Characters / MCU: Karen Page

Main Character Index > Heroic Organizations > Defenders & Their Allies (Matt Murdock | Jessica Jones | Luke Cage | Danny Rand | Frank Castle | Karen Page | Elektra Natchios)

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Karen Page

"I don't see the city anymore... there's only dark corners."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Penny's Place (formerly); Union Allied (formerly); New York Bulletin (formerly); Nelson, Murdock and Page

Portrayed By: Deborah Ann Woll

Voiced By: Daniela Palavecino (Latin-America Chilean Spanish dub), Flávia Saddy (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

Appearances: Daredevil | The Defenders | The Punisher | Daredevil Born Again

"There's nothing worse, feeling choices are made for us."

Matt Murdock's (former) girlfriend, Matt and Foggy's office assistant/secretary at Nelson, Murdock and Page, and formerly a reporter at the New York Bulletin.

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A-C

• Accidental Murder: Not watching the road and being really intoxicated while driving causes Karen to crash her car with her brother Kevin as a passenger. Kevin doesn't make it.
• Action Survivor:
  • She fends off Fisk's attempt to have her killed in jail by clawing at Farnum's eyes hard enough to draw blood with her nails.
  • James Wesley underestimates just how far she'd be willing to go to protect her friends and family, and she steals his gun and empties it into him.
  • While she spends most of the church fight trying to outrun Dex, she draws his attention to her when Matt is beginning to be overwhelmed, and the fight even ends with her knocking him over the side of the alcove to stop him from stabbing Matt.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: A very drastic one. In the comics, she was a straight-A student who graduated summa cum laude in the University of Vermont who then moved to New York to make a name for herself. Here, she was a drug dealer/user who didn't want to go to college because the diner her family had was struggling financially who then moved to New York because her father disowned her for getting her brother killed in a car accident.
• Adaptational Badass: She's far more of an active character than her original comic book incarnation, and with a frequently fierce attitude to match.
• Adaptation Expansion: Compared to her comic book counterpart, Karen is practically a superhero without the superpowers, even having a storyline that's very parallel to Matt. A breakdown of MCU characters by screentime shows that Karen has more screen time than any Netflix MCU character who isn't one of the titular protagonists.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Frank Castle and Ben Urich never interacted with her in the comics. Here, she has a very close relationship with both of them, with her serving as a Morality Pet to the former.
• Adaptational Skill: She has incredible investigative skills in this adaptation, which her comic book counterpart lacks in any capacity.
• Adaptational Wealth: In the comics, her family was well-off and she could have inherited their money yet she chose to make her own living because she wanted to make a name for herself. Here, she comes from a family that's financially struggling for years because their diner has not been earning enough money.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Her appearance on The Punisher. Despite Deborah Ann Woll getting title credits billing, Karen only shows up in four episodes and her primary contributions to the plot include giving Frank information about Micro and later getting targeted by Lewis Wilson.
  • Beforehand, she was also this on The Defenders. Like in The Punisher, Deborah Ann Woll gets title credits billing, but unlike there, she has very little impact on the story and doesn't have as much screen time as even the other friends and associates of the titular team.
• Agony of the Feet: She shot Lewis Wilson in the foot with the handgun inside her purse when he used her as a human shield against Frank Castle.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: When she was a teenager, she ran around with Todd Neiman, a local drug dealer, but their relationship forcibly ended when her younger brother Kevin burned down his trailer and she had to shoot Todd to stop him from beating Kevin to death in retaliation. It's subverted in the present, as she disapproves of Matt and Frank's vigilantism and brutality but knows that the city needs people like them to stand up to powerful criminals and defend the weak and helpless.
• Alliterative Family: With her younger brother Kevin.
• Alone with the Psycho:
  • In Season 1, when being held captive by James Wesley. She shoots him dead to get out of this mess.
  • In Season 2, she has one when she realizes Colonel Schoonover is the Blacksmith.
  • In Season 3, she purposely invokes this by visiting Fisk in his penthouse and trying to provoke him into attacking her with the FBI's surveillance cameras watching, with mixed results.
  • Arguably, any time she spends alone with Frank "The Punisher" Castle is this.
• Amicable Exes: After a rather bitter break-up between her and Matt in the fallout from the Punisher trial due to Matt's flakiness, they are back on friendly terms in The Defenders, with them figuring out if they want to get back together. Matt revealing his alter-ego by the end of the second season certainly helped a lot with their relationship.
• Anger Born of Worry: Karen is annoyed at Matt for dropping the bombshell that he's starting up Daredevil again to take down the Hand, just days after she had been led to think he'd left that behind, but is understanding when Matt says he has to do this. She takes a harsher tone, though, when Matt tells her that the Hand may know that he is Daredevil because this is incredibly reckless of Matt to do and Karen doesn't want him to get hurt so that all the work they did to put away Fisk will never be undone.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: She gives Foggy a kiss on the forehead while he's lying in a hospital bed due to the injuries he sustained in Fisk's bombing campaign to eliminate the Russians.
• Arch-Enemy: She's Fisk's second most personal enemy after Matt as her investigation of him contributed to his downfall twice and because she killed his best friend and right-hand man, James Wesley.
• Armed with Pepper Spray: Has one in her bag that she uses against two thugs who attacked her outside of Elena Cardenas' apartment.
• Ascended Extra: Compared to the comics, this version of Karen takes on a much more active role in the events going on around her, and is the co-protagonist of Daredevil.
• Assassination Attempt: She gets hits put on her several times, and she survives all of them because Matt, Foggy, and Frank have her back.
• Assassin Outclassin': As mentioned in the trope above, none of the attempts to assassinate her work out, but special mention goes to Dex's failed attempt. Unlike the previous examples where someone has to rescue her, and in this particular instance Matt chose to abandon an attempt to assassinate Fisk in his penthouse to come rescue her, here she's the one who takes down Dex by surprise attacking him when Matt is unable to beat him.
• Badass Normal: In the MCU, Karen's a mere human with no superpowers or special gifts. However, she's also managed to survive in deadly situations and put criminals to justice using her resourcefulness and investigative skills.
• Betty and Veronica: Karen is the Betty to Elektra Natchios' Veronica and Matt Murdock's Archie. In contrast to Elektra, Karen's blonde, middle-class, kindhearted, and moral.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Outwardly kind and compassionate, but physically attacking her is a very bad idea. Four times in the first season, she gets physically attacked. Only half of those times (Rance, the guys that attack her outside Elena's apartment) does someone else save her (Matt in the former case; Foggy in the latter). The other two times, with Clyde Farnum and James Wesley, she saves herself. On all four occasions, she makes her attackers suffer. By season 2, she carries a gun around at all times and is perfectly willing to use it on Frank. And in season 3, she's willing to use the gun to protect Jasper Evans when Fisk sends Dex to the Bulletin to get rid of Evans and discredit Matt. Later, when Dex tries to kill her in the church to avenge Wesley's murder, she uses herself as a distraction for Dex to let the congregation escape or to let Matt get a second wind, and she's the one who pulls the finishing move of the fight by knocking Dex off the balcony to stop him from killing Matt.
• Big Damn Heroes: She often gets saved in the nick of time by Matt. In "Karen", she gives Matt one back by knocking Dex off a balcony when he's about to shank Matt.
• Big "NO!": When Father Lantom gets impaled by a billy club meant to hit her.
• Big Sister Instinct: Towards her younger brother Kevin. When her boyfriend, Todd, gets into a physical fight with Kevin and is beating him with a tire iron, Karen saves her brother by threatening Todd with a gun, then actually shooting him in the arm when he still tries to beat Kevin up anyway.
• Birds of a Feather: Karen has quite a lot in common with Matt: both are driven by a sense of justice, and they both have an inner struggle about life and death. They both think other people's lives are worth saving, even bad guys like Grotto and Frank Castle, and they want to seek justice in their own way. They even like the same kind of simple "cheap" life. Where they differ is that Karen actually has killed someone (James Wesley).
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: She starts crying after gunning James Wesley down.
• Break the Cutie: A lot of horrific things happen to her, starting from day one. And in all likelihood, it's not about to stop any time soon.
• Broken Bird: After Matt's presumed "death" in The Defenders, she spends her appearances in the The Punisher mourning him and can't stop thinking about losing him. She keeps a photo of her with Matt and Foggy placed on a tabletop by the TV, her new apartment looks very similar to Matt's apartment, and her talking with Frank about not wanting to be alone suggests she also hasn't spoken much with Foggy at all since the events of The Defenders. By the start of season 3, she's struggling not to succumb to her grief over not having Matt around.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Attempts to coerce Fisk's right-hand man Felix Manning into revealing his secrets by exposing him through The Bulletin, only for Manning to reveal that he knows details of Karen's past that she hides from most people, scaring her instead.
  • She reveals to Fisk that she murdered James Wesley and twists the knife even further when she tells him he deserved more gunshot wounds. This pisses Fisk off and had it not been for Foggy's intervention, he would have murdered her and had the FBI cover it up. Fisk then puts out a hit on her, and tasks Dex with carrying it out.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After sitting out most of the second season of The Punisher, she returns in the antepenultimate episode to help get Frank out of the hospital he's incarcerated in.
  • Six years after the cancellation of Daredevil and The Punisher, she's set to make her return alongside both of the titular characters in Daredevil: Born Again.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She does this to her father (and her younger brother Kevin) for trying to keep their financially struggling diner afloat in her eponymous episode.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special confirms that God of War exists in the MCU. Karen's actress Deborah Ann Woll played Faye in God of War Ragnarök.
  • Quantum Leap is one of the time travel movies that Scott Lang brings up in Avengers: Endgame. Woll played Carly Farmer in the revival show.
• Character Development: Not only is Karen's role massively expanded from the comics, but she also probably undergoes the most Character Development of any character throughout the show, changing from a scared (though very brave) office worker on the run from her past, to a Badass Normal heroine in her own right. She also does not suffer her comic book counterpart's fate and finishes the show on equal grounds with Matt, with them having worked out their issues with each other with them being very close but not together romantically in the series finale (with the possibility that they could make it work this time if they ever chose so). Not bad for a character who was initially dismissed as nothing more than a boring love interest (and a Damsel Scrappy to boot) by fans.
• Character Tics: Karen tends to run her fingers through her hair when she's anxious or unsettled.
• The Charmer: Karen tends to bat her big blue eyes at people and convince them to help her. She's about as good at it as Matt and Foggy, who are, you'll recall, lawyers.
• Chekhov's Gun: Foggy tells Matt early on in "Stick" that she carries mace on her keychain. Later on in the episode, she uses it on a bunch of assailants who attacked her outside Elena Cardenas' building.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: She's always determined to make justice prevail, no matter how much she suffers or loses in her attempts to do so.
• Color Motif:
  • Most of the time, Karen wears very neutral colors, symbolic of her moral ambiguity.
  • In The Defenders, her association with Matt's life is shown through her clothes matching the colors of Matt's Daredevil armor: a red skirt and a black coat with red inner-liner and red sash.
  • In Season 3 of Daredevil, she tends to gravitate towards juxtapositions of white and black, much like Matt and Fisk are doing, representative of her efforts to do good in spite of her troubled past and killing Wesley. There are actually a lot of scenes in Season 3 where she's wearing outfits that have the same colors as outfits Matt is wearing in the same episode.
  • In The Punisher, she wears a lot of black clothing, symbolic of her visible grief over losing Matt.
• Commonality Connection: When assigned by Ellison to interview Neda Kazemi about how she and her father were attacked and almost kidnapped, Karen appeals to Neda about how she was slandered after her brother died because Neda initially refuses to talk to her due to her experiences of being slandered by reporters.
• Composite Character: Although she still maintains her position at Nelson & Murdock as its office manager/secretary and Matt's love interest, she also takes up Ben Urich's role as Matt's newspaper informant after his death.
• Confess in Confidence: In "The Perfect Game", Foggy has her pay him five dollars so that she can confess to him that she killed James Wesley and said confession will be covered under attorney-client privilege.
• The Confidant: Functions as a confidant and informant for Matt, Frank, and Danny.
• Crusading Lawyer: Karen is just the secretary rather than one of the attorneys, but Matt and Foggy ultimately view her as equal to them in this regard. Indeed, within Season 1, much of Wilson Fisk's downfall is the result of Karen's exposure of him through the law and the press, moreso than anything Matt or Foggy contribute.
• The Cutie: The picture of her that Foggy uses as her contact photo on his phone is possibly the cutest thing in the entire MCU.

D-K

• Damsel out of Distress: Karen doesn't have Matt's fighting skills and needs to be rescued at times (from Rance, the Hand, Lewis Wilson, Dex, etc.), but what she lacks in power, she makes up for in determination and ingenuity and has several times managed to get herself out of dangerous situations without help.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was an addict involved with a drug-dealing boyfriend when she lived in Fagan Corners, shot said boyfriend in self-defense of her brother, and then accidentally killed her brother by taking her eyes off the road in the midst of an argument. One of the reasons Karen pushes Ben so hard to expose Wilson Fisk is that she believes that no one will believe her if she goes public with the story herself. Karen implies that what Ben knows about the whole situation makes her an unreliable witness... and Ben seems to silently agree. And right before she kills James Wesley, she says, "Do you really think this is the first time I've ever shot someone?"
• Dark Secret: At the end of Season 1, no one else knows she killed James Wesley, and at least her friends don't know that she was indirectly responsible for the death of her brother Kevin. Though it's no longer a secret at the end of Season 3, since she separately tells Foggy, Fisk, and Matt about killing Wesley and also tells Matt about her role in Kevin's death.
• A Day in the Limelight: While she's already a major character, she gets an entire episode of season 3 that solely revolves around her. The first half-hour is an extended flashback showing her backstory, including her brother's death. The last 15 minutes involve Fisk sending Dex to attack Karen as revenge for Wesley's murder, and Matt rushing to save her.
• Determinator: Karen refuses to let go of an investigation no matter how many other people try to convince her otherwise and no matter the personal cost.
• Deuteragonist: Karen's headstrong, investigative nature causes her to advance the plot forward as much as, if not more than, Matt himself. In Season 1, the exposure of Wilson Fisk is as much the result of Matt's interventions as Daredevil as it is Karen's use of the media. It's more apparent in Season 2 of Daredevil, where Karen keeps the Punisher plotline going while Matt becomes involved with helping Elektra fight the Hand. In season 3, she is very active in trying to get Fisk put back in prison, and even gets an entire episode named after and primarily focusing on her.
• Death Seeker: Losing Matt causes Karen to turn into one by the time of The Punisher, with her outright provoking Lewis Wilson into gunning for her and Senator Ori simply so she can get an adrenaline high to take her mind off the emptiness she feels without Matt in her life. Fisk getting out of prison, and ordering an attack on her colleagues to discredit her and silence Jasper Evans, is enough for her to decide to confront Fisk in his penthouse and provoke him into trying to kill her by revealing her part in Wesley's murder, a decision that would've almost certainly gotten her killed if not for Foggy's intervention, and which ultimately culminates in Fisk ordering a hit on her and several more innocent people (including Father Lantom) getting killed in the process. When Dex seems ready to kill her, she seems resigned to her fate as he's readying his baton to strike.
• Defiant Captive: Is she ever!
  • When James Wesley kidnaps her and tries to force her into lying to everyone that Fisk is a good person under the threat that her loved ones will otherwise be killed, she steals his gun the first chance she gets and unloads it on him.
  • When she and a bunch of people get kidnapped by the Hand in order to lure Matt out, she manages to help Turk Barrett, one of the hostages, activate his ankle monitor so the police and Daredevil could find them. She succeeds.
• Defiant to the End: When Wesley has her as his captive.
  Karen Page: If you're going to kill me... just do it. I'm sick of listening to your bullshit.
• The Dog Bites Back: She kills James Wesley when he abducts and threatens her, in the third attempt on her life that Fisk's men have made.
• Don't Create a Martyr:
  • One of her objections regarding Frank's brutal methods is that some of the people he kills could be seen as heroes instead of the scumbags they truly are.
  • She ends up the beneficiary of this: after Fisk's first two attempts on her life fail and she goes public with what she knows about Union Allied, he calls off the kill order because (he believes) she's already caused all the damage she's going to and her death at this point would only increase scrutiny on his organization. This turns out to be a severe underestimation on his part, as Karen ends up exposing Fisk's criminal dealings to the press and later murders Wesley when he tries to blackmail her under the threat of her loved ones being killed.
• Doom Magnet: It's much easier to find a person she's associated with who died or suffered horribly than it is to find someone who hasn't.
• Driver Faces Passenger: Played for Drama. During her eponymous episode that reveals her backstory, she constantly took her eyes off the road during her argument with Kevin as they were driving away from Todd's burning trailer. She ends up drifting out of the lane and hits the guardrail at a little bridge crossing the creek, flipping the car over several times and killing Kevin.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Karen has a tendency of taking up the bottle whenever she's depressed or incredibly dismayed.
  • She and Foggy also get drunk at Josie's after finding out that Elena Cardenas was murdered.
  • After killing Wesley, she spends several hours drinking every piece of alcohol in her apartment. Matt and Foggy notice, but don't know why. In fact, it's implied that this happens quite a lot.
  • As shown in her first appearance in The Punisher, she's taken up drinking again after she loses Matt in The Defenders.
• Drugs Are Bad: Her eponymous episode reveals that she was a drug dealer and addict in her teens and it lead to her brother dying, her father disowning her, and her moving out of her hometown.
• Drunk Driver: Along with her not watching the road, this is what lead to the car accident that killed her younger brother Kevin.
• Dude Magnet: She's attracted the likes of Matt, Foggy, Grotto, and Malcolm. Season 3 also reveals that she had an ex-boyfriend named Todd.
• Establishing Character Moment: While locked up in a jail cell, Karen fights back against the guard who tries to kill her and scratches his eye, showing that she's resourceful and capable of getting out of her own messes. Later, as Matt takes her back to his apartment, she starts asking questions about his blindness, establishing that she's very curious and inquisitive about things around her.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: She's a blonde-haired woman who's quite the Dude Magnet.
• Eye Scream: She scratches out the eye of Farnum, the corrupt cop who was blackmailed into assassinating her by James Wesley.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Dex faces to kill her after temporarily incapacitating Matt, Karen simply closes her eyes and waits for Dex to deal the killing blow... only for Father Lantom to get in the way and take the blow himself.
• Fire-Forged Friends: She and Frank were initially at odds with one another because Frank shot up a hospital where Grotto was being treated in in an attempt to assassinate him and executed him not long after. They later form a close bond because Karen showed and gave Frank a photo of his family and got to know one another because Matt wanted Nelson and Murdock to represent him during his trial.
• Flipping the Bird: Gives Grotto the finger when he requests a kiss for good luck.
• Foil:
  • To Elektra Natchios. Both are love interests for Matt, both have very troubled childhoods, both have a "my way is the right way" attitude towards what they do, and both have killed people. Where they differ is that while Karen is wracked with guilt over killing James Wesley, Elektra has no remorse and actually enjoys killing.
  • To Trish Walker. Both are blonde reporters. Both are also the biggest advocates of their superhero friend (boyfriend in Karen's case). But whereas Karen desperately warns Matt to be cautious so he doesn't get killed or exposed, Trish has always wanted Jessica to do more with her powers and once even crafted a superhero persona for Jessica. Trish and Karen are also both people who have experienced extreme degrees of powerlessness. The difference is that Karen, who only recently entered a world containing superheroes, seeks a mundane type of power: investigative journalism. While Trish, who grew up living in Jessica’s shadow and experienced a far greater degree of powerlessness than Karen, longed for the extreme: superpowers.
  • To Jessica Jones. Both have working relationships with Matt that begin with him coming to represent them after they get arrested (John Raymond's suicide and evidence tampering for Jessica; getting framed by Fisk for Karen). Both of them are alcoholics with dark and troubled pasts that include the death of family members in a car accident (Jessica's brother and father; Karen's brother). Both of their dark pasts include a Kevin in their life (Kilgrave aka Kevin Thompson; Karen's brother Kevin Page). Both Jessica and Karen have each killed people (Jessica killed Reva, Kilgrave, and Dale; Karen has killed James Wesley and is implied to have killed someone else in her past). And they both are skilled investigators. Where they differ is that Karen is bright and perky, while Jessica is sour and crass.
• Former Teen Rebel: Season 3 reveals that she used to be a hard partier and drug user who didn't want to go to college. Kevin's accidental death manages to set her straight and ditch her rebellious behavior.
• Frame-Up: Wilson Fisk frames her for stabbing a co-worker to death in an attempt to discredit her for whistleblowing.
• Functional Addict: After killing James Wesley, Karen's shown to be functional after a night of drinking so bad that Foggy remarks that he stopped drinking the night before, while Karen smells like a distillery. When Wesley has Karen kidnapped and sedated, rather than physically bind her, he relies on her drugged state to protect him, a fatal error since chronic alcoholics have resistance to sedatives.
• Genre Blind: She's quite naive at first about how dangerous going after Wilson Fisk will be, until Ben Urich sets her straight by pointing out what happened to other whistleblowers who decided to expose corruption by speaking to him. Of course, Karen fails to consider what Fisk will do when he learns that she and Ben found and spoke with Fisk's mother. Namely, he kills Ben. She also tricks Ben into going with her, telling him that they are going to a hospice that might be good for Ben's Alzheimer's-suffering wife, meaning he doesn't even know what he is getting into until he's already started speaking with Marlene, and by then it was too late for him to save himself. Karen learns from her mistake, and come Season 2, is more meticulous in her investigation and less willing to drag others in.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: During her late teenage years, she not only dealt drugs but was addicted to them too. After getting into an argument with her father and brother, she takes so many drugs (and drinks so much alcohol) that even her irresponsible and manipulative boyfriend at the time was worried about her.
• The Ghost: Karen is mentioned a few times in Iron Fist as the reporter that publicized Danny's plans to close down the chemical plant, but doesn't show up onscreen there. She's also briefly mentioned in Luke Cage to be covering the story of the Rum Punch Massacre, and her offscreen acquisition of a source mentioning Ingrid's survival ends up tipping off Mariah and Shades to the existence of a surviving witness.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: During a flashback to her teen years, she passes a lime to another girl using her mouth while wearing nothing more than her underwear and short shorts.
• Good Is Not Soft: Despite being a very kindhearted and good-natured woman, Karen isn't afraid of getting her hands dirty to defend herself and/or deal with criminals. Just ask Clyde Farmum or James Wesley.
• Grandma's Recipe: Her grandmother taught her how to cook a casserole filled with virtue and made her promise to serve only to her future husband. She later serves it to Matt and Foggy as thanks for helping her clear charges.
• Guilt Complex: A very common trait of hers. She frequently beats herself up over things that aren't entirely her fault due to how it involves people dying or getting hurt.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Karen has long flowing blonde hair and is one of the kinder and most compassionate characters in the MCU.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: What she was in her teens, as revealed in her self-titled episode.
• The Heart: James Wesley tells her that what make her so dangerous is that she can inspire and encourage people into doing what's right.
• Heroes Love Dogs: In "Rabbit in a Snowstorm", she tells Matt and Foggy that she loves dogs after Foggy suggested that Matt should get himself one to help him with his blindness.
• He's Just Hiding: In-Universe. Following Matt's "death" in Midland Circle, Karen refuses to believe he's gone in the absence of a body, and goes around to hospitals in search of him, while also paying the rent and utilities on his apartment so that it's waiting for him when he comes back. This has strained things between her and Foggy, who has resigned himself to Matt's demise and is trying to move on.
• Hero with an F in Good: You could almost make a Drinking Game about how many times Karen's attempts at doing the right thing end up killing, or at the very least seriously harming, someone else.
• Hidden Depths: While never touched upon, Karen is a very skilled artist. She has several well-crafted hand drawings scattered around her apartment, and she's seen sketching the outlines of the buyers at the Union Allied auction with fine attention to detail.
• Hide the Evidence: She throws the gun she took from and used to shoot and kill James Wesley with into the ocean.
• Hot-Blooded: She has a fierce temper and low impulse control, which gets her into trouble on multiple occasions.
• Human Shield: Lewis Wilson uses her as one when he comes after her during an interview with Senator Ori.
• Hypocrite:
  • Especially as Season 2 progresses, Karen gets a case of this, blasting Foggy and Matt relentlessly for lying and keeping secrets from her, despite keeping some very big secrets of her own from them as well as telling a couple of pretty big whoppers. Namely, killing James Wesley, and saying Frank Castle kidnapped her when she really ran off with him.
  • Becomes even more blatant in the first season of The Punisher where she continues to aid and abet Frank despite swearing to cut all ties with him for murdering the Blacksmith in the previous season of Daredevil, as well as both supporting and condemning his murderous vigilantism throughout the season. She even has to take a brief pause when she harangues Lewis Wilson for his murderous bombings and reasons, despite already supporting Frank who's arguably killed many more people than Lewis did in one bombing spree.
• I Have No Daughter!: After Kevin's funeral, she's more or less disowned by her father.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: How she feels about Ben Urich's death as she pushed him into investigating the conspiracy behind Union Allied. Ben's wife Doris reassures her that it wasn't her fault as Ben wouldn't have investigated it if he didn't want to.
• Improvised Weapon User: In "Karen", she picks up a big cross and swings it at Dex to stop him from shanking and killing Matt. It sends Dex falling but doesn't kill him.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Karen sports big, beautiful, bright blue eyes and is one of the most compassionate and idealistic people in the MCU.
• Insecure Love Interest: Karen believes at points that Matt is too good for her and fears he'll judge her over killing Wesley. Matt is much the same way, but it's about his Daredevil stuff. Only once they get to see each other at their lowest while hiding from Dex in the church, are they able to plant the seeds for a stronger relationship.
• Insistent Terminology: She's an office manager, not a secretary. She will correct anyone who makes that mistake, be it a special agent of the FBI or the Kingpin himself.
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • With Ben Urich, who becomes a mix between a mentor and a friend to her.
  • After Ben is killed, Karen forms another one with Mitchell Ellison in Season 2. Ellison views her as sort of like a surrogate daughter.
  • Also forms this with Frank Castle, who notes at one point that she reminds him of his daughter. This continues into his own series.
• Intrepid Reporter: In Season 2, she works with Ellison to investigate Frank Castle, and he is so impressed with her skills in investigating that he hires her. She continues to work at the Bulletin until midway through Season 3 when she's fired following Dex's attack on the Bulletin because she refuses to divulge the real Daredevil's identity to Ellison. Although she and Ellison reconcile towards the end of the season to speak out about Fisk (and he even attends Father Lantom's funeral), Karen has realized that the reporter job stifles her truth-finding abilities, and she's much better suited to being a freelance investigator.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Ben Urich's death is this to her. She believes that her pushing him into the story is what led to Ben getting killed by Fisk, but his wife insists that it wasn't her fault because no one has ever pushed Ben into doing anything he didn't want to do.
  • She also feels this way regarding Father Lantom's death as she put him in danger by hiding in the Clinton Church while Fisk was hunting for her and because he willingly took a fatal hit from a Billy Club meant for her.
• It's Personal: She becomes more determined to take Wilson Fisk down when he has Elena Cardenas murdered by a junkie.
• Karma Houdini: As revealed in her titular episode, she escaped punishment for the car accident that killed her brother (which is on the grounds of manslaughter) because the sheriff is a family friend anywho made it look like he was the only one in the car. However this only makes her feel more guilty, and she was forced to leave town because her father refuses to have anything to do with her anymore.

L-Y

• Like a Daughter to Me: Her mentor-like relationship with Ben extends to this. During Ben's funeral, Doris tells Karen that if she and Ben had a daughter, Ben would've wanted their daughter to be someone like Karen.
• Like Brother and Sister: After receiving a lot of Ship Tease with Foggy for much of Season 1, they end up like this by the end of the season when Foggy gets back together with Marci while Karen and Matt begin to develop a romance, and they remain like this in all subsequent seasons.
• Locked Out of the Loop: By the end of Season 1, she's the only surviving member of the good guys to still not know Matt's secret. This ends in the Season 2 finale.
• Love at First Sight: Karen has a very noticeable crush on Matt from the moment they first meet.
• Love Interest: During the first part of Season 1, Karen seems to be one for Foggy. By the Season 1 finale, Foggy has gotten back together with Marci, and Karen has become a love interest for Matt. Throughout Season 2, Karen starts dating Matt, and while they're briefly driven apart by his nighttime crusades with Elektra (not helped by Karen finding Elektra in his bed), they reconcile when Matt discloses his secret to her in the Season 2 finale. They haven't begun dating again as of the end of Season 3, but it's clear that they still mean a lot to each other and the attraction is certainly still there.
• Meta Casting: Deborah Ann Woll's husband EJ Scott is blind. Karen is dating Matt, a blind lawyer.
• Missing Mom: Her mother Penelope died of cancer when she was a teenager.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Gets a few scenes of her undressing, especially a gratuitous one in the pilot when she changes clothes in Matt's place, albeit under dim light and using Toplessness from the Back.
  • She also gets a Shower Scene in "The Ones We Leave Behind", although nothing is seen other than Shoulders-Up Nudity and a Sexy Silhouette.
  • She starts her eponymous episode wearing nothing but a bra and short shorts and passes a lime to another attractive woman with her mouth.
• Morality Pet:
  • To Frank Castle in Season 2; his fondness for her clearly goes beyond a simple refusal to harm civilians, and he is always polite and sincere with her.
  • To Matt, as she's the only one he allows to see his vulnerable side.
• Moral Myopia: Karen takes being lied to and being manipulated very seriously to the point of briefly quitting Nelson & Murdock as a result of Matt and Foggy's constant lying. At the same time, Karen constantly both manipulates people and lies, and is now currently in Ben's job, and she did play a minor role in the events that led up to his death by taking him to see Fisk's mother under false pretenses. While Karen does feel bad about her actions, she doesn't hold herself anywhere near the same standards that she holds others.
• Muggle and Magical Love Triangle: Karen is the Muggle end of this as Matt begins dating her in Season 2 while also working with Elektra to fight the Hand.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: How she killed James Wesley. As she puts it to Fisk:
  Karen Page: He died quickly. If you were wondering. Didn't suffer much. You see, Wilson, Matt Murdock isn't the person you should be worried about. I killed Wesley. I shot him seven times. Because the clip ran out. He deserved more!
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • She sobs uncontrollably when she gets into a car accident and causes her younger brother Kevin's death in the process.
  • She also feels very guilty for Ben Urich's death as she insisted on interviewing Fisk's mother which eventually lead to Fisk murdering Urich. His widow exonerates her of it, as she knew that Ben wouldn't have done something he didn't want to.
• My Greatest Failure: As much as she denies any responsibility for it, Kevin's death was this to her. She eventually accepts that it was her fault.
• Neutral Female: Karen has a habit of telling off men like Matt, Frank, and Ellison when they treat her like this. After Wilson Fisk tries to have her framed up and twice attempts to have her killed for exposing corruption at Union Allied, she becomes feverishly devoted to bringing down Fisk and ending corruption in Hell's Kitchen, single-handedly pushing Foggy and Ben into helping her uncover Fisk's secrets and expose him. She ends up feeling guilty later on about Ben though since she blames herself for pushing Ben into writing about Fisk and therefore his death, but it doesn't stop her from fighting on.
• Never My Fault: Repeatedly claims it wasn't her fault that her brother died. Except for her actions, bad choices, and refusal to accept her brother and father's help directly resulted in Kevin's death. That being said, she fully admits to having killed her brother when she and Matt are hiding from Dex, hinting that the Trauma Conga Line she's endured over the course of Season 3 from Dex and Fisk has pushed her to accept responsibility.
• Never Suicide: Fisk arranges for Farnum to hang her in her jail cell. It almost works, only Karen goes for Farnum's eyes, drawing blood from one of them with her nails.
• Nice Girl: Karen has a strong morality, and she's also nice to those around her, such as respecting Elena's dislike of swearing. Matt likes her for her compassion towards those around her.
  Matt Murdock: It's a good quality, Karen. The stuff of saints.
  Karen Page: Yeah, well I'm no saint.
  Matt Murdock: I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that.
• Noodle Incident: Before shooting and killing James Wesley, she asks him if he thinks this is the first time she shot someone before. Season 3 reveals that the first time she shot someone was when she shot her ex-boyfriend Todd because he was beating his brother to a pulp.
• Not His Sled: Unlike her comic book counterpart, Karen isn't killed by Bullseye, with Dex killing Father Lantom instead. In fact, the scene where this was supposed to happen even remakes the comic panel featuring Karen's death, but switches her and Matt's positions; Matt is instead a bloody mess being cradled in her arms, this time around.
• "Not So Different" Remark: In Season 3, Foggy notes that her plan to visit Fisk and then provoke him into attacking her (which was only stopped by Foggy's intervention) is the kind of thing Matt would do. Given how Matt did something similar in the previous season by going to the prison to interrogate Fisk and actually did manage to provoke Fisk into attacking him, Foggy's comparison isn't far off the mark.
• One Degree of Separation: Between two of the Defenders, as she is dating Matt and also is Danny's media contact.
• Office Romance: With Matt in Season 2. She later breaks up with him because of his constant inability to be completely honest with her.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: She helps Danny Rand force his company to shut down a cancer-causing plant by preemptively publishing an article about the shutdown before he even tells the board.
• Out of Focus: Despite getting title credits billing, she only appears in half the episodes of the Defenders and has little impact on the plot.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: She shoots and kills James Wesley near the end of the first season. Given how Wesley definitely would've come after her again if she didn't, this clearly needed to be done.
• Parental Abandonment: Karen's mother died from cancer and her father refuses to have a relationship with her, ever since Karen accidentally caused her younger brother's death. When Karen attempts to leave New York, she calls her father and asks him to come home, only for him to come up with a flimsy excuse why she can't.
• Passing the Torch: At the end of Season 2, Karen takes over the role Ben Urich played in the comics as Matt's newspaper confidant and informant.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Foggy and Frank, though it doesn't stop her from having a little Ship Tease with both of them.
• Playing Possum: She does this to fool Farnum when he tries to assassinate her on Wesley's orders. She then takes the opportunity to scratch his eye out and screams for help.
• Please Wake Up: To Matt when he passes out after his second fight with Dex due to being tired and injured.
• Plucky Girl: Despite all the hell she's been put through by criminals like Fisk, Karen remains idealistic and determined to bring said criminals to justice.
• Prone to Tears: Karen cries more than any other character in the entire Defenders Saga.
• The Real Heroes: She writes an article in the Season 2 finale that says that a hero isn't someone who lives above the people and keeps them safe, but as someone who lives among them.
• Relationship Upgrade: Matt and Karen begin dating partway through Season 2. Though it's unfortunately downgraded again shortly thereafter when they break up due to Matt becoming unreliable in his day job and being busy helping Elektra fight the Hand. They do reconcile after Matt reveals his secret identity to Karen but have not officially gone back to dating as of the end of Season 3.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Union Allied tried to offer her a large sum of money to keep her quiet about their shady dealings but she declined as she felt that their crimes are too great to not be exposed.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She tries to leave New York after provoking Fisk by revealing her role in Wesley's death, but Sister Maggie insists that she hide in the Clinton Church. Unfortunately, this leads to Fisk sending Dex there to assassinate her, and while she and Matt manage to drive Dex off, Father Lantom and two innocent bystanders are killed, and Matt and a few other congregants are seriously injured.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: After her Bulletin coworkers and Jasper Evans are massacred by Dex, she repeatedly tries to wipe the blood spots from her sleeve while being questioned by the FBI.
• Second Episode Introduction: She makes her first appearance in The Punisher in the second episode.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Between when the Blacksmith's boat explodes and when Frank Castle shows up to aid Matt in taking out the Hand ninjas, she, Matt, and Curtis are among the few who know that Frank is still alive.
  • Becomes one for Matt after he reveals his secret identity to her.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Matt tells her that Benjamin Poindexter is the Daredevil impostor after the church fight.
• Sexy Secretary: Both Matt and Foggy are attracted to her. Matt even courts her. Ironically she repeatedly insists she's an "office manager", not a secretary, presumably because of the lewd associations of this trope.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: She puts on one of Matt's buttoned shirts after the shirt Foggy got for her got wet and we briefly get to see her shirtless while she's changing.
• She Knows Too Much: Frequently defied.
  • Fisk repeatedly tries to bribe her, discredit her, or have her killed because she knows a lot about his secret criminal activities. Fortunately, she has Matt and Foggy to help her against him.
  • Schoonover also tries to kill her after she figures out that he's the Blacksmith and assassinated Samantha Reyes and Gregory Tepper, but Frank manages to save her from him.
• Ship Tease: Karen regularly seems to get flirtatious and interested in the men she works with, but is afraid of commitment because she doesn't think she's worthy of love.
  • There are regular teases about Karen being attracted to Matt before they begin dating, from changing into one of Matt's dress shirts in front of him in his living room, to Karen thinking Elena is talking about Matt when talking about "the handsome lawyer" instead of Foggy. While talking with Trish in the precinct, Trish even compares her relationship with Jessica to Karen's relationship with Matt.
  • Karen also has some teasing moments with Frank, but it goes nowhere, neither in Daredevil nor The Punisher, because while both Frank and Karen may care for each other, their interactions all happen at times when they both are occupied by their own personal issues. Frank shuts it down for good in Punisher Season 2, telling her that Matt is the better man for her.
• Shower of Angst: Has one after she shot and killed James Wesley.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Her kindness and femininity conceal her strong convictions and passion for justice.
• Sixth Ranger: To Nelson and Murdock.
• Skewed Priorities: In The Defenders, she's more annoyed at how Matt has returned to being Daredevil than the fact that The Hand could be after her again. Though considering how many times she has been put in danger by the likes of Fisk, the Blacksmith, and The Hand themselves, this is quite understandable.
• Southern-Fried Genius: In her teens, she manages to get accepted into Georgetown University, but defers her application because she feels like her father and brother won't be able to manage the diner without her around. It's unknown if she ever decided to go to Georgetown after her brother's death and subsequently getting disowned by her father.
• Statuesque Stunner: In addition to being good-looking, at 5'10" she's by far the tallest female character on the show.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: She tries to provoke Fisk into attacking her in her interview with him so that they could have something against him. She succeeds in provoking him by revealing that she's the one who shot and killed James Wesley, but Foggy manages to intervene before Fisk attacks her.
• Stunned Silence: Matt revealing to her that he's Daredevil leaves her speechless.
• Survivor Guilt:
  • Karen's borderline obsessive pursuit of taking down Wilson Fisk is because she's desperate to find justice for Daniel Fisher; the nice guy who worked in Legal, who got killed because she asked him for advice on that weird file.
  • After killing Wesley, and being indirectly responsible for getting Ben Urich killed it only increases.
  • In Season 2 it's strongly hinted that the reason she tries to convince herself that Frank Castle is a good person is that, having personally killed Wesley, she needs to believe it's possible to be a good person after killing people to validate her own actions. Too bad Frank doesn't exactly help after she sees his handiwork at the diner.
  • Her backstory reveals that she definitely has this with regards to Kevin, her younger brother, who was killed in a car accident that she caused.
  • Father Lantom's death also becomes this for her as he willingly sacrificed his own life to save her when Fisk ordered Dex to assassinate her.
• Took a Level in Badass: She gets a gun in between Daredevil Seasons 1 and 2, and shows a willingness to use it to protect herself and the people around her when Fisk makes later attempts on her life. She even teams up with Matt for a bit in locating Jasper Evans, and despite throwing no punches, plays as big a part in trying to help Matt stop Dex when he comes after her in the church.
• Tranquil Fury: She's clearly in this state when interviewing Fisk in his penthouse and trying to provoke him. She never raises her voice but her words show that she's seething with anger as she reveals what she knows about his secrets (like the fact that he killed his own father) and reveals that she murdered Wesley.
• Two First Names: Both "Karen" and "Page" are applicable as first names.
• Undercover as Lovers: She pretends to be Grotto's wife to get him admitted to a hospital while throwing off any suspicion.
• Unkempt Beauty: Still attractive even with an NYPD t-shirt, messy hair, and reddened eyes from crying.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Due to Daredevil being canceled, her relationship with Matt ends up like this.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: From offscreen in Luke Cage Season 2, she accidentally endangers Ingrid's safety. By passing the word that someone survived the Rum Punch Massacre, Mariah and Shades end up learning of Ingrid's survival after a reporter brings it up at a police press conference.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: She shot and killed Wesley with his own pistol.
• Weirdness Magnet: She frequently gets involved in dangerous ordeals. By the end of season 2, Brett can't help but take notice of it.
  Brett Mahoney: Is there any shitstorm you're not a part of?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her arc in The Punisher season 1 falls victim to this. She more or less disappears from the show after Frank saves her from Lewis Wilson.^note Admittedly, there were justified out-of-universe reasons for this: namely, that Deborah Ann Woll had to go back to The Defenders to finish filming Karen's scenes there, and The Punisher proper needed to focus back on its main characters as it started its final act
• What the Hell, Hero?: She frequently calls Matt and Frank out for the morally questionable actions they make as Daredevil and the Punisher.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Karen is the most idealistic of all the characters and this manifests in her determinator style dedication to bringing down people like Fisk. It's dangerous, and it doesn't pay well but it needs to happen because Wilson Fisk is a dangerous criminal.
• Working with the Ex: With Matt in Season 3, who comes out of hiding after news of Fisk has been released from prison and is just as determined to take him down as she is. Matt reaches out to her when he needs help bringing in Jasper Evans, and although initially reluctant to help, Foggy and Sister Maggie persuade her to give Matt a chance.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: In "Upstairs/Downstairs", she explains in detail how she killed James Wesley to Fisk himself, noting how he died quickly and she shot him seven times. This agitates him and he certainly would've killed her had it not been for Foggy's intervention.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She poses as Frank's hostage to help him escape from the police following his thwarting of Lewis Wilson's bombing plot.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Subverted. She tries to talk Frank out of killing Colonel Schoonover, who was revealed to be the Blacksmith and behind several assassinations, including an assassination attempt on her, but unfortunately Frank has made up his mind and goes through with it.
• You Can't Go Home Again: She can't go back to Fagan Corners anymore because her father disowned her for accidentally causing her brother's death.
• You Didn't Ask: Her response when Matt points out that she never told him that she had a brother before as she helps him get dressed for Grotto's funeral.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Said word-for-word when she enters the penthouse Fisk was held under house arrest and sees how luxurious it is.
• You Have to Believe Me!: She's drugged as she tries to blow the whistle on Union Allied's corruption to Daniel Fisher, and comes to in her apartment next to his dead body with a knife in her hand to make it look like she killed him, right as the police burst into her place and arrest her. She utters this trope word-for-word to Matt and Foggy because of how damning the evidence to frame her looks like. Fortunately Matt can hear her heartbeat and know she's telling the truth.
• You Remind Me of X:
  • It's implied that she reminds Frank Castle of his deceased wife Maria because of her determined personality and strong convictions.
  • When she goes off on Ellison for benching her from covering Fisk's release from prison, he tells her that she's just as much of a pain in the ass to work with as Ben was, though it took years for Ben to become that.

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"We are all lonely. I sometimes think that is all life is, we're just... we're just fighting not to be alone."