dex's head because he's the first person who's actually shown admiration for Dex's talents, as he's been driven to be a very bitter and jaded person by the various mentors, institutions, and other figures that he has trusted who have all abandoned him for one reason or another.

E-M

• Empowered Badass Normal: He's on his way to becoming one as the doctors in charge of helping him walk again are reinforcing his spine with cogmium steel.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Takes a bite out of Fisk's burger to annoy him. It doesn't work as Fisk just cuts around the bite instead.
• Enfant Terrible: Had his first kill when he was a little boy when he killed his coach with a baseball because he got benched by him.
• Enter Stage Window: After the Bulletin massacre, he enters his apartment through the window because entering through the front door in a Daredevil costume would have alerted people.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Fisk's armored convoy transporting him to a safe house is ambushed by an Albanian hit squad that incapacitates and/or kills the rest of the FBI agents in the transport, Dex manages to singlehandedly dispatch every assassin with quick and meticulous accuracy, ricocheting bullets off of various surfaces to take out targets hiding behind corners. Then when two gunmen try to throw down their weapons and surrender to him, he simply shoots both of them in the head without hesitation. Then when his gun runs out of bullets, he hurls the gun and empty magazine at the last two gunmen hard enough that the latter impales its target in the throat.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • He is genuinely deeply attached to his therapist and is utterly heartbroken by her death. While he expresses this in violent ways (saying he wants to kill her to punish her for leaving him, even when he intellectually knows it's not her fault), his pain is genuine.
  • He tries this again with Julie, and even though he proves completely incapable of a personal relationship with her, he truly recognizes and respects her goodness, and however messed-up his feelings for her are, they are certainly genuine, to the point that Fisk has her killed because she's too positive an influence on Dex.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Subverted, and in direct contrast to Fisk. Fisk clearly won’t take a painting from a family affected by the Holocaust. Dex has no problems killing the remaining family members for it. He does this without Fisk’s knowledge, and Fisk is understandably disturbed to find the painting in his living room. This pretty much draws a line of separation between Fisk’s ambitions, and Dex’s complete lack of morals.
  • While taking down all of the FBI agents protecting Fisk, he doesn't kill any of the non-corrupt agents and only subdues them non-lethally. He even offers one of them a chance to walk away because said agent was a good friend to him.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Averted. Dex is fully aware that there is something seriously wrong with him and takes active steps to deal with and he is capable of recognizing kindness in others such as his therapist and Julie, even if it often leads him to unhealthy behavior, as well as able to recognize and genuinely appreciate when it's shown to him.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Matt Murdock. Both lost their parents at a young age albeit, through different circumstances, both of them work for law enforcement, and they constantly suffer life crises. However, Matt found other parental figures in Father Lantom and Stick, who while none of them were perfect, did care for Matt in their own ways. Whereas Dex lost both his parents, killed his own mentor in a fit of rage, and everyone else he cared about died off, none of whom were nearly as sketchy as Matt's familial ties. Matt is also a respected lawyer and despite defending a few questionable clients, stays true to his morals, is mostly well-liked by the authorities, and does the right thing for the most part. Dex however is an FBI agent who is constantly looked down upon by his superiors for his brutality until they are all either killed off or turned dirty by Fisk and expresses fierce jealousy towards vigilantes, which ultimately turns him dirty and corrupts him into Fisk's personal hitman. However, their fighting styles are completely different: Matt focuses on his fists, specializes in close-quarters combat and uses boxing just like his late father, and even though he does show that he has some long-range skills, it's more of an improvised backup and even then, it's limited and he's only decent at it. Dex meanwhile is more of a marksman and unlike Matt, can use pretty much anything he grabs his hands on as a weapon, and while he is more than capable of holding his own during a brawl, he is at a significant disadvantage and has to resort to more defensive measures via constant blocking or find something he can throw. In many ways, Dex is what Matt Murdock would have become if he wasn't able to control his bloodlust and became a sociopathic killer instead of a fighter for justice.
  • He's also an evil version of Hawkeye. Works for the government (originally), fights bad guys, skilled marksmen. Clint, like Dex, can turn anything he gets his hands on into an accurate projectile weapon. But Clint is also extremely perceptive, and The Everyman moral center of the Avengers, while Dex is a psychopath desperately trying to act normal while indulging his sadistic urges. Their bosses are a black spymaster in black clothing, and a white criminal in white suits, both with shaved heads. Dex even claims his behavior would be lauded if he were wearing a mask, and in the comics Bullseye doubled for Hawkeye on the Thunderbolts and outright posed as him when he was a member of the Dark Avengers.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Fisk learns just how bad an idea it is to have a violent, unstable man like Dex working on your behalf. Then further destabilize him just to make him dependent on you.
• Evil Is Petty: Dex takes a lot of pleasure in bullying others, including Fisk. He takes a bite out of the big man's burger just so he can watch how he reacts. He's openly disappointed when Fisk just cuts away the bite and eats the burger without an emotional response.
• Evil Knockoff: Fisk gives him a Daredevil costume to act as his dragon and to discredit the real one.
• Evil Orphan: As a child, he lived in an orphanage because his parents died, and was already mentally unstable, killing animals such as cats and birds and eventually killing his coach after he benched him during a baseball game.
• Evil Wears Black: Likely a reference to his comics costume, but Dex is always wearing black.
• Expy: He has a job in law enforcement, is explicitly identified as a sociopath mimicking human empathy, and his name even has "Dexter" in it.
• False Flag Operation: Fisk directs him to commit crimes in a replica of the Daredevil armor to turn public opinion against Matt.
• Fan Disservice: We get to see him shirtless in "The Perfect Game" but it's while he's having a mental breakdown from his failed date with Julie.
• Faux Affably Evil: A variant in which his rather flimsy attempts at being polite and sociable (relying on stock phrases like "that's really hard") are reflective of a desire to mask his nature because he hates it rather than as a way to mislead people. He is capable of genuine kindness and affection but mostly relies on his stock phrases in everyday life to try and seem something close to normal.
• Final Boss: He's one of the final enemies Matt must defeat in the final showdown, along with Wilson Fisk.
• Finishing Stomp: Does this to Matt at the end of their first fight.
• Flechette Storm: Is capable of doing this, as seen when he picks up a bunch of knives and sharp utensils to kill other FBI agents during the final battle.
• Foil: To Wilson Fisk. Dex and Fisk each have some mental issues, but Fisk is absolutely a loving member of his family and devoted to the idea of helping his community while Dex is The Sociopath who enjoys bullying people and has no qualms about killing people, even doing so for the pettiest reasons. However, Fisk has embraced his role as the villain and declared Then Let Me Be Evil, while Dex has spent his life desperately trying to find a Morality Pet to help him be a good person. Hell, Dex's apartment is entirely decked out in black, white, and gray, just like Fisk's.
• Friendship Moment: Despite his utter lack of empathy and sadism, Dex genuinely seems to appreciate people who are there for him. He's moved when his fellow FBI agents have his back in the face of the agency throwing him under the bus and gets visibly choked up when Nadeem hires a lawyer to help him get his suspension overturned. He's devastated upon finding out it was all a manipulation by Nadeem to keep him out of the way while he and Matt broke into his apartment, and doesn't take it very well to say the least.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: He served in the U.S. Army before he became a corrupt FBI agent serving as Fisk's personal assassin.
• Glass Cannon: Downplayed. Dex is, by all means, a skilled hand-to-hand fighter who can hold his own against Matt in close quarters combat, but it's clear his specialty lies in ranged weaponry.
• Grayscale of Evil: The walls of his apartment and most of his clothes are shades of contrasting black and white, referencing the costume of his comicbook counterpart.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: After failing to assassinate Karen Page, he kills two bystanders using two glass bottles as projectiles after they walk in on him wearing his fake Daredevil suit unmasked.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It really doesn't take much to piss Dex off. Not unexpected of course, since he has BPD.
• The Heavy: Dex is responsible for both major character deaths (Father Lantom and Ray Nadeem) in season 3, as well as a large number of minor character killings or hospitalizations (Ellison, Jasper Evans, etc).
• Hell Is That Noise: His head is literally like a buzzing hornet's nest, becoming louder and louder the more unstable he becomes, even appearing to cause him actual physical pain. Doubtless an effect of him no longer taking his medication around the same time he starts acting as Fisk's assassin. ^note There's very, very good reason stuff like olanzapine has to be carefully, gradually weaned off instead of abruptly stopped.
• Hero Killer: He kills both Father Lantom and Ray Nadeem. He also tries to kill Matt several times and comes close but fails because he gets stopped by someone or something else or Matt successfully escapes.
• Horns of Villainy: Whenever he's wearing the Daredevil costume.
• Human Shield: Does this to one of his FBI colleagues to prevent Ray from shooting him during his escape from the Bulletin. He tries to do this during his second fight with Matt but Matt easily removes the hostage from him and kicks him. He also tries to do this again during the final battle with an FBI agent so the other agents don't open fire on him, only for Matt to sneak up behind him, wrap his head with a table cloth, and knock him down with a punch to the head.
• Hypocrite: He tells Nadeem how cold it was for him to hire a lawyer to help him get reinstated into the FBI while secretly investigating him. That's very rich coming from a sociopath who stalks people and secretly enjoys killing but hides it behind a nice guy facade.
• I Can't Feel My Legs!: When Fisk slams him against the edge of a wall, the first thing he says after regaining consciousness is that he can't move. The doctors who are in charge of his paralysis are trying to help him regain his mobility.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: When Matt calls him using Felix Manning's phone, Dex brushes off any of Matt's attempts to intimidate him until Matt brings up Julie, to which Dex gets angered and threatens to come after him if he hurts her. Matt turns this threat around by telling him that Fisk had her killed and gives him the location where he hid her corpse at.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: At his core, Dex is truly desperate for any kind of affection and love and clings desperately to anyone who makes him feel cared for but his unstable nature often ends up driving them away or leads him to do serious damage.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Dex is a very skilled sharpshooter, and is downright uncanny with thrown weapons, two very different skills. He can hurl pencils with such force that they impact with the strength of thrown daggers, and is able to bounce bullets and other objects off of items that deflect them into their intended targets. His first fight with Matt at the Bulletin sees him also turn practically anything that isn't tied down to the floor into a weapon. When going after Karen and Matt at the church, he turns rosary beads into projectiles and collection plates into deadly boomerangs.
• Improbable Weapon User: Pencils, scissors, snow globes, light ornaments, and rosary beads to name a few. If it's not tied to the floor, and can be thrown with one hand, he will use it with lethal accuracy.
• Improvised Weapon: If it can be thrown, anything is a deadly weapon in his hands.
• Informed Ability: After their first fight, Matt states he is as fast, strong, and dangerous as him and that he couldn't beat him. While Matt did indeed lose the fight it was only thanks to Dex's superhuman accuracy and the Daredevil suit's great durability, that aside Matt is clearly the better fighter out of the two and outclasses him anytime they fight hand-to-hand.
• In Love with Love: He makes it clear he has no real physical attraction to Julie, he just wants her as a "North Star". He can fake the idea that they are a couple but the truth is that he just wants a good person to praise him when he tries doing good.
• The Insomniac: He tends to have trouble sleeping due to the voices in his head.
• Interrupted Suicide: He attempts to commit suicide after being put on administrative leave by the FBI and unintentionally scaring off Julie Barnes during their conversation at the hotel, but is stopped at the last second by a phone call from Fisk, who wants to give him a Daredevil suit so he can wear it while committing murders in order to discredit the real Daredevil.
• Irony: Early on in the season, Nadeem thanks him for saving his life during the convoy ambush by the Albanians, citing him as the reason why Sami still has a father. By the end of the season, Dex becomes the reason as to why Sami doesn't have a father anymore.
• It's All About Me: Much of his instability seems to stem from being so narcissistic, even as a child, that he becomes violent to the point of homicidal if the world cannot live up to his self-centered expectations of it.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Played with. Matt and Fisk are genuine Arch Enemies dating back to Season 1. But Dex makes the conflict between him and Matt very personal after murdering Father Lantom.
• Jerkass: Aside from being a remorseless psychopath, Dex is a huge scumbag. He frequently bullies and belittles other people, is very smug around people he dislikes and is incredibly abrasive towards people who threaten him or get in his way.
• Jerkass Has a Point: His assertion that he would have be called a hero if he was wearing a mask while gunning down the Albanian gangsters who killed multiple FBI agents and tried to assassinate Fisk isn't far off the mark considering how much praise and adulation the likes of Daredevil and Spider-Man get from New Yorkers until they were framed for things they didn't do.
• Kick the Dog: As a kid he used to torture and kill animals; it required a lot of therapy sessions for him to stop.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Does this to one of the criminals he and the FBI are arresting after he just threw a crowbar at him.
• Lack of Empathy: He has so little empathy for others that he has to be taught how to fake it.
• Lean and Mean: He has a slender (but muscular) build, and is as dangerous as they come.
• Leave No Witnesses: After fleeing the church and hiding in an alleyway following his failed Assassination Attempt on Karen Page, Dex suffers a Villainous Breakdown and kills two more men who walk in on him dressed as Daredevil with his mask off.
• Lightning Bruiser: Matt was surprised by how fast (and how skilled) he was in combat and rightfully so, as Dex can fight dozens of enemies and take each of them down very quickly.
• Long-Range Fighter: Dex can hold his own mostly, but even when not in top shape Matt still has the edge over him in hand-to-hand combat. However, Dex absolutely dominates at long range, whether with firearms or improvised weaponry.
• Malevolent Masked Men: He's this as Daredevil, willing to kill or hurt anyone he comes across while making his way to whoever he's trying to assassinate.
• Meaningful Name: "Poindexter" in popular culture has come to mean "a boring nerd". Its original Old French meaning was "poing destre" - "right fist". Dex is both a socially awkward and obsessive individual and Fisk's carefully cultivated right-hand hitman.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Dex is severely unstable with his violent tendencies, attachment issues, and constant noises in his head which even seem to cause him physical pain. His childhood therapist diagnosed him with Borderline Personality Disorder (which causes him to invest far too heavily in individual relationships) and psychopathic tendencies (such that he has little to no empathy for others).
• Minion Manipulated into Villainy: He already has a number of issues that he at least tries to control with structure and guidance from his old therapist, but Fisk's machinations put a stop to that and exacerbate his psychopathy. Finding out that Fisk has been manipulating him since they met enrages him and he goes on a warpath to get his revenge.
• Morality Chain: Dr. Mercer told him that he needed a constant "North Star" to keep him morally on balance and guide him. After her death, he spends much of his adulthood fixating on finding another north star, which leads to him stalking an old work acquaintance. It almost seems to work, such that Fisk views Julie as a threat to his control over Dex and has her killed.
• Moral Sociopathy: Dex is a sociopath with sadistic tendencies and violent impulses who enjoys killing. But he has enough awareness to know his impulses are wrong and do everything he can to control them, often by trying to find and focus on his "north star". He is also capable of restraint, even at his worst, and in recognizing and responding to kindness when shown to him and is capable of genuinely caring about others and showing them the same.
• Multi-Ranged Master: In his hands, anything that can be fired or thrown is a deadly weapon. Firearms, knives, utensils, writing implements, office supplies, glass shards, anything.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: He brings Julie's frozen corpse with him on his way to get revenge on Fisk for having her killed, showing just how unhinged he has become due to Fisk's manipulations.
• Mundane Made Awesome: One of his common attacks is picking up everyday objects and throwing them at people. In his first fight with Matt, he uses random objects with terrifying effectiveness. Matt is knocked out of the air and hit in the face multiple times, even while behind cover.
• Mythology Gag:
  • His assumption of the Daredevil identity (and Matt's renewed use of the Bullseye-like plain black costume) calls back a brief era at the end of the Ann Nocenti run where he impersonated Daredevil of his own accord and Matt had to snap him out of it by dressing as Bullseye.
  • His apartment number is 131, a reference to the issue of his first appearance in Daredevil comics.
  • As a kid, his ball cap had a target similar to Bullseye's insignia stitched onto it.
  • In the very last scene of the series, during his back surgery his eyes open to reveal a bullseye pattern.

N-W

• Neck Snap: He does this to one of the New York Bulletin employees during his massacre.
• Never My Fault: Refuses to admit to doing anything wrong during the convoy ambush, even though two of them had their hands behind their heads, obviously having surrendered. He'd rather blame the vigilantes for getting away with what he can't. Fisk exploits this for his own purposes.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His backstory (working at a suicide hotline and shadowing Julie) gives him shades of Serial Killer Ted Bundy.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He delivers a vicious one to Matt during the end of their battle at the Clinton Church. However, Karen manages to stop him from dealing the killing blow in the nick of time.
• No-Sell: Foggy punches him in the face twice during the Bulletin attack, but it does nothing and Dex just gets him out of the way very quickly.
• No Social Skills: Due to his sociopathic nature, Dex has immense trouble socializing, relying on stock phrases and displays of empathy and pretty much everyone can sense something...off about him.
• Not So Similar: While listening to his tapes with his therapist, Matt notes that while he and Dex have similar backgrounds when it came to their childhood, at the end of the day he's nothing like him because Dex is a psychopath at heart while Matt is not.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We don't see him kill Esther Falb to return her painting back to Fisk, but Fisk does notice some blood on the side of the painting, making it clear that whatever method he used to kill her was not pretty in the slightest.
• Not Wearing Tights: He never wears his iconic comics costume, only wearing civilian clothes throughout the show and only donning a costume when Fisk has him impersonate Daredevil.
• Obsessively Organized: The first episode to focus on him, "The Perfect Game", opens with him eating breakfast. The scene varies between a very subtle Undercrank to make his movements seem alien, and showing him perfectly stacking his finished newspapers, making sure his cleaned coffee cup is parallel to its neighbor, and going back into his apartment to fix a photo thrown off-kilter by him closing his front door.
• Offhand Backhand: He can throw projectiles on people with his back turned on them. When two people walk in on him wearing his Daredevil suit while unmasked, he kills the second witness by throwing a glass bottle at his face while walking away. During the final fight, he throws a pistol at his boss Tammy Hattley while leaving the reception, knocking her out.
• Offscreen Villainy: In between the episodes "Reunion" and "One Last Shot", he murders Esther Falb to get the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting back to Fisk in an attempt to appease him. Ironically, Fisk was horrified when he found out about this as he actually chose to let Esther keep the painting after hearing her backstory.
• One-Man Army: Dex takes down a dozen well-armed Albanian gangsters with advanced weaponry and body armour, entirely by himself. This is after the Albanians just murdered most of the FBI envoys transporting Fisk. If he has a gun, or office supplies handy, he's basically unstoppable. Knowing how formidable Dex is, Matt exploits this trope on the finale by telling him that Fisk had Julie killed so that Dex will take out every FBI agent guarding Fisk so that he (Matt) can get to Fisk unmolested.
• One-Steve Limit: He's the show's third Benjamin, with the first being Ben Urich and the second being Big Ben Donovan.
• Parental Abandonment: He lost his parents at a young age which caused him to look for substitute figures elsewhere, to get the affection he never had growing up.
• The Paranoiac: He has several symptoms, such as refusing to accept blame for the murders he committed and even reframing his supportive coach as a jerk to justify his killing of him, a penchant for murderous revenge over even minor slights, controlling tendencies manifesting in needing everything in his home to be in perfect order, a suspicious outlook and self-fulfilling belief that others are out to get him, a tendency to see himself in a self-important light (such as preferring to see his actions as heroic, or not caring as a child if other kids didn't get to pitch at baseball to the point of murdering over it), and an irritable temperament and general Jerkass attitude overall. He also has stalking tendencies and a habit of growing dangerously attached to particular people for fear of abandonment, to the point he would rather kill them than allow them to abandon him in any way.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He shoots a couple of surrendering gunmen... who had just gunned down five of his fellow agents in cold blood. It's difficult to feel bad for them.
• The Pen Is Mightier: He uses office supplies during his fight with Matt in the Bulletin, and uses a pencil to wound Mitchell Ellison.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Even while obviously threatening Nadeem upon turning up at his house, he acts very polite and cordial in the presence of Nadeem's wife and kids and has a sweet moment with Ray's son where he gives him tips on how to throw a baseball. He later seems reluctant to assassinate Nadeem, enough that Ray has to go for his gun to get Dex to go through with it.
  • He worked for a time at a suicide prevention hotline and made a genuine effort to help people. Unfortunately, this just led to him stalking Julie and didn't solve his mental issues at all.
  • When he arrives at Fisk's hotel with Julie's frozen corpse, he encounters his former surveillance room partner Agent Lim, who declares him one of the "good ones" and spares his life by telling him to leave the building immediately.
  • Even though his Roaring Rampage of Revenge involves Revenge by Proxy, he pulls his punches when taking out the honest FBI agents, and we know at least Hattley survives when he could have very easily killed her. It seems like trying to make the frozen corpse of Julie, the "north star" to his moral compass, has had at least some positive effect on him.
  • He's genuinely moved when he sees how his colleagues have gone to bat for him after the shooting with the Albanians and when Ray tells him how Dex's actions mean Ray's son still has a father.
• Pinball Projectile: Because his marksmanship is that uncanny. He killed his baseball coach by ricocheting a baseball off a steel pole and into Bradley's head, he later picks up a baseball during his first fight with Matt and bounces it off a wall to hit Matt while he was hiding behind a cubicle wall, and later ricochets his gunshots when Matt and Nadeem are taking cover after they broke into his apartment.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: He tries this by giving a one-liner before trying to kill Vanessa as payback for Fisk's murder of Julie by throwing a microphone aimed at her rib cage. Unfortunately, Matt intercepts him in the nick of time.
  Dex: I'd like to make a toast. Julie and I wish you the absolute best!
• Psycho for Hire: He's diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder with psychopathic tendencies and is hired by Fisk to impersonate Daredevil.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He was already a psychopathic child after murdering his baseball coach purely out of spite. He's no better as an adult, being very insecure, frequently bullying others, and still seeing nothing wrong with killing people. Kingpin even acts as his father figure when Dex becomes his new mercenary.
• Psychotic Smirk: Frequently when he's wearing Daredevil's costume.
• Punch a Wall: After getting home from his failed date with Julie, he punches a hole in the wall out of anger.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Whenever he's wearing the Daredevil costume.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Invoked. It's part of the Daredevil suit and it makes him look more intimidating.
• Red Is Violent: His sadism and psychopathy are most present when he's wearing the Daredevil costume.
• Replacement Goldfish: Fisk tells him that he reminds him of James Wesley quite a bit due to him dutifully following Fisk's orders like Wesley did. Given how Fisk had a genuine bond with Wesley while Dex is just another pawn in his plans, the honesty behind this statement is questionable.
• Reluctant Psycho: Dex is aware of how messed up he is and does everything he can to overcome or at least live with his violent impulses before the combination of his own behavior and Fisk's manipulations push him fully off the deep end.
• Revenge by Proxy: After finding out that Fisk had Julie assassinated, Dex tries to kill Vanessa as payback. During the final fight, Dex makes several attempts to kill Vanessa only to be intercepted by Matt every time.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When Matt tips him off that Fisk had Julie murdered, he dons the Daredevil armor and makes a one-man assault on Fisk's heavily defended hotel, with the intent to kill him and Vanessa at their wedding.
• Rogue Agent: In the finale, he is fully willing to take down an FBI agent who gets in his way to kill Fisk, though he at least doesn't kill any of the honest FBI agents, even giving one of them (Agent Lim) a chance to walk away because he was good friends with him.
• Sadist: He openly takes pleasure in hurting others (both people and animals), and sees little difference between innocent civilians and armed combatants. For what it's worth, he's genuinely tried to stave this off with help from his psychiatrist, medication, and a strict structure, but he's ultimately too far gone for any of it to stick.
• Sanity Slippage: Over the course of Season 3, he becomes more and more unhinged as Fisk's influence corrupts him. By the finale, he seems to have completely gone off the deep end, talking to the corpse of Julie, bent on making his enemies suffer as much as him, and engaging in Revenge by Proxy regardless of the cost.
• Saying Too Much: He screws up his date with Julie and scares her away when he tells her things that he knows that she never told him like her former aspirations of being a ballet dancer or the fact that she worked at the suicide hotline for 3 years.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: One of the most terrifying and dangerous things about Dex is that if he wants to find someone, he will.
  • He's completely figured out Julie's daily routine, like what restaurant she usually goes to and what her jogging routes are, and uses this to stalk her regularly.
  • When Dex organizes a sweep of the church to look for Matt and Karen, he almost catches them hiding in a coffin in the basement, only not doing so because of Sister Maggie's timely intervention.
• Second Episode Introduction: He makes his first appearance in the second episode of the third season.
• Secret Identity: He maintains one when Fisk has him impersonate Daredevil to discredit the real one - Matt Murdock. Nadeem's dying declaration exposes him as a fake, restoring the real one's reputation.
• Shadow Archetype: To Matt Murdock. See Evil Counterpart for more details.
• Shear Menace: One of the things he throws at Matt is a pair of small scissors.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Gender Inverted. He falls in love with Julie because of her kindness.
• Slasher Smile: When he completely gives in to his urges and embraces the darkness inside him, he begins to frequently flash these. It's especially terrifying when he's wearing the Daredevil outfit.
• The Sociopath: One of the most comprehensive clinical examples on the show. He's diagnosed at an early age with borderline personality disorder with psychopathic tendencies, which is the textbook definition of a sociopath (this begs the question of exactly how he got a job with the FBI in the first place, as his background check and psych evaluation should have thrown up more red flags than a Soviet parade). He needs to fake empathy when confronted with the feelings of others, repeatedly falling back on "It's hard, real hard." as a mundane platitude because he doesn't know what else to say. He shows no remorse for killing people, always finding a way to shift the blame to them for angering him, getting in his way, or simply inconveniencing him. Once Fisk corrupts him and he embraces his role as Fisk's executioner, he relishes any chance to flaunt his power over others with impunity, killing and maiming almost at will, and with no regrets. However, he's not a complete monster. He's capable of forming attachments (such as with his therapist, Julie, and Nadeem), even if they're twisted, and he's reluctant to kill sometimes (as when he has to be pushed to kill Nadeem at his home). Even at his worst, he's still capable of restraint and showing mercy.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: When he's in the Daredevil costume, he has a rather calm, gentle voice that makes him more unnerving. He's more prone to primal rage when he's not in costume.
• Sore Loser: Dex does not take failing or losing very well, with it becoming his Berserk Button. When he fails to kill Karen Page, he starts hitting boxes and kills two people who walk in on him wearing the Daredevil suit unmasked and when Foggy, Nadeem and Brett thwart his attempt to have her arrested, he screams in rage in the back of a van.
• Stalker with a Crush: He tells his FBI therapist that he has a girlfriend, Julie. He doesn't, but Julie Barnes is indeed real. He worked with her at a suicide hotline for a year and has been stalking her ever since. When he finally gets the chance for a real date with her, he's far too excited, easily insulted, and unhinged to keep things together. He winds up ruining any actual chance with her, falling deeper into his insanity as a result. Although he is able later to win her over a bit, convince her to try to help him with his issues. Before she can, Fisk has her killed and pretends that she has rejected him again in order to make Dex reliant upon him. When Matt reveals the truth to him, he goes on the warpath against Fisk.
• Start of Darkness: He's been a murderous psychopath since he was a child. He tortured and killed animals. He killed his baseball coach and showed no remorse for it because the man benched him so other kids could play.
• Surrender Backfire: During the assassination attempt on Fisk by the Albanians, two Albanians try to surrender after seeing Poindexter slaughter most of them but he guns them both down without hesitating.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: A dark example. While working at a suicide hotline, he talks down a suicidal man who was being abused by his stepfather by suggesting that he use the gun he's planning to commit suicide with to kill his stepfather instead.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: 6-feet-tall, brown-haired, and incredibly snarky.
• Tantrum Throwing: He does this when things don't go his way and his uncanny accuracy just makes it way worse because he will hit something or someone.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: After his attempts at improving are undermined and sabotaged, by circumstance or Fisk's manipulations, he finally decides to embrace his murderous nature although he does maintain some small semblance of restraint, sparing a few of his fellow agents. After he learns of Fisk's betrayal and manipulation, he embraces this even further, though makes a point to direct it exclusively towards Fisk and all those who work for him.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. He had a therapist since he was a kid who died of cancer when he was a teenager. She tried to recommend a list of therapists she knows that can help him but he vehemently refused because he was too attached to her.
• Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: Naturally he can get away with it. He can even turn clips into daggers.
• Throw the Book at Them: During the church fight with Matt, he tries to throw scriptures at him, but they're easily blocked due to being heavier and slower than any of the other projectiles he throws at Matt.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Wilson Bethel plays him as an adult for the majority of his appearances, while in flashbacks to his childhood he's played by Cameron Mann as a child and Conor Proft as a teenager.
• Token Evil Teammate: Out of all the corrupt FBI agents working for Fisk, he's the only one who isn't being blackmailed into doing so and actually enjoys working for Fisk. This changes after Matt reveals to him that Fisk was manipulating him from the start, leading Dex to turning on Fisk. Dex may not have been coerced like the other agents but he was manipulated like many of them too.
• Tragic Villain: Ultimately, and unfortunately, Dex's issues are not his fault; he was dealt a shit biological hand and he knows it. His apathy and utter lack of morals breed an intense self-loathing. He began working at a suicide hotline to try and foster some empathy and do some good, to no success, and later joined the army and the FBI to at least only target bad people to satisfy his violent urges and establish some structure in his life, but Wilson Fisk's influence causes him to snap, transforming him into a fully insane killer willing to target innocent and guilty alike.
• Tranquil Fury: When he sets out to kill Fisk because he had Julie murdered, he remains eerily calm and personable despite being hellbent on vengeance.
• Troll: He takes a bite out of Fisk's burger in an attempt to vex him. To his disappointment, Fisk just uses his utensils to cut around the bite instead.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He was a really unsettling kid, torturing animals and even committing his first murder as a young boy.
• Undying Loyalty: To whoever he considers his North Star.
• Unwitting Pawn: Fisk pulls several strings and makes multiple arrangements to dismantle Dex's rigid structure and make sure that he has no one else to turn to but him so that Dex can become his personal hitman and enforcer. Matt later reveals Fisk's manipulations to Dex in order to make him his pawn that he can use to take out the FBI agents guarding Fisk so that he can get to Fisk himself.
• Villainous Breakdown: When he fails to kill Karen Page. He even kills two people watching him breaking down. He has another one when Ray gives Karen up to the NYPD instead of the FBI.
• Weapon Specialization: While he's willing to use any object that can hurt his targets when thrown, he has a preference for handguns and will use it whenever he gets the chance to.
  • He mentions how he took a liking to the M11 pistol during his time in the U.S. Army.
  • His service weapon as an FBI agent is a Glock 17, which he uses to kill multiple Albanians during their attempt to assassinate Fisk. He also uses this gun to kill Nadeem.
  • In the Bulletin attack, he disarms Karen of her own .380, then uses it to kill Jasper Evans.
  • At home, he owns an FNS pistol that he uses to shoot at Matt and Nadeem with when they break into his apartment.
  • During the final battle, he picks up a Glock 19 from one of the fallen FBI agents to shoot Tammy Hattley when she tries to reach for her gun.
• We Can Rebuild Him: After his spine is broken during a three-way battle with Matt and Fisk, he undergoes experimental surgery to upgrade his body.
• Wham Shot: (turns to the passenger seat) "That's Agent Lim. He’s one of the good ones." to Julie. By this point, Julie is a corpse that's been sitting in one of Fisk's freezers for most of the season. Now, Dex is driving around NYC with her thawing corpse in the passenger’s seat. Also, Dex is in his Daredevil costume. Even Matt, who is aware of Dex's sociopathy, has to do a double-take on that one.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dex is a psychopath with limited empathy for others, but not no empathy. He wants to be loved and build a connection and has absolutely no ability to find it. He wanted to be part of the baseball team and couldn't. He wanted his therapist to stay with him, but she couldn't. He fixated on Julie not out of any weird sexual thing as would normally be portrayed, but because he recognized her as a good and beloved person and wanted her to keep him good. He knows he's broken and takes active steps to try and fix it. Fisk manages to undo all of his efforts and push him beyond his breaking point.
• Would Harm a Senior: As expected from a psychopathic hitman, Dex doesn't pull his punches on old people.
  • He kills crime boss Everett Starr by throwing a billy club in his face, cracking his skull, after he declines Fisk's offer of protection in exchange for 20% of their business earnings.
  • He murders Esther Falb offscreen and stole her Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting to appease Fisk. This does not sit right with Fisk, who had allowed her to keep the painting after hearing of her tragic backstory.
• Would Hit a Girl: He has no problem harming and killing women like he would men. When Fisk orders him to assassinate Karen Page, he takes the order with no hesitation and only fails because of Matt helping her take him down.

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"It's hard. It's really hard."