Headscratchers / Daredevil (2015)

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Season 3 entries go here.

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Schoonover’s testimony and Frank’s history

• During the trial, Colonel Schoonover mentioned he’d known Frank for nearly a decade, most of his military career. Then later, we find out he taught Frank to shoot at 18, so he must have known him his whole military career. There is no way Frank is 26/27; that just doesn’t make sense. So, was Schoonover lying about how long he’d known him? Or is a possible explanation that he was an instructor who trained Frank, then Frank was deployed under someone else for a few years, before Schoonover formed his own unit and he’s referring to how long he “really” knew Frank - ie worked with him?

Why not just kill Healy off?

• What was the point of Fisk arranging a rigged trial for Healy? I know Wesley told Leland that this trial is because this is at a time when they need to minimize the number of bodies they're dropping in light of Karen and Union Allied, but...wouldn't it be more practical to bail Healy out of custody then discreetly kill him so that it looks like he jumped bail and went on the lam? I say this because in Luke Cage (2016), that's the fate Diamondback had planned for Shades after the hostage situation at Harlem's Paradise went south: bail Shades out, then have Zip take him to an old building and kill him there, and no one would question that he went missing; and to be honest, I feel that Diamondback's plan seemed to be a lot cleaner than a rigged trial, as a rigged trial leaves too much room for mistakes to be made.
  • Healy might still have some use as a hitman. If Fisk starts killing everyone who did their job, they'll be like Hoffman and snitch. Healy has a little more leeway than someone like Jasper Evans.
    • Most likely, Healy would be spared this one time. But I think Fisk would have him on notice and warn him that there will be dire consequences for him and/or his family if he screws up again.
  • Healy bashed a guy's head with a bowling ball, he is not getting bail. Shades had leeway since he didn't kill anybody and a good lawyer to avoid remand. It was either kill Healy in detention or get him out.
    • In real life, Shades would have been charged with the murder of Damon Boone.
    • They have to prove Diamondback killed him with a power glove. That is not known to the public and that Shades was with Diamondback during the hostage takeover. Even if he gets charged for being an accomplice Shades could still get bail since they have yet to prove he was involved in someone's death willingly. Healy's homicide, on the other hand, was clear cut and the trial was just a show trial to prove he had a good reason so it's easier to say he is too dangerous to the public (his reaction to someone kicking him out of his bowling alley was to kill him and according to the unconscious bodyguards, he was armed).

Oblivious Matt?

• Frank's hit on the Dogs of Hell happened in Hell's Kitchen the week before his hit on the Kitchen Irish joint. Yet, the show seems to imply that the first Matt has ever heard of the Dogs of Hell massacre is when he overhears some cops at the Irish massacre talking about it while he and Foggy are conversing with Brett. So running into Grotto at Josie's is the first time Matt is hearing about Frank and what he's up to. Which begs the question: Frank was planting men "by the dozens" (in the words of the guys trying to buy weapons from Turk), so how could Matt have completely missed a massive killing spree going on in his own neighborhood? Or not been trying to make his own efforts to investigate it when out Daredeviling?
  • He was kind of busy what with the whole trial. When there's so much going on in Hell's Kitchen, stuff can happen too fast for Daredevil to react compared to a police chase. He isn't Batman; he doesn't investigate all the crimes.

"Guys? He's bleeding"

• When the Nelson & Murdock trio encounters Grotto at Josie's, how come Matt doesn't notice that Grotto is injured long before he passes out? He was able to sense that Grotto's adrenaline was high from across the room, so he ought to also be able to smell blood from that distance (since he used the scent of the dog's blood for part of the way to locate Frank Castle's hideout in the next episode). I can believe it possible that Matt isn't reacting because Karen is there and she isn’t yet in on the secret, but usually the cinematography would provide some indication of when Matt is perceiving something others aren't. Also, that Grotto's bleeding seems like something he would mention to Foggy right from the start, along with pointing out that Grotto is armed.

"You know what would've happened if someone caught us stumbling home?"

• As much as we love Foggy hunting for Matt and hauling him back to his apartment after Frank shot him, it does bring up a lot of questions. First: Where are the police? If they heard gunshots up on the roof the night before, why didn’t they investigate right away? Because if they had, they surely would have seen Daredevil lying there and picked him up. Related: If we assume that Matt was somehow able to evade the police, how exactly does Foggy get him home without being seen? Back alleys would only take them so far, and this is Manhattan in the middle of the morning. Someone has to have spotted them.
  • Cops are busy with gang violence now. Due to the Punisher hits, they are too busy keeping order in the street (see the hospital scene where two thugs started fighting each other) to do sweeps of rooftops.
    • The NYPD has 35,000 cops, and the 15th Precinct has a couple hundred. It's not like a few can't be spared to do vertical patrols and helicopter sweeps looking for the hospital shooter. This show takes place in a post-9/11 New York, where a lone shooter would bring in all the cops in Manhattan, the ESU teams, and the actual military, as the National Guard is stationed a couple blocks from Hell’s Kitchen.

Would Matt, Foggy and Karen have won Frank's trial if Matt hadn't helped Elektra and dedicated himself 100% to the trial?

• As in, had Matt ignored Elektra and focused on defending Frank, would they have won the case?
  • No. Frank still would have tanked it. Matt's lack of availability had nothing to do with the trial other than forcing Foggy and Karen to have to pick up the slack caused by his absence. They lost the trial because Frank made that deal with Fisk and purposely blew up so that he could meet with Fisk, something that not even Matt saw coming. That would have still been the outcome even if Matt had been 100% committed to helping defend Frank. The one thing that would be different is that Nelson & Murdock likely would still be intact rather than everyone being bitter at each other; it's also likely that Jeri Hogarth would also see Matt as worth bringing on at HC&B in addition to Foggy.
  • The Punisher trial was one of those big, important trials, up there with the OJ Simpson murder trial. It's career making stuff for Nelson & Murdock, and for the State of New York, it's the kind of trial where you need to make sure you do everything by the book and make sure your case is watertight and legit. No unreliable or coached witnesses, no inadmissible evidence. You have to get it right the first time because there are no do-overs. Could Foggy have won the trial if Matt wasn't distracted and Frank didn't sink it? That's unclear. The evidence that Frank Castle was randomly killing people, even if they were very bad people, was pretty strong (especially incidents like the hospital shooting where he was in public). In that aspect, it was a bit of a sunk case. Even with both Matt and Foggy on the job, and without Frank going off script when giving evidence, it was a tall order to get a not guilty verdict. That said, Matt should have been working his ass off on it instead of running around with Elektra. Again, even if you lose trials like this, these are still career making trials. Other lawyers, other firms, they watch the lawyers who do these big trials to see who does well and who doesn't because they all want to bring someone on-board. The criminal law fraternity of New York City gossips, nitpicks, critically assesses its peers and competitors. Matt's conduct during the trial almost certainly messed up his career because he so obviously (at least to another lawyer who doesn't know about his secret) left Foggy in the lurch. You wouldn't go near a lawyer who did that to their partner with a 10 foot pole. But any lawyer, whether that be Jeri Hogarth or someone else, would have been impressed by Foggy's diligent preparation and defense of an extremely unpopular accused.
  • Due to how disconnected the Hand/Elektra and the Punisher storylines are, it would've made little difference as far as the outcome of the trial. The main ways that Matt’s involvement with Elektra affected the trial were that he completely missed their opening statement, and Elektra threatened the medical examiner, rendering Tepper's testimony inadmissible. So let's say Matt had firmly ignored Elektra and dedicated himself 100% to the trial. What would've been different about the trial?
    • First off, would Matt’s prepared opening statement have been different from Foggy’s improvised one? Sure. But probably not in any very significant ways. At the beginning, they were still working together on their defense strategy, and were both on the same page as far as what approach they planned to take. So Matt probably would have set up their defense for the jury in basically the same terms Foggy did, just maybe a little more eloquently than Foggy.
    • Tepper's testimony, though, would have played out differently. If Elektra hadn't threatened him, it would have been up to Matt to try and break him down on the stand, and make him admit that the records on Frank's family had been altered, and admit to Reyes' involvement. Could Matt have done it? Yes. If he had his head in the game, there’s a good chance. Meanwhile, their other witnesses–Colonel Schoonover, and the other medical expert who testified about the long-term effects of Frank’s brain injury–wouldn’t play out any differently, and they were both pretty strong witnesses for the defense.
    • But ultimately, Matt’s involvement wouldn’t have been enough to change the outcome. The reason why is because once the guard passed Wilson Fisk’s message to Frank, Frank wanted to be locked up. There was nothing Matt or Foggy could have done about that. Now, had the earlier stages of the trial had gone differently due to Matt being present, the defense might not have been put in a position where they felt that they needed to call Frank to the stand to testify. But in that case, Frank would have found another way to have his outburst and get himself convicted.
    • So, really, if Matt had dedicated himself to the trial wholeheartedly, the main difference would have been to his own professional reputation and to his personal life. Jeri Hogarth was impressed by Foggy’s work, so she and other firms would be impressed by both of them, if Frank's defense had actually been the work of both of them. Matt and Foggy wouldn’t have fought, broken up Nelson & Murdock, etc. And Matt and Karen would have kept dating, and he would have kept hiding the truth from her for who knows how long.
    • Karen would still have kept trying to find out the truth about the shooting of Frank’s family, for her own reasons; and Reyes would still have told them her story after Frank escaped, and Matt would still make his visit to Fisk in prison (to give Fisk a reason to set his trap for Matt at the prison in season 3) and later try to track down the Blacksmith himself. Even if Karen still had her job at Nelson & Murdock, she had promised Ellison a story for the Bulletin, so she still would have visited Colonel Schoonover (whether she still would have gone with Frank to the diner is unknown). Even if she and Matt were still on good terms, as long as Matt kept her in the dark about him being Daredevil, it's likely they would have each kept on pursuing their own agendas without telling each other much, as happened before when they were investigating Fisk in season 1. So once the trial was over, that whole story could play out largely unchanged. There would be differences in the details, but the major plot points would remain the same.
    • The whole Hand storyline, of course, would be very different without Matt’s involvement. But Frank’s? Thinking through the probable consequences, it's actually surprising how little difference it would've made if Matt had been fully involved there.
    • The Defenders and Daredevil Season 3 would subsequently be the subject of the same kinds of changes: there'd be differences in the details but the major plot points are roughly the same. In The Defenders, Matt and Foggy would've defended Luke Cage, rather than just Foggy doing it through HC&B. Rather than Foggy handing Jessica's case to Matt, it would be Marci handing Jessica off to Nelson & Murdock. In the climax under Midland Circle, Matt probably wouldn't be as inclined to remain behind with Elektra and would've returned to the surface with the others. For Daredevil season 3, Matt likely would do all of the same things that he does in the actual timeline, though he probably just goes to the prison as himself rather than steal Foggy's Bar card. Foggy would still run for District Attorney, Karen would still uncover the money trail regarding Fisk's purchase of the hotel and Red Lion (regardless of whether she was at the Bulletin or stayed at Nelson & Murdock), Dex's attacks on the Bulletin and the church would still happen, and Father Lantom would still be killed in the latter, and everything regarding Nadeem's storyline would stay the same.
  • Even if Matt had been 100% dedicated to the trial, that wouldn't necessarily mean that they'd win. Matt’s lack of participation and Elektra’s tampering with the medical examiner are not the real reasons they lost. Both of those things certainly didn't make things better, and the situation definitely would have been better if Matt had been dedicated to the trial instead of trying to balance out his double life… but it stands to reason that Foggy and Karen could have won the case on their own if Frank hadn’t sabotaged his own defense. Frank quite plainly didn’t want them to win. This whole concept of a trial is insulting and absurd to him. He’s not interested in being cast as a powerless victim of his circumstances. Nor is he up for getting the psychological help that a Nelson & Murdock victory would grant him. More to the point, Frank is only interested in meeting with Fisk, which is the main reason he ultimately sinks his own case. Now, if Frank had been a compliant client (e.g. a different person…), Foggy’s arguments would have been solid enough to earn him at least a partial victory. Jeri Hogarth feels the same way, which is why she offers Foggy a partner position. But even without Fisk’s involvement, it's hard to imagine a situation in which Frank would have allowed himself to be let off with an insanity plea. Matt may be responsible for a lot of the disastrous fallout that happens over the course of Season 2, but Frank's trial going down in flames is arguably one of the few things where Matt is not the one at fault.
  • Matt's involvement would have been worthless as soon as Frank's ranting on the stand began. Ignoring that, the show points out that the case was going their way before Frank's outburst, even with Matt's limited participation. However, logically, any half-competent lawyer or for that matter human could have proven that their case is bullshit anyway, since Foggy's defense is that the reason Frank kills so many people is that he enters an extreme case of fight or flight state. Which falls apart when you remember that Frank clearly was actively looking for trouble while armed again and again and again. Once you prove that Frank was planning to kill those people long before he even encountered them, the head injury bit is only going to damage Foggy's case, if anything, because it means Frank's problem is physical (and thus not solvable by therapy) and not mental. Besides, Reyes was influential and corrupt enough to make the reports about the deaths of Frank's family completely disappear, and the law is her home turf, where she'd likely be most influential. If Nelson & Murdock managed to win, Reyes likely would have pulled off a plan B to save her ass, especially against a firm as small and not as influential as Nelson & Murdock.
  • The biggest problem the trial had was that Frank wanted to be convicted so he could meet with Fisk. Matt had to put up Frank as a hostile witness as Frank was by that point playing to Fisk's tune and was not about to help himself. Matt can't be blamed for that as it is a legal practice when the witness suddenly goes off script. The judge wouldn't have allowed it unless she had also seen some evidence of it. If Foggy had been the one grilling Frank, the outcome would have been the same except Foggy and Karen wouldn't be pissed at Matt for supposedly fucking things up. The writers wanted it to be a movement that Fisk maneuvered that contributes to N&M looking bad, and the showrunners have said time and again they wanted Matt to be tortured through the season.
  • Matt, Karen and Foggy weren't trying to actually win the case, they were just trying to get him off death row and get him the help he needed (that he didn't want this help is another can of worms). They all knew he was guilty (Matt and Karen had had their interactions with him prior to approaching him at the hospital). Even in the diner scene, Karen says that deep down she believes Frank belongs in prison. Karen thought that Frank's family needed justice (find the culprits and all), and wanted the truth to come out about Reyes' role in covering up their deaths. Matt just didn't want Frank to be executed. And Foggy didn't want to deal with Frank at all but was outnumbered, so he did his job and defended his client to the best of his abilities.
  • It's unlikely that Matt would've been able to ignore Elektra. Elektra knows how to stick around. But, anyways, let's assume a hypothetical scenario where Elektra never shows up. So we just have the same season but without Elektra, and then the answer becomes trickier. The trial of Frank Castle is a… legal fuck up. I know it looks cool, but it falls into a lot of the traps that a lot of Hollywood falls into. Trials like these take MONTHS, maybe even years, not days/weeks. Sure, days/weeks is how it worked as late as the 1930s, but not these days.
    • There is a lot of legal stuff that Matt and Foggy could/should have done. For example, why was the gallery full with protesters, who had SIGNS? Who in their right mind would allow that, and other nitpicks. All of that is stupid, but they have a story to tell so fine.
    • The next issue is the insanity plea. Why did they think this was a good idea? Frank fits neither of the New York criteria to be declared unfit. It should have never been a conversation. Especially once Frank said he wasn’t insane. Lawyers are in the service industry. They do not get to decide a clients’ pleas/defenses. Lawyers are pizza deliverymen, but with more debt.
    • Second, Matt’s cross-examination. It seems that, much like Healy's trial in season 1, the writers wanted Matt to give a big speech, but that’s not what this is about. He’s supposed to be asking Frank questions, not giving a closing argument.^note And he should be doing it from behind counsel table and not wandering inside of the well, but that's another can of worms It's supposed to represent Matt's inner struggle but still, why put Frank on the stand?
    • But alas, let’s go out even further on our little limb and say that Matt and Foggy did everything right. Imagine no Elektra and Nelson & Murdock actually acted like competent lawyers. Even then, it’s hard to say what the outcome would've been. It was a losing battle, but they could have won, even if it was on a technicality/appeal. Of course, that really wouldn't matter much since by the time Frank took the stand, he wanted to be locked up so that he could meet Fisk in prison. But let's say that that outburst never happened. Even knowing what we know, that Frank was railroaded and that his family was set up and all, he deserves to go to prison. He does not deserve the insanity plea, which would have landed him in a care facility, not back out on the streets. He deserves punishment. He killed people. Yes, they were bad people. People who themselves had committed many crimes, but they are still people.

The "car accident" lie

• After Matt's "car accident" (his and Foggy's excuse for him being attacked by Fisk and Nobu), I keep thinking, why didn't Karen think it was strange that Matt never went to the hospital? He was all stitched up, but she knew he didn't go to the hospital. It's clear that the story raised red flags for her and led her to correctly think Fisk was involved, but the lack of a hospital visit for a car accident that required stitches isn't something that can be explained away...
  • Matt knows someone that stitches people up for free. With the little revenue Nelson & Murdock is making as a startup, they don't want to pay expensive bills for stitches.

Was dissolving Nelson & Murdock the right thing?

• So, obviously by the end of the season 2 finale, Matt realizes that he probably shouldn't have pushed Foggy away, instead of trying to talk to him. But about dissolving Nelson & Murdock... was it the right call? I feel that in the context of the show, this question doesn't seem like one with a "yes" or "no" response, because it’s so individualized.
  • On the one hand, I feel that Foggy should have cut Matt some slack because balancing two demanding jobs is hard, and reality says "If you can't handle all your commitments, you need to cut back on some of them." At the same time, I understand Foggy may not be a guy who's willing to cut Matt some slack when Matt's negligence was also actively harming the success of their firm, especially when his Daredevil activities caused him to miss important meetings or miss important parts of the Frank Castle trial. It's Matt’s responsibility to choose which side of his life he prioritizes, and at that point in time, he was prioritizing Daredevil– which is a side of his life that at this point, Foggy still doesn’t completely approve of. By the end of the season, Foggy was too invested in maintaining his own integrity as a professional, and Matt was too embroiled in his Daredevil-related activities, for them successfully work together as partners. It was a situation that pretty much called for them to split up– as devastating as that is. And anyone who's read the comics will know there's a lot of precedent for this, since Nelson & Murdock dissolved several times in the comics over these sorts of disputes, too.
    • Foggy had to go through four rooftops to find a wounded Matt after the Punisher shot him. And a few episodes after he has to defend the guy responsible for this, because Matt and Karen guilt-tripped him into it. It's not cutting slack, it's "you pinned me with your problems again and I saw you left for dead like two weeks ago." Viewers tend to forget because they're predisposed to be sympathetic to Matt due to the show focusing on him, but to Foggy, Matt is his blind friend who almost died twice and keeps putting himself in harm's way with a smile on his face. To Foggy, Daredevil is not a job, but something Matt shouldn't do if Foggy has to pick his body off the floor.
    • There's not really much that Foggy could have done that much better. I mean, yes, he probably could and probably SHOULD have been WAY more supportive of his friend's secret identity, but logically, he was really screwed either way. There's no realistic way for there to be a scenario where Foggy could give Matt the "If you can't honor all your commitments, cut back on them" spiel ("Hey Matt, maybe you shouldn't commit to so much stuff on this Castle case if you have so much on your plate as Daredevil!" or "Hey Matt, how about taking a vacation from the devil horns and focusing on this case for the next few weeks?"), and even less realistic would be Matt happily conceding to Foggy's logic and going along with either of those proposals.
  • Foggy is a long-time friend with Matt and actually cares about him getting injured and going out in his costume to beat the shit out of bad guys. Foggy never liked that idea but he mostly kept silent about it because Matt managed to balance out his day work as a lawyer with his nighttime activities as Daredevil. All Foggy accepted that he couldn't talk Matt out of it. It started to become a bigger issue for Foggy after Matt got shot in the head. And moreso when Elektra showed up. Because of Elektra's toxic influence, Matt's activities actually began interfering with their work on Frank Castle's trial, causing him to miss out on important meetings and be late to deliver the opening statement. Foggy got screwed by Matt's mistakes and it puts both of them at risk of losing their jobs. That bothers him and he's tired of it. Also, Matt doesn't really explain the whole situation to Foggy (he has a really bad habit of only explaining half-truths), so to Foggy, it just looks like Matt is running around with Elektra and getting himself hurt (plus, Foggy didn't really care about Elektra; all he really knows about her is that she was a very bad influence on Matt in college). Foggy being extremely livid with Matt after Elektra threatened their witness is also entirely realistic. If your law partner was bailing out very regularly and also messed up the most high profile, career make or break trial of your career in doing so, you'd probably react the same way. If you think of Matt's addiction to violence (manifesting through his obsessive need to be Daredevil, and the way he falls back into bad habits with Elektra) as akin to any other addiction, this is Foggy's moment of "I can't help you if you won't help yourself." In fact, on a closer watch, it seemed that Foggy was pissed off enough that any explanation from Matt would fly over his head, that all Foggy cared about was the fact that Matt was ignoring all his other responsibilities to do…whatever he was doing with Elektra.
  • Matt's always been doing what's best for the city, it's normal that he sometimes has to fail his friends, and of course they will be disappointed, but Foggy should know better. On the other hand, Foggy probably wouldn't have had such a problem with it if Matt had just told him right off the bat that Elektra was back in town and she was the person who donated all that money to their bank account (if he had, I imagine Foggy would have argued Matt out of some if not all of his date night ninja fights, allowing him to contribute more to Frank's trial). But Matt kept it a secret, and unnecessarily so. And Elektra came back at a really bad time and she's stirring things up in a way that they don't need to be.
  • I would think at some point, Foggy should realize if he wants to be safe he shouldn't really ask too many questions about Matt's alter ego, because the more he knows the more useful he becomes if Fisk or anyone else wants to use him as leverage against Matt.
  • I feel we should consider Matt's and Foggy's perspectives during that final scene in "The Dark at the End of the Tunnel" when Foggy is packing up his office:
    • Foggy's perspective: From Foggy's perspective, dissolving Nelson & Murdock seems to have been a tough choice. Foggy needed some time on his own to thrive as a lawyer, and establish some self-confidence and independence. He’d been stuck in Matt’s shadow for too long, and during Frank Castle's trial, he showed that he had been holding himself back, and wasn’t getting the credit he deserved, stepping up when Matt was unavailable. That said, Foggy’s line from that scene about hoping Matt would convince him to keep the Nelson & Murdock partnership going, and being relieved when Matt doesn’t, seems vital here. It suggests that deep down, Foggy wants to stay with Matt, he doesn't want to end Nelson & Murdock. And if Matt had argued and been in the right mindset, it's very likely that Foggy would have gotten cold feet and changed his mind about leaving, and they'd also talk Karen into staying with them. But the logical side of Foggy recognizes that breaking free of the familiar and challenging himself to grow is the right step, and that he and Matt need some time away from each other to figure things out. Eventually, Foggy does come to dislike working in the high-profile, high-stress environment of Hogarth Chao & Benowitz, comes to miss the kinds of clients that he and Matt helped when they were partners. It was obviously never going to be a permanent separation. But for now, it's a good thing to see Foggy getting out there and developing as a lawyer.
    • Matt's perspective: When looking at it from Matt's perspective, I feel it’s more difficult to say if dissolving Nelson & Murdock was a good choice. At the moment of the breakup, he makes the decision to let Foggy go when he’s convinced that he doesn’t need his friends, and that Foggy and Karen don’t need/shouldn’t be around him. After the fight with the Hand, and Elektra's demise, Matt seems to break out of that mindset by telling Karen about his secret identity, so I have to imagine that perhaps he does regret that things came to this. There are a lot of interesting prospects for Matt's future after The Defenders. But from an emotional standpoint, this decision may lead to some challenging times for him. Charlie Cox has said when The Defenders opens, Matt's spent two months mourning Elektra's death and possibly has become a recluse. I have to imagine Matt may also be having regrets over his actions in season 2 of Daredevil and is trying to atone for what he did.
  • It's not if it's a right choice or not, it's not a choice, period. The firm went under since they didn't have any clients who could cover their bills, as it's implied that Reyes drove them away. Elektra probably didn't even pay Matt after the whole Hand debacle. They have no retainers, clients that pay in peach cobbler and strawberry rhubarb, and Frank's case was done at standard pay, yet they had to cover multiple expenses like the psychologist's hotel bills. Add to that the fact that Matt pretty much gave up being a lawyer at this point, and there is no option where they can afford to keep the office.
    • I'm sure they could have stuck it out and tried reaching out to their friends or anyone they knew, maybe asking any lawyers at other firms if they'd be happy to pass their cases off to Nelson & Murdock? Or was the Nelson & Murdock name too tainted by the trial? If Matt's heart had been in the firm, Matt, Karen and Foggy would have soldiered on. Maybe they'd be in a financial slump for a bit but the three of them would persevere.
  • From a character development, breaking up Nelson & Murdock was a necessity, and probably for the best for everyone involved– Foggy in particular.
    • On Matt's end, he's becoming confident in his double life after Season 1, but his interactions with Frank Castle and Elektra, and his failure to balance his problems, have forced him to reevaluate everything. He is still learning how to be a superhero, and is figuring out how to live the life he’s chosen. He ended the season solid in his conviction that he needs to be Daredevil, and is unwilling to accept Foggy’s criticism. As of right now, he is privileging the Daredevil side of his life, which ties into his decision to tell Karen– someone who might accept and support his actions as Daredevil as he goes through the process of figuring out his priorities.
    • Meanwhile, on Foggy's end, it's important to realize that he is a self-deprecating person by nature, often dismissing his own abilities in favor of Matt’s (that Matt graduated summa cum laude and Foggy only graduated cum laude may have had something to do with it). Then there's the imbalance of Foggy's self-doubts being paired up with Matt's excessive self-confidence. Matt is secure in his own position to a degree that verges on arrogance– which is great for superheroing, but not so good for engaging in what’s supposed to be an equal partnership. Matt emphasizes his skills and opinions over those of others, and Foggy is insecure enough to let him. In season 2, Foggy is finally given an opportunity to realize how good an attorney he is when he finds himself having to step up in Matt's absence (standing up to Reyes, and later Frank Castle's trial). Season 1 was about establishing Foggy’s role in the friendship, and then Season 2 shakes it up and takes it to the next step. Foggy learned to value himself, and to place his own abilities and opinions on the same level as Matt’s, if not above them, as he watched Matt lose control of his own life. As Foggy said, he deserved better than the kind of friendship Matt was offering him right now.
    • In short, remaining together as Nelson & Murdock at this point in their character arcs would just be holding back Foggy from developing as a lawyer and Matt from developing as a superhero respectively. And they both recognized this. Despite all of their fights, their final interaction when Foggy's packing up his office was civil and respectful. They both understood that they need some time to themselves. Plus, they both have great opportunities ahead of them: Foggy got the fancy corporate job he dreamed of in law school, where his skills were valued, where he’d be able to thrive by himself; Matt got plenty of opportunities to figure out his life as Daredevil, both through all of the free time he now had, and his teamup in The Defenders. With that, and the events of season 3, Matt got a chance to rebuild and reorient, to figure out his new dynamics with Karen and Foggy, and to become a more experienced superhero. Enough for Matt and Foggy to miss each other and their little private firm.
    • Worth noting, but it looked like by the end of the season, Matt and Foggy were already finding their way back to each other. Maybe not professionally, but at least personally. And they do still have so much in common. That they both want to help the little guy is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a post-season 2 fanfic somewhere where there's an argument from Foggy that was spot on: Foggy has known Matt for years and has had time to adjust to and befriend Matt. Their friendship isn't built on some new weak foundation. Which is what made the reveal in season one so painful for Foggy, but also what allowed them to endure. Because this isn't some fledgling thing. This is a deep true friendship. But Foggy's only known Daredevil a short time. He hasn't had time to befriend/adjust to Daredevil. It's kind of like how new parents might not know how to adjust their relationship to accommodate the baby, and have to ask themselves "How do we still find time to be a couple and a family?" But Matt and Foggy got to figure it out. And stepping apart professionally is part of that.
  • At first, it hurt a lot watching Matt's relationships crash and burn. I could see every move that he did wrong. But on further viewings, I honestly felt like Matt couldn't have done much different. Foggy wasn't very understanding of Matt's choices even when Matt was honest. He gave Matt the all-clear to pursue something with Karen and then got jealous when they were together. I also believe that a part of Foggy was a bit resentful—even subconsciously— of Matt's ability to hear lies and smell emotions and stuff, and that that never went away and only got worse as the season went on. I can't say that I don't see how Foggy was pushed to his breaking point, but it felt like a lot of that had been building up inside of him for a long time and he wasn't expressing his frustrations properly. So it blew up at a very poor time, considering everything Matt was dealing with. When Foggy said he was relieved that Matt didn't want to give Nelson & Murdock another go...I think he meant it. To Foggy, Matt is a little bit much to handle. The problem is, instead of figuring out how to make it properly work, Foggy cut ties at the first sign Matt sounded like he wanted to.
  • The way I see it, Nelson & Murdock couldn't function as a law team anymore was for a number of reasons:
    • 1. It was in the middle of "Seven Minutes in Heaven" that Matt chose to end his partnership with Foggy ("I'm done apologizing to you for who I am"), and early/mid "The Dark at the End of the Tunnel" when he chose not to make a last-minute appeal to Foggy. One has to remember that Foggy nearly broke up the partnership in season 1 upon finding out that Matt had hidden his Daredevil identity. Even after Karen forced them to reconcile, Foggy never seemed entirely happy about it, but Matt continued his vigilante activities.
    • 2. As time went on, Matt became more convinced of the value of his work as Daredevil, and incidentally, it meant his outlook on justice diverged significantly from Foggy's. From Foggy's point of view, Daredevil is a choice; from Matt's point of view, Daredevil is a compulsion and a necessity for Hell's Kitchen. They're both right, but they're so frustrated by the other's inability to see it their way that neither one can back down. The narrative shows that they are very uncompromising to what they want from each other: Matt just wants Foggy to see that it's either the Matt Murdock-Daredevil package deal, or nothing, that Daredevil isn't some phase of life that Matt will get over eventually but rather is part of who Matt is; and Foggy wants Matt to realize that it's very hard on Foggy and Karen when Matt's night life causes him to miss out on important meetings and half-ass his work on Frank's trial, that Matt needs to realize when he's in way over his head and just occasionally back off and let the police do their jobs. It's this lack of flexibility that hurt them both, the sort of thing that they should have just talked out like adults (and preferably with a mental health professional). In general, a lot of people seem to think that Matt and Foggy splitting inherently indicates a failing on the part of one or both of them, when the reality is that it's more like a natural part of life; sometimes friends go different ways. For a while their goals in life were aligned (or they thought so), and now they aren't.
    • 3. Matt and Karen then guilt-tripped Foggy into defending Frank Castle, forcing Foggy to, against his better instincts, take on a no-hoper of a case on behalf of someone who didn't want to cooperate with his own lawyers (especially as Frank clearly doesn't care what they do to him because he'll always do his own thing regardless of any legal judgement). The trial was ultimately blown because Frank was a wild card who refused to play along at every opportunity, suggesting that the biggest issue wasn't Matt's unreliability, but the firm actually taking the case in the first place. The trial itself was due to the general fallout of Matt mixing his vigilante life with his lawyer life. Couple that with Elektra having a major negative impact on Matt's work on the trial and hurting their defense with her intervention, that's a lot.
    • 4. Another thing Foggy may have taken issue with was the increasing antisocial behaviors Matt began exhibiting. If Matt went out for big cases, actually rested when he needed to, and planned ahead, I think Foggy could get behind the Daredevil act. For example, the first time Matt faced off against Frank Castle, Frank shot him in the head. When Foggy asks his friend to rest, Matt gets into a threatening fight position. And Foggy was totally valid to ask Matt to rest, given that Matt's senses cut out right after this as he clearly has brain trauma. Can you imagine how it would've gone if this hearing loss took place at the precinct while negotiating Grotto's plea deal?
    • 5. To me, I feel that Matt loves Foggy (platonically, of course), that Matt realizes he needs Foggy, but I tend to feel that Matt doesn't respect Foggy, like, at all. I felt like Season 2 really drove this point home. Not only does Matt not respect Foggy’s time and work professionally, he also doesn’t respect Foggy’s friendship or Foggy’s (above and beyond) attempts at rebuilding trust. Even in the whole walk-and-talk scene in the beginning, Foggy tells Matt not to make fun of him when he is expressing (in much less judgey ways).
    • 6. It's also important to note the role Wilson Fisk plays in influencing Matt's decision to prioritize his Daredevil side over his lawyer side. In season 1, Matt ultimately tried to stay somewhat within the legal system, using Daredevil to supplement the legal work that he, Foggy, and Karen did in taking down Fisk. In season 2, Matt's confrontation with Fisk in prison undermined that accomplishment. To Matt, it felt like the justice system had failed to work. When he ran into Frank on the Blacksmith's boat, he told Frank that he was considering breaking his no-killing rule in dealing with the Blacksmith, and Frank had to talk him out of it. Matt considered killing the Blacksmith because he'd seen that working within the law had done nothing to stop Fisk. By the end of season 2, the only part of Fisk's organization that actually had been wiped out for good was the Russians: Fisk was in prison and regaining power through taking over Dutton's underground ring; Madame Gao was still running her drug business; Matt defeated Nobu's faction of the Hand, but the factions run by Bakuto and Madame Gao are still active. In my opinion, Matt didn't make his last-minute attempt to save the firm not because of all his past failures with the trial and with the Hand, but because he thinks that distancing Foggy and Karen from him will keep Fisk from going after them (you have to remember that Fisk is angry at both Matt and at Foggy).
    • 7. Because of this, the three people of Nelson & Murdock by the end of season 2 all have different perspectives on what the justice system is: For Karen, it’s finding the truth and writing it for everybody to see, no matter how long it takes her to find the information, or how dangerous the road to answers becomes. For Foggy, it's upholding the law, and while there are gray areas, he still believes in the system; believes that it works. For Matt, it’s putting on that mask and doing something about the tragedy he hears and feels every day, because the justice system failed to stop Fisk, and he'll fight these injustices no matter the personal cost.
  • Asking if dissolving Nelson & Murdock was the right thing, is like asking if a couple that agrees that they are in a mutually unhealthy relationship should separate. Remember that at the beginning of the season, Nelson & Murdock was not making enough money to support them financially, and even less so after the disaster that was Frank Castle's trial and Reyes being implied to have driven clients away from their doors. On top of that, Matt has strained relations with Foggy and Karen, and Foggy has trust issues with Matt. None of those things are good to have in a law firm, especially one of three people. Foggy and Matt had reached a point where they realized they obviously needed some time away from each other. If they had decided to try to push through it, they probably would have all ended on much worse terms both financially and relationship-wise. Their issues would have festered to the point where their friendship was ruined or they even hated each other. As it stands, by breaking up the firm, they at least had a chance to cool off and remain friends. Plus it does seem that Matt realized that Foggy deserved the chance to get the respect, recognition and pay that someone of his skill deserves, all stuff that Matt knows he's not been delivering on as of late. On top of that, Fisk had just threatened that he'd go after Foggy as well (and it was obviously not an idle threat given his manipulation of Foggy's family in season 3), so Matt may have felt that he had no choice.
  • It seemed that Matt felt it was the right thing to do. It's clear that his visit with Fisk, and Fisk making very clear that he would be coming after Foggy as well, scared the shit out of Matt, so it's possible he felt he had no choice but to create distance between himself and Foggy. But even before the encounter with Fisk, in 2x09, Matt had started to feel pretty guilty about the whole “I insisted we take Frank Castle's case against your wishes, Foggy, and oops, I’ve got too much Daredevil stuff going on, you can handle Frank, right?” thing. It seems Matt had started to realize that Foggy deserved a helluva lot more than what he was getting from Matt. Foggy didn’t want the practice to dissolve, so it could be arguable that if Matt asks him to try again, Foggy would be very open to it. But some space from each other was a good thing (especially on Foggy’s part; it looks like he REALLY needed a break from Matt, even if he didn’t realize it). So, it was a good thing at that particular time.
  • It was the right thing, at least for Karen and Foggy, and it would have been very difficult to avoid it. Foggy and Matt had reached a point where they were never going to be able to work together, and trying to keep soldiering on under those conditions could have led to a major, possibly friendship-ending explosion. Foggy was prioritizing the law firm, Matt was prioritizing Daredevil, and if they’d stayed together, they were going to continue clashing due to this disconnect. By taking a healthy break from each other, they had an opportunity to get their heads in order. Besides, ignoring the later events of season 3, it was pretty much a guarantee that the separation wouldn’t be permanent. Foggy, who has always operated in Matt’s shadow, got the chance to step out on his own, build his self-confidence as a lawyer, and work in the big, fancy law firm he dreamed about in college. He had time to reflect on his friendship with Matt, and through the encounters with other superheroes, came to better understand Matt’s point-of-view. Karen, too, had a chance at a fresh start, working alongside someone (Ellison) who gets her, knows her secrets, and was there to support her. Through her work at the Bulletin, she got a little bit of breathing room to reconcile the shame and trauma she’s been struggling to cope with within her own life (of course, until Dex came knocking). And she got some room to rebuild things with Matt without all of the usual Nelson & Murdock drama getting in the way.
  • In the long-term, breaking up Nelson & Murdock needed to happen. If you rewatch the show, you’ll notice subtle (and not so subtle) moments where Matt either brushes off Foggy’s concerns or outright goes against them. In the pilot, the way Matt handles taking Karen’s case is an example. He doesn’t really listen to Foggy’s concerns and just goes on what her heartbeat tells him without fully explaining to Foggy why they should. Later on, when James Wesley hires them to defend Healy, Matt overrules Foggy's objections to taking the case again without giving a real good explanation for his decision-making. Then there's Frank Castle's case. Despite Foggy’s genuine resistance against taking the case, Matt and Karen pressure him into taking it anyway. This isn't to say that they’re not good partners, but Matt needed to get out of his own head/ego for a while and truly take Foggy’s professional opinions into account. Taking a step back was necessary to make Matt think about how talented Foggy really is and appreciate what he brought to the firm, and keep that in mind when Foggy proposed Nelson Murdock & Page at the end of season 3.
  • The only way in which season 2 would have ended with Nelson & Murdock still open and Matt, Foggy and Karen still working together, would be if Matt had been able to find SOME kind of balance between being Matt Murdock and being Daredevil. Most likely, that would involve Matt telling Karen his secret identity earlier. Because it's likely that if Karen knows Matt is Daredevil, it would certainly have eased some of Foggy’s anxieties (he wouldn’t feel quite as alone with the knowledge of what his bff gets up to), and perhaps that would have led Foggy in turn to become more understanding and supportive of Matt’s double life. Frank Castle's trial was kind of a disaster from the get-go, and maybe nothing would have changed, but who knows what would have happened if Matt had actually devoted himself to the trial instead of allowing Elektra to manipulate him into going out every night. When his life as Matt Murdock started to crumble around him, he probably started thinking “maybe Stick was right after all; all of this is just a distraction” and it wasn’t until he had pushed everyone and everything in his normal life away that he realized just how empty his life is without all of it, and only then does it finally sink in that while Matt needs to be Daredevil, he doesn’t want to just be Daredevil. Of course, it then ended up flipping back to that "fulltime Daredevil" mode in season 3, but eventually Matt figured things out.
  • If Matt were to get his head out of his ass and start concentrating back on Nelson & Murdock, then maybe the three of them could have reconciled to keep the firm going after everything that happened in season 2. But this means that Matt would have to own up, explain where he’s been, and apologize for everything, with an awful lot of "I'm sorry"s going around. He would have to come clean about all the hurt he caused Foggy and Karen, stop abandoning them at crucial times, and put all his time and energy back into Nelson & Murdock. His abandoning them during the trial did a lot of damage, so he’d have to really make amends before Nelson & Murdock could go back to being a normal law firm again.
  • Breaking up the firm was kinda inevitable after all of the secrecy. Matt thinks he can do the double life of both Matt and Daredevil while withholding important information from Foggy and Karen. He loses Foggy because he abandons his professional responsibilities, and refuses to tell Foggy why, or what he’s doing, until it’s too late. He loses Karen because for whatever reason, he refuses to trust her with one of the most important facts about his life, even as they begin dating; which means he then also hides from her the same things he’s hiding from Foggy. His behavior looks really sketchy (running off to meet with his “private client”, not showing up in court, Elektra in his bed), and while the viewer knows there’s an explanation for it, he doesn’t even try to give that explanation to Foggy or Karen, until the damage has already been done and they don’t want to listen.
    When you have a partnership, the one thing that is absolutely necessary in order for everything to work out is honesty. And Nelson & Murdock was dangerously lacking in it. So, the falling out was just a matter of time. And let’s not forget that Matt isn’t just Foggy’s partner in the law firm but most importantly his long time friend. So if anything, he probably was expecting a more straightforward attitude from Matt and he didn’t get it. And thus the falling out ensues.
    Could the three have worked it out with more talking? Well, sure, they could. It would be very difficult, though. Too many mistakes were made already. Honesty at the last minute isn’t worth as much as being honest and open from the start. Matt needed a wake-up call in order to understand that he was falling back into bad habits, pushing everyone away by keeping them in the dark. Matt's actions have consequences, and he needs to receive some kind of backlash for his wrong decisions. Therefore, as much as it’s sad for all of us fans of the Matt, Foggy and Karen as a kicking ass law firm trio, the dissolving of the firm couldn’t not happen after the hot mess Matt created.
    Relationships -personal and professional- need constant work, openness, honesty and trust. After all the lying, both Foggy and Karen couldn’t trust Matt, and for that the firm couldn’t have a future under those circumstances. Losing his closest friends is supposed to act as a catalyst for Matt, making him realize the importance of those relationships and driving him to repair them. Telling Karen about his crime-fighting alter ego is a first step in the right direction.
  • Breaking up the firm was the right choice (although it certainly wasn’t easy to watch). While Matt, Karen and Foggy probably could have soldiered on a bit longer, that at best would have only delayed the inevitable, as this falling-out was bound to happen eventually. By the last few episodes of season 2, the three of them were rapidly heading in different directions: Matt was focusing on his superheroics, Foggy was focusing on making a name for himself as a lawyer, and Karen was plunging headfirst into the world of investigative journalism. They were all prioritizing different things, and all holding each other back in different ways. As it is, the one good thing is that the partnership ended as calmly as it did, with all parties agreeing that this was probably for the best.
    • It gave them time to regroup. Karen’s new job at the Bulletin gave her the freedom to fight injustice that she so desperately needs, with a boss who knows her backstory and understands her. Foggy’s new firm allowed him to build his confidence as a lawyer, giving him the high-powered legal career he dreamed of in college and offering him an opportunity to finally step out of Matt’s shadow. Matt finally had a minute to, well, figure things out in general, with the events of The Defenders and season 3 giving him some perspective on how he wants to live, and on how he might balance the two sides of his life. And all of this being an opportunity for them to reflect on their relationships with each other outside of the emotional whirlwind of season 2.
    • Now this separation of Nelson & Murdock doesn't end up being permanent. Of course, this situation was further complicated by The Defenders due to the fact that Foggy and Karen think Matt was killed in the destruction of Midland Circle. But once season 3 plays out, Nelson & Murdock rides again. The firm meant a lot to them, after all, and they’re good friends who enjoy working together. Ideally, this time apart has allowed their friendship to rebuilt, stronger than ever. While it's questionable, . Matt, Foggy, and Karen separated and reunited on numerous instances in the comics, so the ending to season 3 ultimately makes sense.
  • One thing to remember about Matt, and this has major consequences for how things turn out, is that he’s got a lot of baggage when it comes to forming attachments to other people. In particular, he's got a lot of abandonment issues, as his own mom later points out in conversations with Karen in season 3. His mother left him not too long after giving birth to him due to her postpartum. His father abandoned him (in a way). Stick abandoned Matt the moment he tried to express his emotions with the ice cream wrapper bracelet. And before he left, Stick made sure to tell Matt to not let other people get too close. And later, Elektra left him because Matt didn’t react in a way that she (and Stick) wanted. The end result is, when Matt feels rejected by Foggy and Karen, it reinforces Stick’s “programming.” That informs a lot on how he deals with people in the present. His life-long experience has been that if he allows himself to love, then he will be abandoned, so he puts up walls to try and protect himself, pushes people away and/or doesn’t fight as hard to salvage his relationships with these people when they do decide to leave. That's why he doesn't fight as hard to convince Foggy to stay. It's why he had to have been brought to his lowest, to his most desperate, to finally come clean with Karen about his secret.

What if Nelson & Murdock hadn't closed?

• So Nelson & Murdock's closure led to the events of The Defenders and season 3. But what would've happened if the firm hadn't closed, and Matt, Karen and Foggy remained together as a firm?
  • The short answer is: not much would change in The Defenders, but a lot of things would have to change in Daredevil season 3.
  • For The Defenders:
    • Matt’s lawyer stuff isn’t a huge deal in The Defenders except insofar as it gets him into contact with Jessica. The only big difference is that instead of Foggy referring the case to him, it's Marci referring the case to Nelson & Murdock. At the police station in "Fish in the Jailhouse," Foggy might try to be in the room with Luke, Matt and Jessica as the police are questioning them, but I think either Strieber and Misty would try to edge him out, or he’d just say basically the same stuff that Matt does in that scene.
    • As far as personal interactions go between Matt and his peeps, they would shift from "they weren’t really talking but they’d thought he stopped being Daredevil and now they’re mad/concerned because he is", to "they are talking, working together as a firm, and they thought he stopped being Daredevil, and now they’re mad/concerned that he’s doing it again". So you start slightly different but end up in pretty much the same place fairly quickly.
    • Arguably the biggest change in the first half of The Defenders is that Matt would meet Luke much earlier in the timeline. Foggy was Luke's lawyer in The Defenders, and if Nelson & Murdock was still open, then Matt would've been part of Luke's counsel and played a role in getting him out of jail. It would mean those two would have at least a minimal acquaintanceship starting out.
    • The thing about The Defenders is most of the focus for Matt is his relationships with Stick, Elektra, and Jessica. So changing stuff outside of those isn’t gonna have huge ripple effects.
  • For Daredevil season 3, it's a very complicated answer.
    • For starters, it depends on whether Nelson & Murdock still exists at the beginning of the season. Because if the end of The Defenders (Matt dying and then not coming home to Karen and Foggy) plays out the same, then nothing really changes in season 3. Foggy would've closed the firm and gone to work with Marci at Hogarth Chao & Benowitz, while Karen either would've started her own private investigation firm or taken on a job at the Bulletin.
    • If Matt didn't stay behind in Midland Circle, returned to the 29th Precinct with the others, and he, Karen and Foggy resumed working together, then at least the first half of season 3 gets totally written. All the character interactions are different. Matt would still have to deal with Fisk sending the FBI after him following the prison fight, and Fisk having Dex frame Matt for the Bulletin attack. At which point, Matt might push people away in a similar fashion, but mending the relationships would be much easier without the buildup of all of season 2 and all of The Defenders, and the first part of season 3; especially without the months of Matt pretending to be dead.
    • If that’s more of the starting point, Fisk would have to take a different approach to go after Matt, because Matt would be more of a visible target. And then in order for the situation to be so different, Matt’s emotional/mental state would have to be different, which would change the nature of his arc. So not only would his dynamic with Karen and Foggy be different, but he wouldn’t be forced into so much time with Sister Maggie, and they wouldn’t get the chance to bond (in fact, it's likely she would've just not existed at all, and her part would be divided between Claire and Father Lantom). If Matt wasn’t so distanced from Karen, and wasn’t staying at the church, then Karen might not end up hiding there and Father Lantom might not be killed by Dex.
    • TLDR; having Nelson & Murdock together at the start of season 3 would pretty much negate all the major setups for both plot and character arcs for the season that had been done in season 2 and The Defenders. It would basically mean an entirely new version of season 3, with Fisk’s goals being the only thing in common. There might also be some additional and different natured interactions between Matt and Dex, beyond the ones we get in the actual season. Which would probably change things after the Bulletin atttack since Matt would definitely recognize him afterwards.

Could Elena Cardenas' death have been prevented?

• When Wilson Fisk originally doubles his offer to the tenement residents and Elena Cardenas tells Nelson & Murdock that she still doesn't want to move, why didn't Matt fight harder to convince her to move? With everything he experienced up until then, he should understand how ruthless and violent Fisk is in dealing with innocent people who get in his way. Karen and Foggy should understand this as well, to a lesser extent. Karen may understand the danger after being framed for a brutal murder, and after being attacked by that guy in her apartment or the thugs outside Elena's apartment, and she and Foggy may still choose to take on that danger; but Elena is an innocent, helpless bystander in this case. By encouraging her to stand firm, even in the face of all of this violence perpetrated by or on behalf of Fisk, their priority should have been to get the innocent bystanders out of harm's way.
  • I feel like they didn't try as hard as they should have because they naively thought that Fisk wouldn't stoop that low in such a high profile case. I'm sure in hindsight they all realized that they should have convinced Elena to move, but at the time the firm were riding high on small wins, like clearing Karen or the whole Healy matter. They probably thought they'd be able to legally stop Fisk in moving the tenants, or at least use the case to bring to light the truth about Fisk's criminal dealings. Karen was blinded by her obsession with finding anything to link Fisk to what happened to her and the embezzling at Union Allied she had uncovered. Matt probably thought he could protect Elena. They didn't want to give in to the bullying. Of course, this all might be moot because of the fact that Fisk by his own admission had Elena killed simply to lure Matt into Nobu's ambush attack.
  • Elena's death might have been prevented, but this wouldn't stop the Hand, thanks to having their building secured right away and the heroes giving up on stopping Fisk legally. If they have to give up the moment an innocent might get in danger, they might as well stopped the moment the Russian kidnapped a kid if that's how Daredevil wants to play it.
  • But the boy was before Matt knew who Fisk was and what he was dealing with. Unlike Foggy and Karen, Matt knows with certainty that Fisk is behind the bombings, Anatoly's murder, Detective Blake's murder, Vladimir's murder, among other crimes. And in season 1, Matt's more focused on using Daredevil merely as a means to supplement the legal work he and the rest of Nelson & Murdock are doing to stop Fisk through legal means.
  • Even if Matt, Karen and Foggy collectively decided to wuss out and tell Elena to move, the problem was that she didn't want to move. Even if they insisted, "You need to take the offer and move out," she'd just go to another law firm. And even if Elena had been persuaded to move, it's likely that Fisk would have probably just killed her anyways, or found some other innocent soul to be bait as part of Nobu's trap.
    • I'm sure in hindsight, Matt realizes he should have done something like go to her apartment as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and threatened her into taking Fisk's offer. Even if Elena thought Fisk had sent Matt, I think that would have been enough.
  • In the spirit of the original question, yes, Elena's death could have been avoided. Most likely, Matt is so wrapped up/confused with figuring the whole vigilante thing out that he likely wasn’t giving the Elena situation his full attention, especially since when that case first came up, he was more focused on locating Vladimir. Yes, Matt knows that Fisk doesn’t kid around. It's hard to tell what Matt was thinking there, but yeah, her death very easily could have been prevented. Then again, Fisk being Fisk…who knows.
  • From a technical standpoint, yes Elena's death could have been prevented. However, from a storytelling standpoint, it's necessary, because it would have undermined the power of her role within the narrative if she lived. Elena is meant to be a heroic character because of the fact that she refuses to back down from the powerful forces trying to take over her home, and she symbolically represents the spirit of Hell's Kitchen itself, and the people who Matt is speaking for as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Seeing her fight back is different than seeing Matt– or even Karen and Foggy– fight back, since she’s not a main character and isn’t a superhero. If Elena just gave up because Matt told her to move, a lot of what made her character powerful and interesting would have been lost. Although Matt certainly could have gotten her to move by telling her something like "We can move you to a safer neighborhood if you just sign the offer they're giving." Elena’s murder is also a bit of a wake-up call for the heroes. At this point, Matt, Karen and Foggy know that Fisk is underhanded and dangerous, but they are still underestimating just how far he is willing to go to get what he wants. And Matt, who is most conscious of the threat in light of Detective Blake's murder, does think Elena should take the offer. He argues about it with Foggy and Karen. But at this point, none of them think that Fisk would have her killed– particularly since he’s just made himself a public figure. Her death is a turning point in the show, since it reveals to the trio exactly who they’re dealing with. Yes, it’s really sad that Elena died, and it’s easy to say that they all should have known better… but from a storytelling perspective, her death– and Matt, Foggy, and Karen’s failure to prevent it– makes sense.
  • There's only really one way that Matt, Karen and Foggy could have prevented Elena's death. They should have worked to convince Elena that as the building owners were starting to become violent, it wasn't worth staying in her apartment. That her own life was not worth losing over a building. That’s what Matt, Karen, and Foggy should have done, but again, it seems they were a little too naive about how far Fisk was willing to go to achieve his goals.
  • In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't really have changed the story much. Here's how it would've gone: Matt goes to Elena's apartment that night, and tells her that contrary to what Foggy had said earlier that day, she needs to take the money and leave tonight. Subsequently, he's there when Fisk's hired junkie arrives to do the deed. Matt fights off the junkie, and after getting the information he needs, knocks him out and escorts Elena to safety. Since there's no way of knowing if Fisk will try again, and Matt knows the cops are crooked, he has Elena stay with Brett (much like Brett later does with Ray Nadeem's family in season 3 after Nadeem double crosses Fisk to get Karen away from Dex). Matt would be enraged over Fisk trying to have an old granny killed, and the next night, he'd still go out and walk into Nobu's ambush. (If the cops were called when Matt was fighting the junkie, they'd be crooked ones working for Fisk. This wouldn't alter Fisk's plans at all other than that he would have to pay a few other people off to ensure that the trail of breadcrumbs to lure Matt to the docks was still intact.)
  • When Elena reports that Fisk has doubled Tully’s offer, Foggy inexplicably changes his mind and tells she should not accept it. Matt tells Foggy he shouldn’t have done that, and he's right: they're in no position to prevent Fisk from carrying out his plans for Elena's building. Given these circumstances, Foggy and Matt’s job is to negotiate with Fisk's lawyers to get the best possible deal for their client. They should've been sitting down with Mrs. Cardenas and giving her the "come to jesus", where they explain the harsh realities of litigation. Although it's just as likely that while this would prevent her death specifically, Fisk would just find someone else to kill to rile Matt up for the Nobu ambush.

"You don't get to create danger, and then protect us from that danger"

• What was Foggy referring to when he said that line? Was he referring to Elektra? Was he accusing Matt of creating these dangerous situations?
  • Foggy is probably at least partially referring to Elektra, but he says it in a way that suggested he was being far more general than that. Foggy is criticizing Matt’s Daredevil identity as a whole, and the danger he’s referring to is every risky situation (Wilson Fisk, Frank Castle, Elektra, the Hand…) that Matt chooses to throw himself into, and which he then escalates and drags back with him into the other parts of his life. Foggy's not accusing Matt of actually creating the danger, he's saying that Matt has a habit of getting himself involved in dangerous situations that wouldn’t have otherwise affected him– and thus the people around him. Matt, by the very nature of his behavior as a superhero, makes violent situations worse, and he is notoriously bad at keeping the two sides of his life separate. Foggy is making solid points… though it does mean he has to be a bit of a hypocrite since he's also ignoring his and Karen’s aptitude for getting into dangerous situations without Matt’s help.
  • Well it's not like Foggy is wrong, as seen here, but he was probably referring to stuff like Matt pressing him into taking Healy's case, which was what brought Matt into Fisk's affairs, or Foggy's near-death experience in that Dogs of Hell biker club doing recon about the massacre in "Bang". Matt does create a lot of dangerous situations.
    • Yes Foggy makes some good points, but because he's not privy to what Matt sees, he also tends to ignore the fact that Matt is one of the few that is doing something about the crime in the city. And as for that creating danger comment, that's not necessarily true from the perspective of someone who is aware of what Matt is up against every night. The Hand's plan will affect the city and so would have Fisk's. Matt's not perfect, but he is helping the city. Things are always going to get worse before they get better. And Matt's not the only who made mistakes in season 2.

Servers wiped clean in the Incident?

• In "Kinbaku", Karen starts to dig into Frank Castle's past by going through the Bulletin archives. She has to do this manually through stacks of old printed copies, rather than just go on a computer, because, as Ellison points out, all of their server's were wiped clean in "The Incident". So firstly, were they wiped clean due to a high electromagnetic field from the portal or from a localized weapon usage near them? The way Ellison mentions it, it sounds like they were wiped clean, not physically destroyed. So did this effect happen citywide to all servers not in a super protected room? Did this happen to every storage device? Even cell phones? What was the worldwide fallout from such a massive loss of data? There are just so many ramifications to consider...
  • The scee seems to imply that some sort of EMP did occur during the incident, but i doubt that this would eradicate all the data. The reason this happened at the Bulletin is most likely that, as a small local business, their equipment was possibly not up to date and backup routines not as strictly followed as they should have been. Bigger corporations would store their data more secured and have multiple means of backup (CD copies for example would be safe from EMP damage) to keep losses at bay. And with the Internet, many such data are not stored on location at all. Also, as the example of the Bulletin shows, the data is not lost entirely - many businesses still keep the paperworks, so it is just a bit harder to access and it might take some time to restore it digitally. Okay, lots of cellphones and laptops got grilled in the process, but if you don't store your data properly, that's your fault. Overall I imagine the fallout might be limited, and as always, there are those who lost and those who came out clean.

Did DD forget he had super hearing?

• In 'Condemned', when Vladimir lowered his voice, why didn't Matt just stand back and go "You're not fooling me," instead of going closer to get sucker punched by Vlad? If his super hearing's able to pick up exactly how many cops were outside, he should have been able to not only able to pick up heartbeats, but hear Vladimir's whispers from a distance.
  • It's somewhat explained in "Nelson v. Murdock", when Foggy gets a phone call from Brett about the demise of the junkie Fisk paid to kill Mrs. Cardenas. Foggy asks why Matt didn't overhear Brett on the other end of the line even though Foggy was in the same room as Matt. Matt replies, "It doesn't work like that," and explains that he has to concentrate on "letting it all in." This still doesn't explain why Matt wouldn't choose to "let in" Vladimir's voice, considering Matt was trying to figure out how much Vladimir knew about Fisk at the time.
  • Matt’s claim about not hearing Brett on the phone seems to be a half-truth. It does take focus for him to perceive specific input because he receives so much of it. He has to filter out and sort through a massive amount of sensory stimuli in order to make sense of anything around him. So yes, technically he does need to “focus on letting things in”– though it’s a matter of hearing too much rather than not enough. On the other hand, in that scene in "Nelson v. Murdock", Foggy is only a few feet away, and out of all of the input Matt is receiving in that moment, Brett’s voice should be one of the loudest sounds. Given the strength of his powers in the show, he should have no trouble hearing it… so we assume he’s downplaying his abilities for the sake of not freaking Foggy out any more than he already has.

Eyeholes in final costume

• How did Melvin know not to cut eyeholes into the mask?
  • Matt probably told him offscreen. We never heard his entire conversation with Melvin about the costume.
  • Melvin told him that the black pieces were tougher than the red, so he didn't know Matt was blind.
  • Also, Melvin could see that Matt's original mask had no eye holes. So figured logically that he really didn't need them. Hence no eye holes in the new mask.
  • Who said it doesn't have eye holes? Case in point. Further, the promotional artwork, like this example, suggests reflective pieces. All of that suggests standard eye-pieces in standard eye holes. That makes sense for keeping part of the secret—that the man beneath the mask doesn't need them. Further supporting the idea that the eye pieces are normal ones is the fact that in season 3, Fisk makes Melvin build a copy of the costume for Dex to wear and there's no indication Melvin did any alteration to the designs he made for Matt other than slight adjustments to accommodate Dex's physique (which also explains why the costume looks weird on Dex).

Did Matt deliberately kill Nobu or not?

• Ok, at the end of the fight with Nobu, Matt notices that he is doused in gas, Nobu throws his weapon, Matt grabs it and throws it at the lightbulb above Nobu, causing sparks to fly and for a Japanese BBQ to ensue. Why is the point that Matt killed a man never addressed in any way after the fact? I know the circumstance of the killing is considerably less grave, considering it was self-defense instead of killing in cold blood, but he still killed somebody while wearing the mask. Matt's fear of taking a life in the name of justice was a pretty big plot point during the series, so I expected that there would be another confession scene with the priest, but nope, Matt seems to be pretty okay with it. Dunno, found that a bit odd.
  • By the time Matt left, Nobu was still alive, as evidenced by Wesley asking Fisk what to do with him. Matt would have easily been able to tell, and Nobu's weird physiology meant that it would take the fire a while to kill him. So either he's blaming Fisk for not putting him out (and preventing Matt from putting him out), or he's assuming that Nobu survived somehow. Note that in later conversations with Foggy, he's still referring to Nobu in the present tense.
  • It looked like Matt threw one of his escrima sticks to stop Nobu's oncoming attack, and the stick was reflected into the lightbulb. Could it have been an accident?
  • Matt throws one of his escrima sticks at Nobu's oncoming attack (Matt is clearly aiming it at Nobu), which deflects the stick into the lightbulb. The stick leaves Matt's hand at a straight angle towards Nobu, not upward towards the light. It was almost certainly an accident. Nobu being flammable at that point was incidental. It's very convenient writing but in no way was supposed to be a "Matt killed someone" moment.

  • There's also the fact that Nobu himself made it pretty clear that he considered it a duel to the death, and this was after Matt gave him an obvious and lengthy chance to walk away. Even setting aside the fact that it was almost certainly an accident, Matt probably doesn't dwell on it too much simply because Nobu had a couple chances to back off. He ultimately made his own choice and Matt is probably satisfied even being alive after the flaying Nobu gave him.
  • It's also likely that Matt assumed Nobu would run off to put out the flames, not keep fighting while still on fire. Setting a guy on fire and allowing him to escape to put himself out is still not killing.
  • In Matt's later confession, he flat-out admits that yes, he went there to kill Fisk, so he was presumably at the time perfectly fine with killing Nobu is he needed to. Also, when he talks in confession later, he implies that he didn't actually kill anyone during the fight, so yeah, Matt probably thought Nobu was still alive at the end of the fight, just incapacitated.
  • That makes perfect sense...within the confines of Season 1. Come Season 2, it's revealed that Nobu survived the incident, or he died, and got resurrected by the same means through which the Hand revived Harold Meachum and Elektra. Matt is shocked and was seemingly 100% convinced the guy was dead saying he saw him burn to death. And Stick implies that it's not the first time Nobu survived something fatal like that. Which means the only explanation is that Matt considered it an accident and feels little guilt about his involvement in quite a grisly burning.
  • Well I think Matt blamed Fisk for the incident, because Fisk or Wesley or one of his other men could have used a fire extinguisher or something to put out the flames, but didn't since Fisk didn't want to work anymore with Nobu. In fact if Fisk didn't beat up Matt and forced him to run, maybe he would have tried extinguishing Nobu's flame (though that is a wild guess). It's a bit of shifting blame to pin Nobu's torching on Fisk, but since he was the guy who wanted Nobu out of the way, it's not like he didn't have responsibility in Nobu getting torched.
  • The first time around, Matt was kind of in a "kill or be killed" situation. At that point, Nobu seemed to be superior to Matt and wielding a deadly weapon.
  • It all boils down to premeditated intent. Matt didn't go into the dockhouse looking for Nobu. He went there looking for Fisk. But when Nobu showed up, it was all about self-preservation at that point. You could argue that him going out into the streets as Daredevil is premeditated, but aside from roughing up baddies and throwing them off rooftops, he's not really trying to kill them. With Fisk, on the other hand, I think Matt felt that ultimately, the only way to end Fisk's pervasive control over Hell's Kitchen was to kill him. Ultimately, he was right as we saw in season 2, Fisk was very much still in control of things from behind bars despite the power vacuum created by his arrest and Frank Castle's killing spree.
  • There is a MASSIVE difference between premeditated murder, manslaughter and killing in the name of self-defense. If Matt had willingly plotted to kill Nobu (which is impossible, because he didn't know Nobu would be there), then it would be murder, which is what Matt is against. If Matt had made the decision to kill Nobu because it was convenient and he had no regard for the consequence, it would be manslaughter. But Matt was about to die. He didn't want to kill Nobu (or at least he didn't want it to come to that) but it was kill or be killed. That is self-defense.
  • Matt feels he didn’t break his code because he didn’t actually pull a finishing move on Nobu. He fought Nobu, Nobu caught fire unintentionally, and Matt didn’t exactly rush to put the fire out. Still incredibly sketchy, but definitely not murder, in the sense that it wasn’t pre-meditated (and Matt would probably have a legal justice system definition of murder). Let's remember that none of the Defenders (except for when Jessica Jones killed Kilgrave) have ever pulled finishing moves. They fight and then the bad guy dies by some other way - usually killed by a non-Defender character (like how Stick decapitated Nobu, Karen killed Wesley, Fisk killed the Russians, Colleen killed Bakuto, Ward shot Harold Meachum, Elektra killed Alexandra, Trish killed Jessica's mom and Sallinger, Mariah killed Cottonmouth, Tilda killed Mariah, etc.). In the MCU, the Marvel superheroes can’t kill, but certain villains require killing. So it's always ancillary characters who actually do the killing, or the killing proves to be non-fatal.

The fate of Fisk's driver

• A related question - didn't Matt clearly throw one of his sticks through Fisk's driver's chest, which made the van tip over? No way that wasn't fatal or accidental.
  • Through the windshield, not the guy's chest. The stick is lodged in the glass and he retrieves it later. Although, crashing a large vehicle in that way should lead to several, potentially life-threatening injuries.

Fisk's escape plan

• In the season 1 finale, the FBI arrests the various people Fisk had bribed, but apparently it takes some time to find Fisk himself in his secret address, because otherwise they surely would've arrested him first? The question is, why doesn't Fisk escape the moment he realizes his cover is blown? Now he apparently just hangs in his apartment, waiting for the cops to come there. Okay, he has an escape plan in case he's arrested, and he puts it to use... But said escape plan is very dangerous and risky, and in the end it does indeed fail. So why doesn't he simply get away when no one yet knows where he is? Why wait for the cops to take him?
  • He wanted to speak to Vanessa, and make sure she could get out. There's a reason the heroes and Fisk's own associates see her as his weak point: because she is. Also, Wesley had just been killed, and with Felix Manning not yet promoted to replace him, Fisk's planning abilities are severely truncated. If Wesley was still alive, Fisk could have trusted him to get Vanessa to safety while he went another way, and they'd meet up before the end of the night. But without him, Fisk needed to see to her safety personally, which cost him.
  • Immediately after the arrest montage, the next we see is Fisk on the phone saying "make the arrangements, wait for my call" to presumably Francis, or more likely, to SAC Hattley. It is fairly obvious that he wasn't just hanging at home, but desperately setting up a full escape plan, that would put both him and Vanessa outside the reach of US law enforcement. Running away in one of the vans would have served him very little. And again, there is also the factor of Wesley not being around, which makes things more difficult to set up.
  • Even if Fisk is busy arranging for everything, it doesn't explain why he has to do it in an apartment which the FBI can trace back to him. Why can't he and Vanessa hide in an abandoned warehouse or something? Based on previous episodes, there seems to be a an abundance of those kind of places available for shady meetings and such. That way the cops might never have found Fisk before he and Vanessa were ready get into that helicopter, so the dangerous escape from the police convoy could've been avoided altogether.
    • Actually, it makes sense that he stayed there. Everybody who knew something important about Fisk's operations was already in FBI custody, so the location of those safehouses was most likely compromised as well. Fisk's own apartment was shown as being top secret, as Madame Gao finding out its location was treated in the same way the TSA react to an airport security breach. So the fact that the FBI eventually got there makes it clear that Fisk and Vanessa had absolutely nowhere to go within the city.
    • Also, at this point in time, Fisk doesn't have quite the influence over the FBI that he has by the start of season 3. Certainly Tammy Hattley is already working for him, and maybe a couple others close to her, and that's probably all he's got. His long-term plans to drive Ray Nadeem into debt have yet to be implemented or have only just started, so...the non-corrupt FBI personnel outweigh the corrupt ones, meaning Fisk is going to jail, no question about it. His best option is what we ultimately see in season 2: with most of his assets either frozen or seized, he has to find new ways to make money on the inside while waiting for the Nadeem operation to reach a breaking point.
  • It's important to note that we don't really have a timescale for when the arrests are happening. For all we know, all of the arrests were probably happening at the exact same time, giving Fisk very little time to actually react. When police are going to be arresting large numbers of people in multiple locations, as is often the case when busting organized gangs, they generally will carry out simultaneous raids to keep conspirators from escaping or tipping fellow conspirators off that the FBI was on the way, so there's no reason to think that the FBI hitting Fisk's apartment happened later in the day.
  • Fisk knew full well that Hoffman had been rescued, since he would know that the team he sent in failed. From that point on he should have either taken steps to kill Hoffman (do something akin to what Fisk had done to Rance), discredit him (like he'd later have done with Nadeem had Vanessa not decided to have him killed) and / or taken the opportunity to flee, since it would realistically have taken more than a day for Hoffman to confess everything and for the Feds to have it all checked out. Certainly in Real Life this would never have happened, since it can take weeks, months or years for information from an informant like that on an organization like this to be taken, researched and verified and for all the warrants to be attained, not to mention (as shown) he had to be debriefed by his lawyers first. The difference is that in those cases the criminals generally do not know that someone is ratting them out, nor do they have the resources and connections that Fisk is shown to possess throughout the series, so the odds of him not having a chance to escape (or for that matter, to take action to cover his tracks or shut the guy up) are extremely low.
  • Except Leland sucked half his profits, most of his organization is in ruin and Fisk's stubbornness to stay in Manhattan reduced his odds of a successful getaway. When his most trustworthy henchman remaining is Francis, some guy that he gave a beat down recently for failing to protect Wesley, it's pretty clear his resource management sucks.
  • And season 2 shows that the government did freeze most of Fisk's bank accounts. He set up a protection fund for Vanessa, but he didn't exactly leave much for himself. So when Fisk recruited Frank to take out Dutton, he might very well have been in a bit of a financial hole, needing to not only pay off Stewart Finney and Valdez brothers for his inside protection, but also continue payments to any guys carrying out his street stuff on the outside, as well as raise the money necessary to buy the Presidential Hotel via dummy corporations.

Why wasn't Vanessa also taken into custody?

• I know this sounds stupid, but I would think that when the police arrived at Fisk's apartment to arrest Fisk, they would also be arresting Vanessa as well. I mean, okay, Hoffman never mentioned anything about her, but I would think that the police would want to at least question her, on the grounds that she had knowledge of the crimes Fisk had committed.
  • I think that's why Fisk married her, even if the police bust in she has spousal privilege and lie that she only discovered his activities after the wedding. Not a perfect defense but she doesn't have much involvement in Fisk's syndicate aside collateral and the police has better suspects.
  • They weren't married. He was only proposing to her when the police entered and were handcuffing her. Unless a marriage license was acquired offscreen, spousal privilege does not quite yet apply. The fact that Vanessa is not a US national (when Matt visits Fisk in prison for info on Frank Castle's escape, he threatens to contact Customs to bar Vanessa from ever being allowed to set foot in the United States) may also complicate matters.
  • Besides: Spousal Privilege would only have meant that Vanessa couldn't be compelled to testify against Fisk. It wouldn't give her immunity from being prosecuted as an accomplice if they were able to prove she was involved. And by threatening to prosecute her, they likely could have gained some leverage over Fisk. (Admittedly, that's a very dangerous strategy). I think the better explanation is simply that they didn't know in advance who she was or that she would be there, and they didn't have an arrest warrant for her. They were serious people sent in to face a very dangerous man, and they had a specific objective. I imagine that in that position you are trained to focus solely on the objective you've been given, and not try to improvise new objectives.
  • It does seem strange that the cops didn’t want to question Vanessa. But Fisk was always very careful when it came to her, so I imagine she'd probably plead the fifth all the way through any questioning.
  • Season 3 suggests that it was to keep Vanessa from going to jail. To Nadeem, the reason Fisk decides to flip on the Albanians for Agent Nadeem at the beginning of the season is because he learns that the FBI are going to have Vanessa arrested and charged as an accessory to his crimes if they're able to track her down. There might be a kernel of truth to this being one of Fisk's motives for becoming an informant. Although considering Fisk already had several agents at the FBI in his pocket before he was arrested, and has been manipulating Nadeem for three years, it could be argued Vanessa was always in the clear to come back to the United States and Donovan was kept in the dark about certain details that Fisk instead trusted Felix Manning with (for plausible deniability purposes). So it's more likely he primarily gave up the Albanians to manipulate Nadeem into letting him out of prison (combined with his own shanking by Jasper Evans), then manipulate the FBI into taking out any potential competitors who don't want to pay his new extortion tax, while using Vanessa's freedom to justify his means.

Thou shall not kill

• Why does this series treat killing criminals like a big deal in the MCU? The Avengers (who presumably inspired Matt) only stopped killing their adversaries with Age of Ultron (for no given reason). Yet Matt acts like doing so is the Moral event horizon, and Frank Castle gets treated like a monster for doing it. Why doesn't Frank just ask "Yeah, cause Cap's 9mm and Stark's missiles are just for show. Don't see how a thousand Hydra agents or middle easterners are any different from these guys. Murderous scum is murderous scum."
  • They actually went right back to killing after that. They murdered at least nine of Crossbones' thugs.
  • Well, Frank Castle may be targeting criminals for elimination, but he's committing criminal actions himself.
  • The Avengers are a military task force sanctioned by S.H.I.E.L.D sent into an active war zone. Daredevil and the Punisher are violent individuals who beat up local street criminals that only they have proof they were criminals. It's not even a cop justifying police brutality by saying soldiers are allowed to shoot on sight, it's Joe Blow saying he is allowed to beat someone with a baseball bat after hearing him doing a crime because the government gives guns to their infantry before sending them in the battlefield.
  • One. Tony Stark operated of his own accord both before and after the avengers were assembled. Iron Man 2 was all about him not being put on a leash.
  • Two. I was kind of thinking Frank would've said that on the rooftop, not in the courtroom, as a way of demonstrating that most people are willing to ignore the spirit (albeit not the letter, thanks to SHIELD, which itself is highly constitutionally dubious) of law enforcement appointment, accountability, and due process, if it means killing the bad guys. There was little more doubt in New York over the guilt of Frank's victims as there was for the Chitauri.
  • True, and that's a good point. Basically, what it boils down to is the moral and legal difference between justifiable homicide in self-defense/defense of others vs murder, public knowledge, and politics. We know that in Iron Man 1 and 3, not only did Tony go after the bad guys of his own accord, but he even caused a death of one helpless enemy each time. Namely Raja's second-in-command as seen in this scene, and the unnamed security guard he knocked out and left to drown. Both instances making him no different than a murderer. The general public, however only knows he went after active terrorists and casualties resulted. No one can prove that his actions weren't in self-defense. Same with the Avengers. By all appearances, their actions are necessary to protect the lives of themselves and others. With Frank Castle, it's public knowledge that he committed multiple murders, often of people in custody, or otherwise incapacitated, and the question of how much innocent life he was risking only adds fuel to the fire (remember that Karen and other innocents were definitely in danger when Frank was shooting at Grotto in the hospital). The bottom line is, anyone trying to charge that incredible green guy or the blonde dude with the hammer, would pretty much be committing career suicide due to the combination of lacking proof, the Avengers's status as national treasures and heroes, the overwhelmingly bad press that would come with going after people of their status on behalf of terrorists (especially given A.I.M. almost killed the President!) and finally, due to them having friends in high places, such as their multibillionaire member.

How does Wilson Fisk's entire operation run?

• I'm somewhat lost at how Fisk's syndicate works. Madame Gao supplies the heroin and the Russians distribute it, fine. Owlsley handles/launders the money. Okay. What do the Japanese provide? And what's Wilson Fisk's role here? If he's just the middle man, that can't work, because the other three are subservient to him. So he clearly has to have an established power base and money network. What do they all get from working under him? And with that, okay, Fisk's plan is to buy up Hell's Kitchen and rebuild it in both a better way, and a way that he profits from, through Union Allied Construction and the other companies he runs. He's funding this through heroin deals? What exactly is he up to?
  • Fisk makes sure the police and politicians do not bother them. As they mention several times, Fisk controls these NYPD precincts and he even cleaned the docks for Nobu and his men when they asked it, and that's a very useful asset. As for the Japanese, it's implied that Fisk fears them and does not want to have them against him. In "Shadows in the Glass," it's clear that even Wesley doesn't have an idea of why the Japanese are important, and all Fisk can say is "They're a necessary evil."
  • From my understanding, it's less of a criminal enterprise and more like a criminal syndicate. Owlsley, Nobu, Fisk, Madame Gao, Anatoly and Vladimir share equal authority, which is why they (in theory) have to consult with one another before doing big decisions. It's a sort of "mutual benefit" partnership they are supposed to have, but of course, they keep trying to sabotage one another. Owlsley is the money-launderer who moves their money and covers their tracks. Madame Gao manufactures (and probably smuggles) drugs of varied sorts on behalf of the Hand as well as curry favor with Fisk; Anatoly and Vladimir distribute Gao's drugs and seem to provide brute strength in the form of manpower to cover the operations. Nobu (as noted by Wesley) does nothing per se, as he only serves as an ambassador of Murakami's authority and along with Gao is there to make sure the Hand's acquisition of the property for Midland Circle goes smoothly, and if need be, enforced (as seen with his fight with Matt).
    
    Fisk's purpose is more generic. He is a man of connections, politicians, crooked cops, journalists, accountants, you name it. He's basically The Fixer in this operation. Now, over the course of the season, the system changed: Anatoly and Vladimir were killed, along with the rest of the Russians, and Fisk absorbed their duties (distributing drugs and providing legbreakers). Nobu is seemingly killed (temporarily leaving Murakami's faction of the Hand without an ambassador in New York City until partway through season 2). Madame Gao's operation was dismantled, causing her to relocate to Chinatown to regroup and later resume her smuggling operation through Rand Enterprises with help from Harold Meachum. Fisk murdered Owlsley (basically leaving them without a man to cover their tracks), and finally Hoffman sold out what he knew about Fisk's operation to the FBI, and Fisk winds up in jail. By the end of season 1, the entire chain of authority has collapsed and Fisk is the last piece standing. Fortunately, he's got some backup plans, since he's already implemented his plans to manipulate Ray Nadeem and he's got some FBI agents in his back pocket already. In season 2, he picks up a new revenue stream by taking over Dutton's underground prison ring. Then in season 3, whatever assets Fisk had that weren't seized when he was arrested, he has Felix Manning launder them through Red Lion Bank. And those assets, combined with any revenue that Fisk picked up as a result of taking over Dutton's ring, are where he obtains the money to buy the Presidential Hotel.
  • Wesley actually mentions in "Shadows in the Glass" that Nobu doesn't bring anything to the table, and yet they get an equal share. Fisk mentions that they're a "necessary evil." It's likely that they have to let Nobu be at the table because Fisk has no choice; he just can't take on The Hand because they'd have him killed.
  • Nobu and Madame Gao are both members of The Hand. Either they work with them, give them an equal cut and maybe get a little extra muscle on their side, or they all die like dogs.
  • In The Defenders, Madame Gao mentions to Elektra that Alexandra had forged the Hand's relationships with crime lords and corporate partners. This establishes how the Hand curried favor with Harold Meachum to get access to Rand Enterprises resources, and also suggests that Murakami (through Nobu) and Gao provided Fisk the initial start-up money to get things going based on a promise of getting their lot for Midland Circle.
  • Given Fisk worked for Rigoletto, it's more likely that Fisk was already running Rigoletto's rackets in Hell's Kitchen when he began his partnerships with the Russians, Gao, and Nobu.
• Nobu actually DOES provide an important role...as a powerful foreign partner, he keeps other people outside the area from intervening. Along with being capable of adding in materials as an emergency.

That Is Law School, Right?

• In the flashbacks in "Nelson v Murdock," we meet Matt and Foggy in law school. It has to be law school since Foggy's registering for Fall 2010 classes, the show's present day scenes are in winter 2014 (the first episode says it's been two years since "the Incident", which Marvel has said was in 2012). There's no way they did undergrad in 2010, law school, interned at Landman and Zack, and passed the bar in four years. So, why then are they taking language classes and living in dorms? Is that a thing in law school? Is the dorm situation because of Columbia University's housing situation/the housing market in New York City?
  • Law schools do have housing and they do offer language courses since being able to fluently communicate with a client is a big deal (see the various interactions with Mrs. Cardenas; Matt and Karen have less difficulty because they took Spanish in school (Matt in law school, Karen in high school), whereas Foggy can only stammer broken Spanish). So they did their undergrad before, spent three years at law school, took the bar, and interned for a year at Landman & Zack until around early 2014. They obviously then spent a few months to get themselves ready for opening Nelson & Murdock, and the first season opens with them starting the firm.
  • Additionally, many colleges require graduate students to gain a "reading fluency" in a second/third language.
  • Things are made more confusing by the flashbacks in season 2 to Matt's college relationship with Elektra, which supposedly happened "ten years ago". But that makes no sense, since undergrad takes four to five years, and law school takes three. If you start undergrad at eighteen, then when you graduate you'll be roughly 21-23 depending on if you do a fifth year. If you go into law school right after, that's another three years, then you'll be roughly 25-26 when you get out. Even if Matt and Foggy spent a full year interning for L&Z, there's no way they'd be any more than 27 years old at the start of the series, from what the show has implied. So having Elektra and Matt be a thing ten years ago is a) insane, b) illogical, and c) impossible, because if Matt nearly bombed out of his Torts and Civ Pro classes while dating her, that sets it in law school, which should only have been a few years before. It's more likely that Matt's old relationship with Elektra was five years before the start of season 1 at most. Season 3 seems to think that, going off the 2012 graduation date printed on Foggy's Bar card when Matt is using it to pose as Foggy at the prison. The "ten years ago" thing is probably because the writers were trying to give the audience the feeling that Matt and Elektra have been separated for a long time, which wouldn't work as well if they had broken up in 2011-2012 which is only a couple years prior, without thinking through the details.

Matt's Disposable Canes

• Matt being blind, he walks around with a white cane as part of him "no, really, I can't see" cover when he's in civvie mode. If he needs to get somewhere in a hurry, though, like if he's chasing down a car or rescuing someone, the first thing he does is ditch his cane in a random dumpster as he ducks into an alley. If he goes back for the cane later, how does he locate it again? Does he just remember which of 80 dumpsters he tossed it in? What happens if a garbage truck comes by on its rounds in the meantime? If he doesn't, how does he pass off all the canes he's likely to lose in the process?
  • He probably doesn't lose that many canes. Normally he plans ahead enough that he just leaves it at home when he goes out for the night.
  • Or he probably buys them in bulk, much like how he bought his first all black civie-style costume in bulk because he never learned how to sew.
  • Said canes are not very expensive in the first place. About ten bucks for a basic model.

Why Hide the Body?

• Why did Fisk's mother cut up Bill's body and dispose of it instead of reporting it to the cops? He was killed in defense of his wife by his underaged son, and she would still have clear marks from the beating she was taking. They would easily have been found innocent, and Wilson wouldn't have been subjected to the trauma of carrying bits and pieces of his dead father to dump in the river in addition to having killed him. He might have even gotten some (evidently much-needed) counselling.
  • Bill was in debt to the mafia. The mafia also had friends in the police department. If a missing persons report was filed for Bill, the mob would know about it within a couple of days at the most, and they would most likely decide that Marlene and Wilson inherited the debt that Bill owed them. Disposing of the body quietly gave them more time to figure out an escape plan. As traumatizing as it must have been to help dispose of his dad's corpse, Marlene probably reckoned it'd be better that than having Wilson be made an example of by the mob.
  • If the Mafia is after you isn't it greatly preferable to be dead with a confirmed corpse than potentially on the run and dodging the Mafia? While everybody else may have suspected that the Mafia collected their debts via murder everybody in the actual organization should have assumed he was on the run, not killed by his son.
  • It's dependent on your interpretation of Don Rigoletto. On one hand, it's possible that if the mafia is after him for a debt, then hiding the fact he's dead might be the worst thing to do because the mob would then positively put pressure on his family. Threatening loved ones to get the debtor to pay up is classic Loan Shark 101.
  • In addition to that: Yeah, no, there's absolutely no guarantee the courts would have seen Bill's death as justified. There are cases of women in abusive relationships who injured or killed their partner in self-defense and ended up going to prison for it. And the Fisks were people who likely wouldn't be able to afford a decent attorney, too.
  • Bill Fisk wasn't just killed in self defense. Wilson repeatedly beat the body with a hammer after he had gone down, indicating clearly unnecessary violence after the first couple of blows in self-defense. Even the best medical examiner would notice that and any charges would at least get upgraded to manslaughter.
  • It's the same reasons why Karen doesn't go to the cops after she kills Wesley: because admitting to the death would mean putting a target on her back.
  • Wilson Fisk was a panicking twelve-year-old child armed with a hammer; in his state of mind, how was he to gauge what level of violence was necessary to defend both himself and his mother? Though it's almost certain that the district attorney's office would be no more likely to see things that way than if it were Marlene who struck the blow, it should be noted that there are plenty of women in prison in the United States for killing men under similar circumstances, especially poor women. Furthermore, this was 1972. It's possible Marlene may well have suspected (or at least feared) that if word of Bill's death got out, Wilson would end up institutionalized or worse, rather than receiving appropriate psychiatric care. The fact that she followed up by sending Wilson away to live with relatives suggests she was trying to shield him from negative consequences, whether legal ones or by way of mob retaliation.
  • Is it possible that Marlene may have told Rigoletto the truth about what happened?
  • I don't really see the issue here. If they admitted to killing Bill, then his debts would only transfer to them since they are the reason he is no longer able to repay them. If he disappears, well, it's possible that Rigoletto would've left Wilson and Marlene alone. In Ben Urich's first scene, when he meets with Silvio Manfredi at the docks, Silvio says that in the the mob's heyday (the late 1960s/early 1970s), the bosses who ran things preferred to see themselves as noble demons who left women and children in peace. It was the arrival of new blood like Fisk and his partners that don't respect the old ways that drove Silvio to retire. So they leave the two innocents alone and target Bill alone. They admit they killed him and they don't seem so innocent anymore. And there's no guarantee that Wilson, being a poor Irish-Catholic kid, wouldn't end up in jail if they went to the cops since the legal system may be biased against him (same reason that Matt's father's murder went unsolved).
  • Maybe they did file a police report, and the police did investigate, only to find no one really wanted to cooperate since Bill was a complete asshole. They decided it wasn't really worth it. And with this being the 1970s when New York City was hit with a massive crime wave, they decided to focus their efforts on more solvable cases.
  • In The Man Without Fear (the Frank Miller alternate retelling of Matt's origin story that most directly inspired season 1, Matt's season 1 and season 3 costumes, and Matt and Elektra's relationship in season 2), Fisk was Rigoletto's bodyguard until he murdered him and took over his operations. Season 1 implies a similar backstory, as Silvio says to Ben that Rigoletto was chopped to pieces. Perhaps Fisk went to work for Rigoletto to work off the debts that his father owed him. This makes the most sense of any theories, since in adulthood, Fisk would need someone like Rigoletto in his corner to ensure that all records of his father were erased, and erase almost all records of his mother that could prove that Marlene Waller (and later Marlene Vistain) was Marlene Fisk.

Why a mask with no eye holes?

• I get that Matt's eyes are useless but if the purpose of a mask is conceal one's identity it shouldn't leave any clues as to what your identity is. I don't have any clue what percentage of people are blind and New York is a big city but being able to narrow it down from every white male about this height, weight and build to every blind white male of that description has got to narrow things quite a bit. Especially when you factor in that there is a blind lawyer who saved one of your victims at the same time a blind super hero shows up, oh and said blind lawyer is also engaged in a lawsuit with you over a slum, and shows up at your girlfriend's place of employment.
  • There's a lot of blind people in Hell's Kitchen alone, not to mention all of New York City a whole. Just because one blind lawyer happens to be opposing legally you doesn't mean he's also the Man in Black kicking your ass physically. Matt doesn't have a choice to oppose him as a lawyer either. His client says 'Go to court' so he has to take it to court. It's the same reason people don't realize Bruce Wayne is Batman; there's no reason to go looking for Batman around Wayne. Also there are fabrics thin enough that you can see through them up close but yet thick enough people can't see through them at a distance. And he's not the first superhero to wear a mask with no visible eyes. Case in point.◊
  • And don't underestimate the fact that most people who see a guy doing the kind of stuff Daredevil does, with or without eyeholes, are not going to assume he's blind. They wouldn't just dismiss the idea, it probably wouldn't even occur to them.
  • Plus, almost anyone fighting the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is going to be pretty freaked out and distracted. They're trying not to die while killing this crazy ninja who's jumping, spinning and flipping all over the place. They're probably not going to get a good look at his eyes, and even if they do, they probably aren't thinking that "huh, I wonder how he sees clearly without eyeholes?"
  • There's a reason Zentai suits aren't just worn by blind people: fabric that looks opaque from outside can be pretty see-through if it's up against your eyes. Even if it darkens things too much to see comfortably, it's perfectly possible to have a mask made of a sturdier material with a thinner and more see-through (but still opaque-looking from the outside) material specifically in the eyehole area.
  • Matt's eyes are frequently not directed where a seeing person's eyes would be. That could be a deliberate part of his ordinary-blind-guy act. Or it could be completely genuine and unintentional, since for all his other super senses, his eyes really are useless. If his eyes are covered by a mask but he is clearly aware of everything around him, people are likely to assume that the solid-looking mask is an illusion and actually uses fabric that he can see through. If his eyes were visible, the fact that his eyes don't behave normally could give the game away. Matt might not even know himself whether he could convincingly portray a seeing person with his eyes unconcealed—he would need someone to give feedback on whether it looked right, and Foggy and Karen weren't in on the secret until after his costume was established. Hell, there are multiple occasions in season 3 where Matt pretends to be sighted, such as his entire stint infiltrating Fisk's hotel, during which he even interacts with Dex (though based on the way Matt is dressed, it looks like Dex thinks Matt is a homeless junkie), and later visiting the prison "posing" as Foggy.

Parkour!

• During the freerunning sequence, Matt jumps over a wall and spins while doing so, around his longditudinal axis. I can't see what sort of practical purpose that was supposed to have. Or that of the side-flip dismount into a parachute roll that he does later.
  • The first might have been to make sure his toes cleared the edge of the wall he was jumping over. The second...Rule of Cool? Maybe it's just his way of keeping his skills honed.
  • In the comics Matt got his name for not planning how he was going to land when he jumped off of buildings. Perhaps this is an example of Shown Their Work or Occam's Razor. It could be Rule of Cool.

Creel's How Old?!

• So Battlin' Jack fought Crusher Creel. The timeline of Matt's flashbacks suggest that took place mid-90s (1994, if Matt's roughly 30 and the show takes place in 2014). But Creel, in Agents of SHIELD, looks to be in his early 30s, not the mid-late 40s he'd have to be to have established himself as a major boxing contender in the mid-90s and then aged 20 years. Creel's there for the shared universe stuff, but seems too young to have fought Jack.
  • Eh, there's wiggle room. If Creel was around 18 when he fought Murdock, then he's 38 or so in Agents. He's clearly healthy, so you can just say he aged well. There is the question of how Creel managed to get a reputation at such a young age, but if he was using his ability as much as possible, he could drop fighters fast enough to make a very big stir in the circles Jack traveled. It's not like he was billed as some master veteran boxer Jack wanted a fight with. Just someone who everyone expected to win—but Jack's handlers still needed him to throw the fight to make sure.
  • Brian Patrick Wade, who plays Creel on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., was born in 1978, which makes him 38 as of 2016. A reasonable age for the character.
  • Creel being very young actually makes a lot of sense. Young prospects get ring experience and "seasoning" by beating up on a long string of washed-up and mediocre fighters before ever fighting anyone dangerous. That's why every boxer of note has a string of 20 or 30 wins at the beginning of their career. Journeymen with losing records like Battlin Jack would make most of their money padding the records of young prospects. However, the fact that Jack seems to think that fighting Creel is an opportunity to make a name for himself doesn't make sense in real-world boxing.

Why did the mob want Jack Murdock to throw the fight?

• Was Jack that much of a favorite to beat Creel? So much so that the mob was willing to throw money at him and threaten his life to make sure his ass went down in the fifth? I mean, yes he kicks Creel's ass in the fight, but they didn't know for sure that this would be the outcome. And while it's possible the mob didn't know that Creel was using literal fists of steel to win his fights, they wouldn't have cared as long as they could turn a profit from it. From the perspective of the guys who set the odds, Creel had been dropping fighters left and right (as mentioned above, he must have been to have the reputation that he did), so the odds should have been heavily in favor of him beating Jack (in which case it would be more lucrative to pay off Creel to throw the fight, since a longshot bet that wins brings in a far greater payout).
  • That's assuming this was the end game. Assuming Creel was on the mob's payroll (or if they just assumed they could buy his loyalty), Jack taking a dive to Creel could have just been planned as the lead-in for a later fight against an underdog that they planned to have Creel throw for a major upset. We don't know how much Jack was getting paid, but it probably wasn't a huge amount of money. Jack had a pretty good reputation as a fighter himself, so even if they thought Creel would win, it would be worth it to guarantee it.
  • Jack is definitely not the favorite. The mob simply wants to make easy money by betting on the fight's outcome. They expect that Jack will be easy to bribe because he's lain down before. Convincing Creel to drop would be much harder. Even though the mob is betting on the favorite (Creel), they're betting on him to win in the fifth round, which increases their payout significantly. Bribing a hard-up boxer to drop in a specific round is a pretty classic mob racket, among many other forms of match-fixing that they engage in.
  • Plus I think Jack was said to be hard to k.o even if he was mediocre so that might had played with the odds of going down on the 5th instead of winning by points. And a con is only one if people believe it, winning was probably already an upset but if it looked like Creel took a dive that might be bad.
  • Was Creel even empowered yet? According to "Agents", he got his powers from an experiment; that experiment may have occurred after his loss to Jack Murdock.
  • I was under the impression that the mob was taking the bets. Your average gambler is gonna prefer to bet for Jack because of those 3-to-1 odds... meaning triple the payout if he wins. The mob makes money because as the rounds go on more and more people will be betting on Jack, hoping for that triple payout (and they lost a lot of money paying people out when Jack did win)
    • There aren't a lot of bookies take bets midfight, and if they do, the odds change according to the fight. Plus it's 3-to-1 because not only it's unlikely to happen so you'll lose money betting on it...but you don't have to put a lot of money on it to win big while someone who bet against Jack will put a lot of money since it's almost guaranteed payout but need a big cash upfront to be worth it (example: if you want a $25 payout, you need to put $75 on Creel or $8.50 on Murdock, the bank would prefer the one who bet on Creel losing). Even an average gambler understands that low payoff is better than a lost so there is more money put on Creel than on Murdock.
    • Those particular mobsters were definitely not the ones taking the bets. Bookmakers take bets before the fight begins and adjust the odds as bets come in so they make money no matter who wins. Only people making bets try to fix the fights because they make money only when they bet correctly.
  • It definitely makes Sweeney look petty. He kills Jack simply because Jack refused to throw a fight? A guy who was legitimately trying to do right by his disabled son and who just wanted some pride in the world and let his son be proud? There was no real reason to kill Jack Murdock. The guy fought and maybe Sweeney lost some money. He'd eventually gain it all back through other matches.
    • We don't really know what endgame the mob had in mind for Creel's career. They may have lost an opportunity bigger than the amount of money riding directly on the fight. Not to mention, disobeying the mob generally has fatal consequences.

Catholics can't kill

• I haven't watched this series 100% through, but anyone else bugged that the writers seem to think Catholic teaching forbids killing under any circumstances? Matt and his priest seem to talk like they're Quakers with their adherence to absolute pacifism, but Catholics are permitted to kill in plenty of scenarios, including defense of life and property and can even carry out executions in some circumstances. Heck, we even developed a theological doctrine, just war theory, to codify lawful killings. I guess it would take away from all the drama of having Matt torn between his faith and his mission, but it's really jarring when you consider the boat loads of actual Catholic soldiers and police out there who know they can legitimately use lethal force when they have to in order to protect themselves. Oh yeah, and Matt never seems to consider that hand to hand combat can still be lethal.
  • Since Matt actively goes hunting for criminals whom he might wind up killing, he probably doesn't think he could ever count any deaths as self-defense. It also very much depends on what kind of theology he was raised with: if he grew up being told killing was wrong except in the most extreme circumstances (and some people I know didn't even get that), then he'd be afraid of it. Remember that the Catholicism you know isn't the same as everyone else's.
  • I saw it more as a personal thing, with the priest telling Matt that murder isn't the best option, much like Batman, though to a significantly lesser extent. In other words, killing Fisk in cold blood is morally wrong, however neither of them seem to think much of Matt killing Nobu in pitched battle.
  • Father Lantom and Matt actually discuss this later on, where the priest admits that the action of the killing isn't in itself a sin. Wrath is however, and he challenges Matt on whether he's decided to kill Wilson Fisk because he has no other choice and it's for the greater good... or if Matt simply hates the man, and gets his kicks out of death and violence. It's a question that floats around quite a bit, especially since wrath is a sin both Matt and Wilson Fisk possess.
  • The problem is: it's one thing to not condone murdering a subdued or otherwise defeated opponent in cold blood. It's quite another to never ever take the life of another, including super villains actively trying to kill you, your loved ones, and/or innocent bystanders. Every reasonable person in the world knows that when someone comes at you with intent to kill, sometimes you have to kill them to preserve other lives. If average police officers (or even ESU teams) were engaged in the situations instead of Matt, they'd probably shoot these people on sight because that's what they're trained to do with people trying to harm them or civilians. Matt's method means he never really defeats his villains (Wilson Fisk is only biding his time, the Hand killed many innocent people thanks to Matt not killing them when fighting them, etc.).
  • Second season showed that even if Daredevil kills them either the Hand raise them or people like Finn Cooley shows up to take the place of and now they know that to get by you need to be the nastiest. Cop killer being no longer sentenced to death was because the criminal tends to do even more killing if he knows he is a dead man. Punisher almost died by the hands of the Irish because people were ready to go to great length to get revenge and he bit more than he could chew with his gambit. If not Fisk another one could have seen the potential of having a guy like Frank in prison and turning his vigilante work as killing competition. That's why while cops do kill criminal, they are put under a bunch of scrutiny. Even Frank points out Matt's beatings aren't that different: He is a grown up playing Bully Hunter because he likes it that he can get away with vigilante justice and we have only his word that he won't abuse his power, using lethal force just because it's too hard to make sure someone stays in jail would make him even worse than the Punisher, who go straight for the kill because that is what he thinks should be done to any criminal he tracks.
  • Thinking about it, there might be Fridge Horror to this: the only reason Matt has survived as long as he did is because other people killed his enemies for him...or at least the significant ones (example, it was Castle who sniped the ninjas, while it was Stick who finished off Nobu, etc.). In these days, you have murderers, rapists, drug dealers, gun traffickers, sex slave traffickers, kidnappers, extortionists, and a corrupt judicial system. So Matt's big plan if he came across a bad guy who is trying to harm someone is to strike the attacker, hit them in the head really hard...hard enough to put them down, allowing the victim escape, and then leave the bad guys tied up with a note on him for the police to find? What's to stop the guy from waking up and getting away? What's to stop a corrupt cop from finding the guy and killing him or taking a payoff? Who's to say the justice system can even prove guilt since there is no one to testify or make a charge and simply a note left from a masked vigilante who nobody even knows? That one time Matt caught Turk selling firearms, Turk said that he would be out in a week or a couple weeks at most. And sure enough he was. He got out under house arrest, and still was able to tamper with his device so he could go off and do whatever he wanted. So what if someone is caught thanks to Daredevil, gets sent to jail, got back out, and then goes and actually does the crime they'd been trying to commit, while Matt is off fighting someone else? What happens then?
  • And then Turk's house arrest allowed the Hand's plan to fail and Daredevil not killing Castle and saving him when he was too deep in with the Kitchen Irish is the reason Frank helped him in the finale. Even Stick's killing routine bit him in the ass and almost made Elektra willfully joining the Hand. It's easy to go "at least this criminal won't bother us", yes, but what if the other criminals get wind of a psycho ready to track them to put a bullet in your head? The show already answered: You have the likes of Finn Cooley ordering to torture store owners for info, or the likes of Wilson Fisk who uses Castle to dispose of Dutton and take over the prison drug trade.
  • There's also the fact that Matt's policy, as failed as it is, only works for him because other people clean up his mistakes. Other people kill the bad guys for him. When he was attacked in his apartment while Elektra was also severely injured, he was hit with a poison dart or arrow which was about to knock him unconscious. So he gets mad at Elektra for killing the guy. Yet, what would have stopped the guy from killing Matt and then Elektra once the poison overwhelmed Matt? If Elektra didn't finish the job, they both would have been dead. And so would Karen. If Matt's tactics really worked, he wouldn't need a mask. He wears it because his tactics do not work at all. Matt knows full well that if his enemies knew who he was, they'd just go kill or try to kill his friends...all because he refuses to use lethal force. This would also explain why Jessica Jones and Frank Castle never use masks at all when they're doing vigilante stuff. I think Castle was right about Matt when he said, "You know what I think of you, hero? I think you're a half-measure. I think you're a man who can't finish the job. I think that you're a coward. You know the one thing that you just can't see? You know you're one bad day away from being me."
  • Matt's problem with Elektra wasn't that she killed the kid. It was that the kid had basically been subdued at that point, but she didn't care and killed him anyway to prevent further complications. Elektra and Frank work by simple moral judgments, but the problem is that they're not long-term solutions to actually help the 20 million who call the New York City area their home. Justice is what Matt believes in firmly, and justice comes from the law of the land, and only when the law is being corrupted and destroyed by people like Wilson Fisk does he don the mask of Daredevil to correct the system. He easily allows himself to be arrested if that makes the system work, but he's let go as he's a vigilante that actually proves his worth to the city by his moral convictions. Let's remember why exactly Matt told Brett to take all the credit for Castle's arrest and make no mention of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen's role: because the police are the people who enforce the laws. To have the NYPD take all the credit for Castle's capture restores faith in the police that had been lost when it came out that there were many dirty cops who did Wilson Fisk's bidding.
    If Matt did kill, and his identity got out, enemies would still kill his family and friends. That's the problem with Frank Castle's life now. Because of his trial, everyone knows that Frank Castle is The Punisher. Matt still has anonymity to help the system, both as a lawyer and as Daredevil. The downside of Frank's system is that he proved he was unwilling to keep others alive in order to find a greater truth about the cover-up his CO was referring to. Killing him effectively hindered the pursuit of justice, but the Punisher isn't about justice - he's about vengeance which isn't just.
  • Except when Matt saves Castle, he pretty much retracts everything he says and even tells Matt to not just kill people because it would be easier. Also who in this season ended up in jail? The masked man that the police can only charge for making a violent citizen's arrest, or the guy who opened fire in a hospital with a shotgun and indirectly caused a gang war where criminals are so ticked off that they'll fight each other in another hospital? Hint: it's the one who became Wilson Fisk's best hitman against his will.
  • Matt doesn't kill because he believes in the justice system. Daredevil is just a tool to purify and support it. He may have his personal religious convictions that have him dance on a razor's edge of moral forgiveness and legal punishment, but Matt holds the law and the justice system as the highest moral good in the land. The system is what keeps society in check. After all, he doesn't just beat up the bad guys and leave them if he's after someone. In the very first episode, when he beats up Rance, he does subdue the guy, but then he dumps Rance and the thumb drive with the Union Allied corruption evidence on the front steps of the New York Bulletin offices, making sure the papers get wind of this.
  • Matt doesn't believe 100% in the justice system; that's why he is clearly working outside of it. Most of what he does is justice as much as police brutality and torture is part of the justice system. Even Potter points out that while not a villain, Daredevil does not have a shield either. The only reason the NYPD give Daredevil more leeway than Castle, is that unlike Castle, Daredevil doesn't gut Mexican Cartel members on meat hooks or machine-gun Kitchen Irish bosses with armor-piercing ammunition. It's only starting in season 2 that Matt really tries to make it look like the justice system is effective (asking Brett to take sole credit for Frank's arrest so it wouldn't look like a vigilante turf war at worst, or that the cops are over their heads and they need less ethical groups to fight crime at best, and again, restore public trust in the NYPD after the revelation of how deep Fisk's corruption went). Plus since shooting when you're blind is a terrible idea the only way he could kill someone would be horribly messy and slow (if he caves Turk's head with his baton no one will be ok with that).
  • Matt's refusal to kill comes not just from being a human being, but also as one who is pretty religious and as one who practices law as his day job. See, you know what the big green guy, the flag-waver, the guys with the iron suit and the magic hammer have? They are soldiers. Matt is not. As an average civilian who deals with small things going on in New York City and not international terrorist organizations masquerading as US intelligence agencies, he feels the weight of people's lives. There is this balancing act of light and darkness in Matt that has been his defining character. If he took the law into his own hands and becomes judge, jury and executioner what does that make Matt? It makes him no better than Wilson Fisk. For two seasons we've seen Matt struggle with killing and we get some idea why he doesn't. Father Lantom said it best in the aforementioned season 1 scene where Matt was contemplating killing Fisk. It even came up again when Castle had Matt chained up on that rooftop:
  Matt Murdock: The people you murder deserve another chance.
  Frank Castle: What, to kill again? Rape again? Is that what you want?
  Matt Murdock: No, Frank. To try again, Frank. To try. And if you don't get that, there's something broken in you that you can't fix.
  • The point of that dialogue is that Matt is also a man who gets pushed to breaking, the strength in his character is that he doesn't let his demons win, even he sometimes comes close to letting them win. When Castle tells Matt that he is "one bad day away from being me", he wasn't lying. He knew full well that Matt was cut from the same cloth as him, just in a lighter shade of gray and maybe more in control of his inner demons.
  • In the Daredevil and Punisher comic The Devil in Cell Block D (which incidentally was a source of inspiration for the Wilson Fisk subplot in season 2), Matt goes to jail and is beaten daily for being Daredevil. When he witnesses Foggy getting stabbed, that's almost enough to break him. The only reason it doesn't is because Frank intervenes, as he doesn't want Matt to become him. Because he knows there's no turning back. Matt actually kills in the comics (though he wasn't himself when he committed the act) and it completely destroys him. He could easily have chalked it up to the Beast possessing him but no, he took full responsibility of his actions to the point that he gives up being Daredevil to find atonement and asks T'Challa to take his place. To understand Matt is to understand how the character functions in the gray areas of morality and how he tried to balance the dark and light.
  • I think that there are a few points where Matt has indirectly killed. In "Condemned," look at the article clipping on Ben Urich's board representing Matt's rescue of Claire from the Veles Taxi garage. The text reads "There were two individuals found dead at the scene." While those deaths would be two of Sergei's henchmen and the result of friendly fire, Matt was indirectly responsible for the deaths.
  • Matt's philosophy is that he himself will never kill. He won't say the same for his allies. Remember that in The Defenders (2017), he has no issue working with Jessica Jones even knowing what she did to Kilgrave. He's also friends with Brett, a cop who has probably had to use lethal force a few times. And in season 3, when he and Nadeem are fighting Fisk's assassins in traffic en route to the grand jury, Matt doesn't say a peep even though Nadeem definitely killed several of the ones that he shot.
  • This is actually one of the areas where Matt’s really, really inconsistent, and just as likely to beat himself up over something that really wasn’t his fault or something he only thought about as he is to justify and explain away something that he actually did. In the show, he agonizes for multiple episodes over whether or not to kill Fisk and then expresses to himself and to Foggy that even the attempt/desire was wrong, but doesn’t even acknowledge that he was the direct physical cause - if inadvertently so - of Nobu’s apparent death. It’s also pretty clear in the second episode that he’s not sure if the Russian he pushes off Claire's roof will survive the fall, but he’s not at all concerned about it, or remorseful about the man’s coma or subsequent death (the death being after Anatoly and Vladimir revived him with adrenaline to get information about Claire). And yet Matt's stance with others (Elektra, Frank, Stick) is that killing is never acceptable, no matter who the target is or how many lives it would save. In this, as in so many other things, he’s a hypocrite. (That’s not even getting into the mess that is Season 2, which among other things suffers from its lack of clarity on whether or not the Hand ninjas are actually alive. When Matt essentially shrugs at the end of the season and lets Elektra/Stick/Frank do whatever they want (and “kills” Nobu for the second time), does he believe that counts as murder? Charlie Cox stated that the Hand aren’t really human anymore so perhaps it was clear behind the scenes, or maybe he was just going by the comics, but it’s certainly not explicit in the show.)
    • In the comics, Matt’s actually accidentally killed many people (usually in a “whoops that supervillain fell to his death oh well” kind of way), planned or attempted murder a few times, and deliberately killed once, but how he’s responded has differed each time, and sometimes with a bit of a delay. This is usually because one writer will have him do the actual thing, and another writer will come along later and go “Hm, maybe he should feel a way about that?” There are three major instances, and many other minor cases that are relevant (also, arguably, Heather’s suicide): The first was attempting to kill Bullseye after Elektra’s death, the second was accidentally killing a prostitute during Man Without Fear (who later turns out to not actually be dead), and the third was deliberately murdering Bullseye during Shadowland.

Fisk's NYPD corruption

• So exactly how many corrupt cops does Wilson Fisk have on his payroll? I kinda lost count.
  • Enough to keep the department from investigating things he doesn't want, but there are enough clean cops that Fisk was genuinely freaked out at the possibility that the criminal who told his name to the dirty cops could have said it to someone clean. The real threat of widespread corruption like this is that you can never know who's clean or dirty. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and you're dead. Or if you tell the right person, but they share it with the wrong person.
  • I'm just trying to figure out how high up this corruption could go. I mean, the confirmed corrupt cops include, at minimum, an entire ESU team, Blake, Hoffman, and Corbin. There are about 40,000 cops in the NYPD, but I personally think the number Fisk would need to buy off is probably very small: a few guys in Narcotics, a few from the Special Operations Division (which is where the ESU team comes from), a few from Robbery-Homicide, a few beat cops in areas Fisk does business in (I think Corbin fills that role), and for ultimate security, maybe a captain or two from the precincts that service Hell's Kitchen and Midtown Manhattan. And some of these cops are PROBABLY not the most omnipotent, as in they are unable to realize that the guy giving orders is on the payroll of a mob boss. This might just have to wait until season 3 to be answered.
  • Well he owns one ESU team that's for sure. And at least five or six beat cops. And Blake and Hoffman. That gets you at least a dozen.
  • In season 2, when Grotto is being wired up for the sting (er, being wired for use by Reyes as bait), Karen reassures him that he can trust the cops and the D.A.'s office and says something along the lines of "When Fisk went down, a lot of corrupt cops went down with him too." That seemed to imply to me that Hoffman did name every corrupt cop who ever was in Fisk's pocket.
  • Luke Cage (2016) establishes that the FBI sweep only nabbed corrupt cops who were working for Fisk. None of the cops that were working for Cottonmouth, like Rafael Scarfe, were arrested as a result of Hoffman's testimony.
  • A related note: many fanfics posit that not every corrupt cop in Fisk's pocket got arrested. Many of them likely escaped arrest because they were so good at covering their tracks. This is almost certain to have been the case, given that we know he has a couple FBI guys in his back pocket who are in on his escape plan in the season 1 finale, which foreshadows the reveal that Hattley had been one of those agents this whole time, and that he'd been manipulating Ray Nadeem for just as long.

Newspapers in the show

• Is it me, or does it seem like The New York Bulletin is supposed to take the place of the real life New York Post? 'Cause to me, the design of the front page◊ looks a lot like the design used by The New York Post.
  • Lots of fictional companies use similar logos or designs from a related real-life company. The Stark Industries logo is based off of Lockheed-Martin for example.

Did Ben know who DD was?

• A conversation between DD and Ben, where he says 'you sound like a boxer' and the reply is 'you're well-informed' or something like that. Is it safe to assume Ben knew who he was?
  • Wasn't that line in reference to Matt's plan? Somehow it sounded like a boxing strategy to Ben, if I recall. If that's the case, Matt is just confirming that he knows about the sport/strategies.

The shooting of Blake

• On Fisk's orders, a sniper (either a corrupt Emergency Services Unit guy or someone dressed as one; and who is implied to be Bullseye based on the Ace of Spades in his bag) fires on the cops outside the building where Matt has holed up with Vladimir, hitting Blake and two other cops. It's clear from dialogue that Blake was the intended target, so what purpose was fulfilled by having the sniper gun down the other two cops?
  • Serial Killings, Specific Target: If just Blake gets shot, investigators would comb through every aspect of his life and career to find a potential motive for why someone would want to kill him, and it would only be a matter of time before clean cops found something that tied Blake back to Fisk (and you can imagine that the NYPD would declare such a case a high priority one since the deceased is one of their own). So having the sniper shoot two redshirt cops along with Blake hides the intended target, makes the motive look like "guy with a vendetta against the NYPD" rather than "kill corrupt cop who turned out to be in the employ of Wilson Fisk," and heads off deeper inquiries.
  • Think of it with something that Richard Castle said in the pilot of his show: "At one death you look for motive, at two you look for connection...at three you look for someone like Kyle; at three you don't need motive because mentally unstable serial killers don't usually have one." So if the sniper shot just Blake, they'd look for a motive and whatnot. With two collateral victims (three if you count Officer Sullivan), there's less of a need to look for motive.
  • It's the same logic used when Vanessa is poisoned at the benefit. Owlsley and Madame Gao had a couple other nameless guests also get poisoned for a simple reason: if Vanessa was the only one poisoned, Fisk would immediately know that someone was trying to harm her to get to him, and he'd probably find out about Owlsley's involvement much quicker. Poison Vanessa and a couple other VIPs, and it suddenly looks like someone was trying to kill Fisk directly and Vanessa just happened to drink from the wrong glass.
  • Even though the killer isn't Bullseye (since Dex doesn't make his introduction until season 3), he might be someone who is a bit like comics Bullseye who's up to killing random cops for fun. I mean even if it's to silence Blake, it won't stop a serious investigation after he killed three cops, and motives aren't the vital element they appears to be in fiction.

When the feds get involved

• I'm not an expert, but in real life, wouldn't the federal investigative agencies (ATF, FBI, etc.) get interested in what's going on in Hell's Kitchen after Fisk staged the bombings? Among the things the ATF investigates are acts of arson and bombings^note Since their full name is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Based on the scale of what is shown onscreen, it's a bit far-fetched to think the Feds didn't want to get involved then as opposed to later. Unless the fact that one of the FBI officers in the convoy in the finale is a bribed guy is supposed to suggest Fisk DOES have guys in the federal law enforcement agencies as a failsafe.
  • The bombings would be labeled a terrorist attack, so the feds would have gotten involved way earlier.
  • Since season 3 makes clear Tammy Hattley had been in Fisk's back pocket since before he was arrested, it's possible that the FBI did investigate...but Fisk directed Hattley to scuttle it to the best of her ability.

What exactly is Fisk's plan to improve the city?

• It's clear that Fisk thought he was fixing the city, but how exactly was he planning to do that? (And what was his image of a "beautiful city"?) He was working in human trafficking, drugs and bribing corrupt authorities. He was helping all the various mobs operating in Hell's Kitchen. None of those things are going to help with making a great city, gentrified or not.
  • Basically driving all the poor people out, like Mrs. Cardenas and whatnot. Using crime to reduce crime in the longer-term. It's kinda like fighting fire with fire.
  • What he wants is gentrification, which, yeah, effectively means driving the poor people out and moving rich people. Part of the issue is that Fisk ends up sidetracked by Matt's attacks on his crew, and Owlsley's scheming, so his plan never unfolds to its full extent, but the gist of it is using his financial power to valorize Hell's Kitchen, build new buildings while demolishing the old being the primary aspect, and use his vast criminal power to enforce that power so his goal will go smoothly (kill Mrs. Cardenas so that he can have her building demolished, blowing up the Russians' hideouts, etc.). Hell's Kitchen is gentrifying in real life, too, just minus the mob influence and alien invasion damage.

The Karen Page frame-up

• OK, so, how Fisk was planning to dispose of Karen Page makes sense: she and Daniel Fisher discovered money discrepancies at Union Allied, so Fisk arranged for them to have their drinks drugged; then associates took them to Karen's apartment and stabbed Daniel to death, planting the bloody knife in Karen's hand to frame her. The plan from there was to have her get arrested, and then she was to be killed in her cell and her death made to look like a hanging (which was the role of Clyde Farnum, the guy whose daughter Wesley had threatened to have killed if he didn't carry out the job) before she faced trial. The intended outcome is pretty straightforward. There's one thing I don't understand, and that's the timing of the cops who arrested Karen: they burst in just seconds after Karen wakes up holding the knife. Was their arrival just coincidental with Karen waking up, or were they supposed to be dirty cops on Fisk's payroll who were already stationed outside her door and waiting for this to happen?
  • There are a few possible answers. One might be that Rance or whoever killed Fisher knew how long it would be until Karen recovered and made sure to call the cops so they'd show up before Karen could get to her senses and call them herself. I'd say that they were clean cops, seeing how if they were dirty cops, what they'd probably do is they'd just shoot her and then "claim" she lunged at them with the knife.
  • Actually the original plan was never to hang Karen in her cell. That was a backup plan they resorted to when things didn't go as planned, as Matt suggested to Karen when she was in his apartment. Likely Rance left evidence that forensics found. Going to court means giving that up and Karen may get off on reasonable doubt if her lawyers can establish that someone else was in the apartment. They can't hold it since too many non-corrupt people would know of it and hiding evidence is a major Brady violation (as Foggy points out earlier in the episode). Thus the suicide plan. If things had gone right, likely Karen would be tried and gone though hell. And just when thing seem hopeless, someone, likely Wesley or even Donovan, appears and offers to make it all go away if she gives up the file she stole. So the cops were never intended to kill Karen. Likely it was just a coincidence that made for a dramatic shot.
  • Karen was probably never intended to make it to trial. If Fisk has a prosecutor on the payroll (likely, given what happened at Healy's trial), just offer the naive, confused, scared-half-out-of-her-mind girl what seems like a "sweet deal" plea bargain. She goes away for some time, unable to expose what she's found out, buying Fisk and his people time to find the file and destroy it, or simply discrediting her with the murder charges and prison sentence so that, by the time she could do anything about what she knew, no one would believe her/care. Matt and Foggy showing up out of the blue to represent her was a Spanner in the Works, with these two lawyers being complete unknowns who aren't in Fisk's pocket, so it was decided that it was better to risk silencing Karen rather than potentially letting her information slip during the trial or as payback for framing her (since, if Karen is convicted, she may well tell Matt and Foggy about the file, if she hadn't already, just to spite the people who've now ruined her life).

Interrogation room murder

• In "World on Fire," Blake and Hoffman shoot and kill a Russian who gives up Fisk's name in the interrogation room. It works to Fisk's advantage since those two are on his payroll and he's got guys in Internal Affairs to make sure it goes away quickly. But what if the Russian had ended up being interrogated not by Blake and Hoffman, but by an honest detective like Clemons, Costa, or Brett, guys not likely to be on Fisk's payroll? Two possibilities could be A) Fisk probably had enough of the right people to make sure that couldn't happen, e.g. the guy responsible for assigning cases is on Fisk's payroll and he can assign Fisk's people to people of interest for Fisk, or B) Fisk may even temporarily have enough influence to squash further investigation temporarily, but it wouldn't be long before the clean elements of the NYPD know who he is and his corruption of the system.
  • That's why Wesley insists on only ever referring to Fisk as "my employer" even to people who know already who Fisk is. No one's supposed to say Fisk's name out loud under threat of death (which is why Healy kills himself after he gives the name up to Matt). Before Fisk goes public with his press conference at the end of episode 8, he puts a lot of effort into remaining hidden in the shadows, such that only a trusted number of Fisk's inner circle guys know he even exists, let alone is the man calling the shots. He attempts to control his underlings through a combination of fear and respect. But even before he goes public, he's starting to lose that fear (primarily among the Russians), which is part of why he has cops on the payroll to take care of anyone who tries to give it up (thus increasing the fear of his other underlings.) But there's still a lot of alarm among Fisk's higher-ups that someone gave up the name, and Wesley and Fisk indeed ponder what would have happened if Fisk's loyal cops hadn't been there. It's the first cracks in the foundation of Fisk's empire, cracks Matt sets out to find and exploit, since going after Blake and stealing his phone provides him the means to track down Vladimir and get Owlsley's name out of him, and the information he overheard before this enabled him to locate the warehouse where Madame Gao's drugs were being packaged.

The convoy ambush

• What sort of murder charges could Fisk be facing for the deaths of the cops and FBI agents killed in the ambush on the highway?
  • Assault of a police officer, assault on a federal agent, murder of a police officer, and murder of a federal agent. That last one is a capital offense under federal law, resulting in either life in prison or execution.
  • So why is he locked up in Riker's? Why isn't he locked up in Terre Haute or Lewisberg?
  • Marvel likes Riker's. It's like Arkham for DC Comics

Fisk's mercs at the end

• When the Summerville Department Store truck carrying Fisk is about to go, Fisk says to his men on the ground, "If anyone tries to follow on the ground or in the air, take them out," and we never see those men again. Did those mercenaries get arrested or did they die shooting it out with the responding cops?
  • In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. Which is why it wasn't shown. But most of them probably were killed in a gunbattle with the police.

How could Fisk not know Karen was with Ben at the hospital?

• We know that Marlene told Wesley about Ben and Karen paying her a visit. We know this because that's why Wesley kidnapped Karen and tried to threaten her. However, any knowledge Wesley had of this was lost when Karen killed him before he could tell Fisk. Couldn't Fisk check with the personnel at the hospice to see who visited his mother? It should be easy with sign-in records and possibly CCTV footage.
  • Fisk only found out that Ben visited his mother when Ben tried to write his story about it, something Fisk learned from his mole at the paper. Fisk had no reason to suspect that Ben brought someone along with him to the interview. By all appearances, Ben was a maverick reporter who worked alone. Not to mention Ben lied about Karen being with him when Fisk asked him if he was alone when he spoke to Marlene.
  • Even more curious is that Marlene never brings up with Wilson "the two people who were asking about me" when he's talking with her in the car in the episode after Wesley's death, especially since she remembered enough about them to provide Wesley a good description of Karen. In this case, though, the most likely reason she doesn't tell Wilson is because she thinks he's already aware of the situation, and that Wesley had already told him after the phone call.

Shooting the bombing survivors

• So after blowing up the Russians' hideouts, we see Fisk's corrupt cops go out to kill anyone who survived. Now, with Corbin, we see he uses a gun that I think came from Vladimir to kill Sergei. However, what I have to question is when Blake shoots that guy trapped under rubble afterwards. Is that his duty pistol (the one he used on Pyotr in the interrogation room) or is that a different gun? If the former, won't ballistics eventually trace the slug dug out of that body back to Blake's gun?
  • Probably the former, and...it would...depending on how many cops Fisk owns.
  • We are talking about a Russian gang member found dead from bullet wounds among enough guns for a small army and in a bombed out building. Not really hard to claim they died before the bombs went off. Also I don't think ballistics is as effective a piece of evidence as CSI makes people think it is. But more likely Fisk's contact would speed through the case anyway and say there is no point investigating small details.
  • But he was shot after the blast, not before the blast.
  • And? How do you prove that without witnesses and sufficient physical evidence, not to mention the people willing to properly investigate and prosecute that have not been paid off?
    • The presence of smoke and soot in their lungs would be found during the autopsy, which would also say they were still breathing when the bombs went off.

The Cardenas lawsuit

• So, in episode 5, would Mrs. Cardenas' buyout and eviction case constitute a civil lawsuit or a criminal lawsuit, or a mix of both?
  • There's a mix: As far as the criminal side goes, you've got some combination of breaking and entering, criminal trespassing, burglary, vandalism, robbery/theft (if they stole anything), assault and battery, and maybe blackmail/extortion, against both the repairmen and whoever sent them. On the civil side, Tully could be sued for trespass, conversion (sue recover the cost of anything that was damaged), vandalism (to cover the cost of repairs to her apartment), intentional inflection of emotional distress (depending on how New York state law interprets it). There could also be pain and suffering damages and punitive damages depending again on New York state law.

The cab scene

• What's the name of the song that the Madame Gao drug mule is singing in the cab in "World on Fire"?
  • Apparently, the song is called "Kangding Qingge", a popular Chinese folk song. It has a Wikipedia page if you'd like to read the lyrics.

"Super" hearing

• A single gunshot is enough to cause pain and hearing damage to a normal person not wearing ear protection. So how does Matt, a man who uses hearing that is vastly more sensitive to navigate, engage in multiple firefights without a single problem?
  • In "Nelson v. Murdock", Matt explains to Foggy that he has to focus on "letting it all in" in order to hear faint noises. Matt is presumably not trying to listen to the gunshots. Still, one would then have to assume that whenever there is gunplay involved, Matt is receiving less sensory information than he normally would be.
  • Stick's training may have included the induction of 'auditory exclusion'. Police officers are known to have that. It wouldn't be hard for Matt to have it too.

How many black suits does Matt buy?

• Whenever Matt gets beat up, which is fairly often, his black outfit usually gets cut to ribbons. He has only a single outfit hidden in his memorabilia suitcase. In episode 10, he states that he buys his gear off the Internet and never learned to sew. So whenever his suit gets damaged, he presumably has to buy replacement items. How often is he buying new suits, and is he forced to stay home whenever he's waiting for replacement items to arrive?
  • If you notice, his gear is slightly different in most episodes. At first, he seems to only have a black shirt, pants, etc. Before he gets the red armor upgrade, we see that he has bought padding of some kind. So yes, he keeps buying new stuff. Presumably, the suit we see in "Nelson v. Murdock" was one that had not yet been worn, which means he probably had spares. Considering his padding didn't show up until later, it's also possible that he ordered that stuff online before the events of the series and didn't get them until later.

What happened to the prototype costume?

• In season 2, episode 2, Matt returns to Melvin to get the helmet of his new suit repaired. However he shows up wearing a hoodie and has to stand in the shadows so the guy won't see his face. So why not wear the black suit from season one? It hides his identity and still allows Melvin to recognise him.
  • Further problematic is that Melvin would need to get exact measurements for Matt's bodysuit and a head mold for the helmet. While Matt can wear a mask while standing mostly naked for the bodysuit, a custom helmet to perfectly fit his face and head would be all but impossible without Melvin seeing Matt's face.
  • When Melvin said he needed a head cast, Matt told him "Give me the stuff and tell me what to do, I'll take care of it at home." And then the rest of the process happened offscreen.
  • It's really strange, considering that it would just seem practical for Matt to keep his black costume on hand for emergencies.

Brett can't recognize Matt's voice?

• You'd think he'd put together that Daredevil sounds exactly like that defense attorney that Foggy partnered up with right? Matt doesn't even attempt to mask his voice when in vigilante mode.
  • Matt actually does change his voice when "in character." Well, more of a change of cadence. As himself in public, Matt has a jovial, easy going cadence, even in court. When in costume, he is much more terse and direct, which is noticeably different. Also, there's the "beneath suspicion" thing. Brett knows Matt, he's known him for years. And Matt's always been blind. Like Ben Urich said in season one, no one suspects the blind man.
  • Much like with Karen, I wonder if maybe Brett has figured out who Daredevil is, and just hasn’t let on that he knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some kind of nod or clue to that effect one of these days.
  • Brett might be suspicious of his two lawyers friends. From Brett's perspective, when anything Daredevil involved happens, Nelson & Murdock are there. Brett called Foggy when he got beat up because he needed a lawyer and moments later it's Daredevil who shows up. Karen is always getting involved when something Daredevil-related happens, and Foggy went with the cops when Daredevil was fighting the ninjas on the roof when only cops were there. If that doesn't make Brett suspicious, what will?
    • An alternate interpretation is that Brett definitely knows Nelson & Murdock have connections to Daredevil. There was the whole case with Fisk, after all. There's also no way he'd be calling Foggy with the implicit expectation that Daredevil would show up otherwise. But whether or not he knows Matt is Daredevil is unclear. Because other than Matt's voice, there probably wasn't much else that would have realistically sent bells ringing for Brett.
    • Brett probably knows Matt is Daredevil as of season 3 episode 12. Matt was dressed in his black Daredevil clothes when he and Foggy brought Ray Nadeem's family to Brett and his mother, and Brett presumably was aware of the other details regarding Matt and Daredevil's disappearances at Midland Circle. And if Brett didn't know it then, then he might have put two and two together when Foggy approached him at the scene where Matt interrogated Felix Manning and warned him about Daredevil maybe planning to kill Fisk.

Why kill the nurse?

• When the Hand comes for the children at Metro-General, they're met by two hospital guards, Claire and a nurse. One of them subdues the two guards nonlethally with martial arts techniques, yet uses his katana to stab Claire's friend through the chest despite posing no threat.
  • Claire reaches for one of the guns the guard dropped and the ninja goes to stab her, the other nurse gets in the way and is killed.
  • It's possible that the ninjas delivered killing blows to the guards. It makes sense to eliminate as many witnesses as possible. Did we ever see them get back up?

Turk is BACK... Somehow

• So, how is Turk free in Season 2? He should be in prison! He helped sell women off, and traded guns. I doubt that even if he squealed as much as he could, he'd still be in prison for years. So, how did he get out?
  • Presumably there was nothing to indict him on the trafficking stuff, and it's possible that after Hoffman gave him up, he could very well have cut a deal where he skated in exchange for testifying against some other members of Wilson Fisk's organization (who knows? He may have sold out the guys who helped him in the sex trafficking ring. It wouldn't be out-of-character for Turk to double-cross someone, since that's just what he did when helping Fisk take out the Russians. Not to mention, the FBI sweep done off Hoffman's testimony probably did not collar everyone in the organization, given the size and everything. Plus, Turk may have used a shady attorney (a la Saul Goodman) as an extra measure.).
  • He snitched, he looks like he'll snitch.
  • Or good behavior. Many prisons tend to do that.
  • We don't know exactly what Turk was charged with. So maybe he only got some very minor charges that he was able to beat.
  • It's revealed in Season 2 of Jessica Jones that Turk has history with Jeri Hogarth. When Jeri meets him to buy an unregistered gun that she plans to give to Inez, the dialogue implies that Jeri and Turk go way back and she's helped him out of a legal jam or two in the past. Maybe one of those legal jams was the charges Turk faced for his time working in Fisk's operation.

Bulletproof Brain

• How exactly did Castle get shot in the head and live? A bullet should have reduced his brain to bloody hamburger. And even if by some MIRACLE that didn't kill him, he should have turned into a vegetable thanks to the massive amount of brain damage a flying piece of metal through the brain should have caused. So does this version of the Punisher have healing powers or something? There's no other way he could have escaped dying or being permanently incapacitated.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic. This sort of thing can and does happen in the real world. In fact, people have survived even more serious gunshot head wounds than Castle did, and recovered from them.
  • And it did put him in a coma. It's only when they pulled him off life support that he woke up.
  • The doctor who testifies at Frank's trial raises the (fairly credible) theory that the shot left him brain damaged.

So who was Black Sky?

• The big reveal of season 2 is that Elektra is the Black Sky, and that Stick and the Chaste took her from The Hand at a young age and raised her to keep her away from them. It's treated as a serious matter, with her being in the Hand's...ummm...hands as an "end of the world" scenario. Yet the Hand had a Black Sky in season one. Prominently. Stick killed the Boy. So there's more than one (Nobu had made clear of that when he chewed Fisk out for not providing more adequate protection). And Matt noted that the boy read totally differently, something he didn't notice ever with Elektra. Why the massive discrepancy?
  • Matt didn't note that the boy read totally differently, he just noted that it was a kid. Stick was the one who berated Matt for not paying enough attention to "see what that thing really was".
  • OP here. Last season it was said that Black Sky(s) were "extremely hard to come by." So there are clearly multiple ones, and the Hand's had them. What makes Elektra so special? If Stick is going around killing all of the Black Skies as soon as he can, why raise Elektra?
  • Ultimately these are going to be questions that are for later shows. We still don't know the true nature of the Black Sky or the Rising. Being "difficult to replace" can mean anything from "a few hundred on the planet" to "one is important in the whole world" to an organisation of immortals.

What happened to autumn?

• Season 2 starts in a sweltering summer. It's brought up often in the opening episode, and the fact that the Punisher wears a coat despite the summer is a plot point. Then in the last few episodes, it's December 2015 (thanks to a calendar and Christmas being celebrated). Except, the first five episodes are set within days of each other. There's no huge time gap since Frank's trial is sped up and then the final episodes take place over a week, tops. Yet, it goes from summer to snow and Claire worried about Matt freezing at night. Huh? The Netflix shows has been pretty good at timeframes: Daredevil season one was set in late 2014 (two years after the 2012-set Avengers, by context), while Jessica Jones was set in early 2015, during the winter season. But to skip autumn seems odd, and also a massive continuity error.
  • I think there's an implication that there was a time skip of a few months.
  • The first four episodes are set within a week or two. Then episodes 4-6 are within a span of three or four days. And Frank's trial is maybe two weeks later, tops, and that turns into a couple of days. The entire season, by the narrative flow and context, takes place roughly over a month, but it goes from summer to mid-December somehow.
  • Here's the timeline, from the best we can interpret it:
    1. Mid-2013: Jessica Jones meets Kilgrave
    2. January 2014: Jessica Jones kills Reva and is freed of Kilgrave's control
    3. Late 2014: Daredevil season 1
    4. Late Winter / Early Spring 2015: Jessica Jones season 1
    5. August 2015 to December 24, 2015: Daredevil season 2
    6. October 2015 to December 2015: Luke Cage (2016) season 1
    7. Late Spring / Early Summer 2016: Iron Fist (2017) season 1
    8. Early Autumn 2016: The Defenders (2017) season 1
    9. November 2016: The Punisher (2017) season 1
    10. Late Spring / Early Summer 2017: Jessica Jones season 2
    11. Late Summer / Early Fall 2017: Luke Cage season 2
    12. Fall / Winter 2017: Iron Fist season 2 and Daredevil season 3

Fisk's incarceration

• It seems that Fisk is incarcerated at Riker's. I would think, given the case against Fisk includes RICO charges, plus a bunch of other federal charges, wouldn't he more likely be locked up at a federal penitentiary like Lewisberg or Allenwood?
  • Given Reyes wants to get rid of him as fast as possible she might have arranged to throw him in Riker's, where the kind of people he antagonized as a vigilante would most likely be incarcerated (and thus he would die quickly). Add to that Fisk's control of some cops, who also wanted Frank in Riker's.
  • But of those charges should include conspiracy to capital murder for the deaths of the FBI agents and NYPD cops killed during the escape attempt in the season 1 finale.

Hospital Shooting

• Why did the show introduce Frank Castle that way in his first on-screen appearance? It didn't ruin it, but it did taint the rest of the show having to pretty much sweep under the carpet that Frank, despite not wanting to kill civilians, would be introduced shooting in Grotto's general direction (and though a window) with a freaking shotgun when the shot clearly shows Karen and others in the line of fire. A shotgun is not a precision weapon and Frank is not being frugal with his bullets and yet the show, Karen and Frank still claim she was never in danger? Why doesn't Frank go in using a pistol, a revolver, or even an ordinary rifle, aiming carefully, choosing his shots, maybe even stop shooting when Karen or someone was in the way? What the show is saying is not lining up with what they are showing.
  • Even worse, Frank later told Karen she wasn't in any danger.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Maybe Castle truly is deluded and insane, because she and other innocents was definitely in the line of fire.
  • Frank could have been using solid slugs which are more accurate than the usual shotgun ammo.
  • Except the impacts shown in the walls and doors from the shotgun blasts show spray shot. The exact kind of ammo Turk gives a lecture about in the same episode, noting that they're designed as the opposite of accuracy, to have as wide a burst as possible. So the Punisher was firing indiscriminately into a crowd with wide-spread ammo.
  • I always felt if we need to assume things in a scene that are not told to us for it to make sense, the scene has been poorly written. Alternate Character Interpretation with the Punisher usually focused on his treatment of criminals and there is a difference between alternate portrayals and just out of character. Even the darkest portrayals stick to his no innocents policy. Introducing your character like that seems to be shooting yourself in the foot so to speak.
  • Starting gunfights pretty much anywhere in a big city, especially a city as populated as New York City, has a chance to get casualties from stray bullets even if he says he is a good shot. It's really convenient that when the 90's Punisher in comics shoots people with bullets that go through wall like cheese, no one who didn't deserve it gets shot from a stray bullet.
    • Frank doesn't kill the innocent, ever... by accident. He shot Daredevil in the face, with NO IDEA who he was. No idea that Daredevil's mask could stop a bullet, and Melvin's "maybe it was a warning shot" is garbage: you don't shoot someone in the head and leave them bleeding and unconscious on a roof for eight hours as a warning. He's also clearly not in "complete control" of the situation. His first shot against Grotto in the hospital misses completely, exploding a rack of medicine that obstructs vision but wouldn't take the full brunt of a shotgun blast. That cart was easily something a panicked person could have hidden behind when the shooting started. Plus, it's REALLY terrible discipline to fire randomly indoors, especially if you're trying to minimize innocent casualties. This plan is also stupid for a bunch of other reasons. For example: smuggling a shotgun into a hospital to kill a low-level guy whose entire protection is a standard hospital gown and an unarmed woman? Bring a smaller gun! And what was his plan after shooting Grotto? Kill Karen if she tried to stop him from escaping? Shootout with the cops? But no, Karen gets free and rabbits with Grotto, while Frank chases her, shooting at her car. She's visibly watching him as she drives away in a panic, so not ONLY is it lucky he doesn't wound or kill her during this, he's lucky she's able to SAFELY drive away without hurting herself or someone else.
  • I agree with what was said on the Fridge page. Castle was shooting with a shotgun, but he was trying to drive them downstairs, outside, and into Karen's car so he could make a truly precise shot with the sniper rifle he had waiting. Notice that the last shotgun round we see is the one fired in the staircase, afterwards, the rest are sniper shots. He fired the last shot in the stairwell to make sure they were moving down, before hurrying to the roof to get the rifle. As to why he didn't hit anyone with the shotgun when he was firing at Grotto, I always assumed that was the show's way of showing us just how scary accurate a sharpshooter Castle is with any weapon, that he can fire a shotgun into a mostly crowded hospital wing and leave everyone alive. It sort of fits with the hit on the Kitchen Irish at the beginning.
  • This is (to me) a bit of Fridge Brilliance that reflects part of what's wrong with Frank Castle. He's delusional because he's a mentally ill person suffering from extreme trauma and brain damage. In his mind, he thinks that he's protecting innocents and only hurting bad guys. In reality, he endangers a lot of innocent people, and it's only through sheer luck that his "stray bullet" body count isn't as large or larger than his "targeted thug" body count. He clearly does not care about putting innocent people in danger. The shooting at the hospital isn't the only instance of this: later in the show, he uses Karen, an innocent woman that he actually kinda likes, as bait to lure the Blacksmith's men to that diner, and he later crashed a car into Karen's vehicle then left her bleeding on the roadside, not caring at all about her wellbeing. In both cases, Frank had no way of knowing if Karen would survive. He also threatens to blow the Vietnam veteran's brains out during that rooftop scene if Matt made any noise while Frank talked to him, and Frank doesn't seem like the type to bluff. And his initial crusade sparks a war among the Hell's Kitchen underworld, which is what leads to that standoff at the hospital that Foggy defuses (real life gang wars have a tendency to cause quite a few civilian deaths). That's to say nothing of the above-mentioned high-powered rounds being fired willy-nilly in residential areas of Manhattan.
  • Something I considered: Castle used a shotgun and a sniper rifle in his attempt on Grotto at the hospital, but used a machine gun of some kind at the Kitchen Irish hit. The weapons at the hospital are the kind where you have to pause between shots. It does reduce the chance of innocent bystanders getting hit. He would use an automatic on the Kitchen Irish because, well, as far as Castle is concerned, everyone gathered around that table was a criminal, so less chance of an innocent civilian.
  • As for the chances of endangering bystanders? Well, Frank may not be targeting them and he may think they were never in danger. But Reyes certainly doesn't seem to think so. After all, when Foggy and Karen are looking over the charge sheets at the hospital, I believe one of the charges against Castle is "reckless endangerment", which means the cops certainly believe his actions endangered bystanders.
  • There's actually a pretty good reason for Frank to be using a shotgun with buckshot shells in the hospital. Buckshot doesn't have a lot of penetrating power, and interior walls historically suck at stopping bullets. So Frank could be reasonably certain that if he shot at a wall, the shot wouldn't penetrate and damage something (or someone) on the other side of the wall. If he was using a more "precise" weapon, the bullets would have a much higher chance of overpenetrating or ricocheting, and actually endanger more people than the spray of shotgun blasts. If Frank knew enough about how buckshot behaves as it leaves the barrel, he could indeed be fairly confident that he was aiming close enough to Karen and Grotto to scare the piss out of them, but far enough away that they weren't in any real danger. It actually lends to the Punisher's character if think about it that way: Where the outside observer sees reckless endangerment of human life, Frank sees surgical precision in single-minded pursuit of his goal.
    • There's also the fact that a sawed-off is infamously poor as a long-range weapon, and he's clearly not aiming at the civilians, and firing a good distance away from them. Given this and the above, it seems this weapon was chosen not just because it's easily concealed, but because it is in fact, the ideal weapon choice for the situation. Loud and short-ranged, perfect for scaring away bystanders so he can hit only the target he's gunning for.

  • Frank may say "I wasn't shooting at you" to Karen. But I honestly don't buy that: when Matt first engaged Frank, he was about to snipe Grotto in the head while Grotto was next to Karen, who was behind the driver's seat of her car already in an alarmed state. In that mental state, there's a high possibility of Karen getting into an accident from say, jerking the wheel over in reaction or whatnot.
  • It's also possible that with Frank, he'll shoot at his targets with intent to kill. He may not have been trying to kill Karen, but he may be willing to injure her to stop Grotto from escaping. But honestly, he could've saved a lot of mess by just using a knife to chase Karen out of Grotto's room, then cut his throat.
  • Much of the first episode of season 2, leading up to the shooting, is spent establishing Frank as a relentless, unstoppable killing machine. We see his attack on the Irish, which is so brutal that everyone, including Grotto, assumes it was a whole gang. We learn about his attacks on the Dogs of Hell, and the cartel, before the last cartel victim finally tells Matt with his dying words that it was just one man. The show initially sets up Frank to be terrifying, and shooting up a hospital is definitely in line with this. However, this becomes counterproductive, once the show starts trying to humanize Frank and make him sympathetic. His claim that he never kills the innocent is highly unrealistic, in a situation like the hospital, for exactly the reasons the original poster said. True, his "Karen was never in danger" remark was probably meant for Frank to reassure Karen (and the writers to assure the audience) that no one was in danger except Grotto, but it’s still pretty unconvincing. Not to mention the fact that, even if we do accept that no one else was in danger of being shot, Frank still traumatized a lot of vulnerable people and scared the shit out of the hospital staff. But that’s the sort of thing this show routinely ignores. Realistically, Karen should have PTSD by the end of season 2 in light of all the stuff she's seen Frank do - the hospital shooting, the diner killings, and the Blacksmith's execution, plus being kidnapped by the Hand - but in the TV world, gunfire harms no one unless they’re actually hit by the bullets. Just like how Matt recovers from injuries ridiculously quickly, characters are supernaturally resilient to trauma so that they can continue being active participants in the plot, and we all accept it. Presumably we’re supposed to apply the same suspension of disbelief to Frank, and accept his assurances at face value. But some situations stretch that suspension farther than others. Frank shooting up a hospital, and then claiming that everyone except the intended target was perfectly safe, is definitely a stretch.
  • Frank didn't care much if at all about collateral damage in the beginning. It's very possible that he didn't start to think about such stuff until Matt, Foggy, and especially Karen started treating him like an actual person instead of a monster. I mean, let's remember that in the diner scene he had the presence of mind to clear the seating area of innocent bystanders before the Blacksmith's men entered so that civilians wouldn't be in the crossfire, which I don't think Frank pre-arrest would ever have done. As to the scene where he's sniping at Grotto, if Frank even thought about injuring Karen, he may have figured she deserves it for helping Grotto. When Frank tries to reassure Karen that she was never in danger from him, I think there's a good chance he's convinced himself that it's the truth. Thinking about the mental trauma he would have inflicted on the other people at the hospital is beyond his mental capabilities at that point. That's where Frank's character development is: as Frank carried out his rampage his character evolved, and through his interactions with Matt, Foggy and Karen, he started caring more about not hurting civilians to justify the "righteousness" of his crusade.
  • Frank Castle is not a hero. Heck, at best he is on the low-end of "antihero." He is a sad, tragic, seriously messed up individual driven mad by grief and a brain-injury who happens to be extremely effective and skilled with weapons, particularly firearms. Even in the comics he has a history of inadvertently targeting innocent people. Hell, his first appearance was him trying to assassinate Spider-Man of all people.
    • To be fair, that was a clear case of Early-Installment Weirdness, and when he almost shot Spider-Man, he was doing it on purpose. In the comics, Frank really is improbably accurate enough to never hit an innocent no matter the situation or the gun, and using a knife would have been too subtle for a guy who calls himself "The Punisher," wears a giant skull on his chest, and regularly dual wields M60's. Of course, there's still the possibility of Karen crashing the car, but introducing him this way is either a reference to said weirdness, or bad writing (trying to set him up one way without regarding the intended twist).

Frank's Fighting Prowess

• There's no denying that Frank Castle is and should be a formidable fighter. He's a highly skilled veteran of (if I remember correctly) the Force Recon units of the Marine Corps. Not sure if that's a Tier-One level unit but it's close. He's skilled, surely he can fight. But going toe-to-toe with Matt Murdock, particularly in the first episode, and successfully fighting him off? That stretches disbelief. Mainly because we saw a definitely Tier-One, JSOC special-ops vet with Will Simpson. He was a good fighter, but not the martial arts master Castle appears to be, actually losing to Trish Walker when she used his drugs for a power-up. Castle being able to fight off Daredevil stretches disbelief a little.
  • Matt regularly gets beaten up by ordinary street thugs with little to no fighting experience (they don't exactly go through the same fight training that people like Trish can afford to have), while Castle is the guy who carved his way through a thirty-man ambush by himself. That aside, in their first confrontation Castle got lucky (Matt missed the gun on his ankle), and in later ones Matt was suffering the side effects of a concussion.
  • Actually, Daredevil seems to be the superior fighter. In all of their fights, Matt gets a lot more hits in and Frank seems to get tired faster. As mentioned above, Frank's holdout pistol left Matt with a concussion that rendered him deaf at some points, which is how Frank captured Daredevil that one time. The last time they fight, Daredevil seems to be more exasperated than anything that Frank keeps trying to fight him and Frank essentially sits down and gives up after Daredevil throws him around a bit.
  • Even in the first episode, Frank gets a couple of good hits in, but otherwise seems barely able to keep up with Daredevil, and he only gets away by quick-drawing one last pistol and holding DD up.
  • Well since he used guns while fighting Daredevil (also he was really fast going from sniper rifle to shotgun while being kicked)he kind of has a small edge until Daredevil disarmed him. Also unlike Matt Frank doesn't have to do elaborate flip and punch a guy 5 time until he goes down which kind of tires the body faster than punch and shoot. I mean Matt showed up running in the first fight with him from the get go he is more tired than Frank.
  • Furthermore Daredevil had trouble with Healy, who is just a really physical hitman.
  • Frank has his own hallway fight where he tears through more than half a dozen guys later on during the season while suffering from accumulated injuries from various fights and torture, and he doesn't have the benefit of Matt's meditation-induced healing. The only reason this is a headscratcher is an unwillingness to believe that someone trained under modern hand to hand techniques can hold their own against a ninja.
  • Matt's fighting prowess isn't supernatural. His superpowers allow him to react earlier to his opponents, and his 'vision' doesn't rely on his eyes, meaning his head doesn't need to be pointed at something for him to know what's happening, making him less predictable than a sighted man. But he doesn't have super strength, super speed, or even a healing factor (meditative healing aside). He's a regular human who is exceptionally well trained and in great physical condition. What sets him apart from other fit, well trained people is that he's a Determinator who is Made of Iron. He'll take twice as much punishment as you, and he'll still be ready for more. Add in the fact that he now has body armour which lets him survive an almost point-blank headshot with nothing more than a severe concussion, and you now have the same bloke, but he's going to feel your hits even less than he already did.

The hospital security

• While I admit it's a nice CMOA for Foggy to talk down the two gangbangers who clearly wanted to settle a score there in the hospital, I'm curious why the guards don't shoot or taze them on sight (don't they have taser guns?), or, for that matter, how that one guy in the hospital bed was able to gain access to a weapon (when I presume he'd have been relieved of them on admission)?
  • The hospital security wouldn't want any casualties due to a missed shot and both thugs had items easily grabbed when breaking free I.E one had a pair of scissors and the other a disposable scalpel.
  • Most hospitals don't allow guards to have guns, since drugged out, delirious or psychotic people are not going to react well to them or treat them with fear. Tazers are no go either, as there is no such thing as non-lethal weapons with sick people who may have heart weaknesses and they are not very effective against the aforementioned drugged out or psychotic people. Those security guards were police assigned to the hospital due to the chaos, so police rules of engagement apply (only fire if harm to yourself or others is certain and these guys were across the room from each other).
  • The hospital had a bunch of cops too. I mean, this was a gang war to them and most of the people there were handcuffed. Why don't they have guns?
  • No good police officer is going to straight-up shoot somebody, in the middle of a hospital surrounded by civilians, if there's a chance they can be talked down.

Useless Horns?

• It's been pointed out that the horns on the Daredevil costume aren't just for aesthetics, they negate someone (namely Fisk, who favors the move) pulling a headbutt on Matt, since they'd be injured by the horns. Yet in season 2, people repeatedly headbutt Matt, slamming their faces against the horns to no effect. Shouldn't they be seriously hurt?
  • Yes but if they go for a headbutt it's not like they expect not getting hurt. It's probably more to absorb the shock without having the whole football helmet.

Elektra's body

• You're fighting an organization that appears to have brought a man back from the dead. Your mentor is telling you this shit is real and you need to believe. A person they very much wants dies and neither you nor your mentor decide to cremate? And, Stick does still seem to love her, despite everything.
  • Matt, at least, seems to be skeptical that anyone can really "come back from the dead" or that the war with the Hand is anything other than a purely mortal thing (Nobu coming back notwithstanding). I'd imagine he insisted on a Catholic/standard burial.
  • When did using unknown magic to bring a loved one back to life ever worked as intended? I mean congratulations, Stick, you raised a woman that doesn't like your organization and she might have more power now, just like what happened to Harold Meachum.
  • It’s very conceivable that Stick wanted the Hand to resurrect Elektra to get an 'in' on Alexandra and the other Fingers. One aspect of Stick, present in the comics, and in the show, is all of the mystery that surrounds him. It’s very difficult to get into his head, so one has to watch a few times.
    • Matt says in Season 2 episode 12 that Stick “never does anything without a reason”, and Stick has been around long enough that there isn’t much that surprises Matt. These two factors should be considered whenever Stick is onscreen. We know the underlying motivation behind most of his decisions is to thwart the Hand. This is a goal he’s been striving toward for a long time, and it informs most of what he does. He obtains Elektra as a young child with the intention of using her and her Black Sky-enhanced abilities as a force for the Chaste’s side of the war. He then hides her in an adopted family to keep her out of the clutches of the Hand. He also recruits Matt at a young age, judges him to be too weak, then comes back at intervals later in his life to test him again and see if he’s improved enough to be useful. He retains Elektra’s services until she starts rebelling– at which point he seems to judge that he’s lost control of her, leaving her vulnerable to being recruited by the Hand, and decides that the only option left is to kill her. This is all pretty straightforward.
    • However, it’s also important to remember that Stick spends a lot of time testing the people around him. His reappearance in season 1, for instance, is just pure manipulation. Stick didn't need help killing the Black Sky boy at the docks. He could’ve gone there and shot the kid without Matt’s help. And if he really needed backup, he could’ve easily just brought Elektra with him. The only reason to return to Matt at that point, to take him along on that mission, was to see how he would perform. To determine whether or not he’d become a more suitable Chaste soldier since his failure to kill Roscoe Sweeney in college. And so, when Stick decided to kill Elektra in the final few episodes of Season 2, that was probably more manipulation. Just like how Stick used Elektra to seduce Matt in college, he doesn't go after Elektra personally, he sends someone else to do the job. Elektra is a highly skilled fighter, and this could be explained away by arguing that Stick doesn’t think he could beat her himself. That would be a fair point to make. However, Elektra takes this assassin down with relatively minimal effort. Stick has trained Elektra her entire life. He should know good she is, and what she’s capable of. It seems that he would be able to accurately choose someone who was powerful enough to kill her– if he actually wanted her dead.
    • Stick’s assertion in late season 2 that it’s “time to get the band back together” suggests that he hasn’t been in regular contact with the Chaste since killing Star and spiriting Elektra away. He has begun courting Matt again, even after all of their messy falling-outs. The Hand are gaining power and influence. All evidence points to Stick being in desperate need of allies. All this time, he’s spent a lot of energy on keeping Elektra by his side, and why wouldn’t he? She’s smart, she’s powerful, she’s skilled, and she’s reasonably loyal. He kept her alive, risked his standing with his comrades (one of whom he killed) for the sake of keeping her around when she was younger. When Elektra tells Stick that she no longer wants to fight his war, completely removing her from the equation wouldn't be a reasonable reaction. His initial goal would probably be to win her back. By sending an assassin after her and making her angry with him, he reactivates her fighting spirit. Elektra speeds back into Manhattan in order to get revenge on Stick, and– fancy that– gets pulled right back into the war effort.
    • This is the point at which things become confusing, because once Elektra returns, it seems like Stick does actually intend to kill her. And it makes sense that he would. Having rejected him, Elektra is now in a perfect position to be scooped up by the Hand. Stick would rather see her dead than let the enemy get their hands on such a powerful weapon, much like what he later tries to do with Danny Rand after learning that the Hand need the Iron Fist to break down that wall under Midland Circle. There’s also the fact that Elektra's death wouldn’t necessarily be permanent. The Chaste may very well have their own supply of immortality substance. Stick could conceivably kill Elektra, hide her body somewhere, wait until the Hand lost interest in her, and then bring her back. Yet there’s a manipulative nature to their fight in episode 12 that makes it seem as though Stick has more in mind than simple murder. He isn't surprised or concerned by Elektra’s imminent arrival, and rather than trying to placate her or just straight-up killing her, he faces her one-on-one and goads her into fighting him, belittling her and feeding her anger.
    • This verbal baiting is a trademark Stick training technique, and his use of it here implies that there’s more going on here than just a grudge match– at least on Stick’s side of things. He may very well be teaching Elektra a lesson in loyalty and personal connections (the reason this fight hurts her so much is because of her emotional attachment to Stick), and at the same time, he’s testing Matt’s loyalty– sending for him, and seeing if he’ll show up and willingly fight Elektra. We never get a real answer to whether Stick wanted her dead here, because he gets snatched up by Nobu's men before getting to that point in the fight.
    • Here’s where things break down even further. Matt has fought of groups of Hand ninjas before. And Stick is a better fighter than Matt. It seems possible that he was weakened enough by his fight with Elektra that the ninjas were able to overpower him. But it's revealed in The Defenders that Stick allowed himself to be captured (given his disappointment in Alexandra saying she won't torture him), because it killed two birds with one stone: it gave Elektra and Matt the motivation to infiltrate the Hand’s pre-Midland Circle headquarters, but it also places Elektra within reach of Nobu, who Stick has been trying to avoid since Elektra was a child. He tells Matt when Nobu shows up that they’ve just lost the war, and the use of the hypersenses visual shorthand during that exchange implies that he says it for Matt’s benefit, rather than– say– to mislead Nobu into thinking he’s won. It seems as though Stick doesn’t want Elektra there, and he’s still angry at her even after she chooses to reject Nobu’s offer.
    • At the same time, this rescue results in a great Elektra / Matt / Stick team-up, during which Stick takes the time to make sure Elektra knows Matt showed up to save her, not him. Having now learned the truth about herself, Elektra once again has a personal investment in the war effort once more. She’s still angry at Stick for using her, she is no longer bent on killing him. And she and Matt form an alliance based around their mutual desire to take Nobu down. These all seem like positive developments for Stick. His recruits are fully on board and working together. He finally has willing soldiers. Once the three of them get back to Matt’s apartment, Stick’s rhetoric moves away from his desire to kill Elektra. He calls Elektra and Matt stupid for deciding to take on the Hand by themselves, but he isn’t going to stop them from trying. Stick should know better than anyone that both Elektra and Matt are too stubborn and, at that point, too angry with him to listen to his advice. A definite argument could be made, based on all of this, that he wanted them to go take on the Hand by themselves– and thus, that he wanted Elektra to be captured. If that's the case, then either Stick was willing to sacrifice Matt’s life to let it happen, or he’s confident that Matt is skilled enough to survive the experience.
    • At the time, it's very much possible that Stick might not have cremated Elektra because he wanted her to land in Alexandra's clutches. His choices with Elektra during Daredevil could have been about getting someone into the Hand to destroy them from the inside out. In Stick's mind, if Elektra woke up in the Hand’s control, but maintained her loyalty to the Chaste’s side of the war, she would make an excellent spy, and would be in a position to strike where the Hand was most vulnerable. If this was Stick's plan, then he partially succeeded, as Alexandra's control over the other Fingers was weakened by her decision to use the last of their substance to revive Elektra, and use Elektra to threaten them into compliance. But he also was very shortsighted if this was the case, because those brought back to life by the Hand, like Elektra or Harold, fall under their power, becoming loyal servants. As seen in Matt's interactions with Elektra in The Defenders, fighting free of this brainwashing usually requires outside help– something Elektra would find difficult to come by right away.

The Hand's terrible hostage plan.

• Despite the fact that Daredevil does in fact care about Karen Page there, the Hand don't know this and don't seem to have left any clues whatsoever as to where they were taking the hostages. If they hadn't through sheer luck (equal parts good and bad) hit on a parolee who had his bracelet off initially (delaying police intervention that would have at least complicated things) but could be activated (allowing police intervention), Matt and Elektra would never have found the hostages. A trap your victims can't find isn't much of a trap.
  • I think there was another step that they didn't manage to get to because the cops showed up. They were likely planning to send a ransom note or something but then their plans changed.
  • It really is a ridiculous assumption that he’d find them. I assume the Hand grunts don’t know that Matt is blind or has heightened abilities (or maybe they do, if a couple of Madame Gao's scenes in Iron Fist (2017) implies anything), and he’s really the only one who could find them under the circumstances. So maybe they were just kidnapping a bunch of people for their blood bank, and they figured it’d be great if they really upset Daredevil, their enemy, over it. Karen was really doing the Hand a favor there (and the scene felt pretty rushed, given that the whole reason Karen was kidnapped was more to tie her back into Matt's story after being separated from him for most of the past ten episodes, so that they would bring Karen closer to Daredevil, and therefore, have her be grateful to Matt when he told her his secret at the end of the episode. It had been a long time since Daredevil and Karen interacted, and she was fed up with Matt).
  • It really makes no sense as a trap for Daredevil, unless they were planning to let him know what they’d done somehow (which means sending a ransom note). They probably do know at least a bit about his senses, though, since in season 1, Nobu deliberately slows his heart so Matt wouldn't know he was present when he arrived at the dockhouse searching for Fisk. And Matt points out that he did so, so if Nobu didn’t know before that Matt can hear his heart, he definitely knows it now. But why would they rough up Brett? They have no reason to think Brett would reach out to Foggy, who just happens to know who Daredevil really is, and that Foggy would then tell Matt what happened to Brett. So even if Nobu was counting on Matt to track them somehow, they would still have to make sure Matt knew there was something to track. All we know about their plan is Nobu saying “Daredevil must die,” then that redheaded woman Tyler telling him they’ve identified 20 targets, and Nobu saying “Take all of them,” with no discussion of what he thought was going to happen next.
    • The reason they go after Brett is because based upon previous encounters with DD, The Hand suspect that Brett is Daredevil's friend/source in the NYPD and/or expected that word will eventually get around to Matt about what was happening. They probably even have moles in the 15th precinct who avoided being rounded up when Fisk was arrested, since it's established in Iron Fist and The Defenders that the Hand have sleeper agents in City Hall, hospitals, and many other places. It's possible that The Hand didn't expect Matt to find them so soon and thought they'd have more time to prepare. Plus it's likely that they know Matt is somehow connected to The Chaste - it's not as if they thought Matt was doing everything on his own with zero help.
    • It's likely that there were a lot more names of people that they could've taken hostage but maybe Nobu thought those 20 were enough to get Matt's attention.
    • The plan was that Matt would find out about all of the people he'd helped being kidnapped, he'd try to save them but ends up getting killed by whatever trap The Hand had prepared for him. And their plan probably would have worked if it weren't for Frank Castle showing up to provide cover fire for Matt.
  • Karen is not in many police reports connected to Daredevil, unless somehow a report was filed regarding the assassin Fisk sent to her apartment. It's Matt who's in love with Karen, so unless they make the connection between Matt and Daredevil, there's no reason for them to suspect Karen is more than just another victim he's helped. It might be different if her name kept cropping up in multiple reports but if that were true; then the NYPD would've found out Daredevil's identity long before The Hand got directly involved (seriously, how does Brett not recognize Matt's voice? Misty Knight already knows Matt's identity and she only knew him for a couple days at most).

Masking your heartbeat makes you undetectable?

• The Hand ninjas are explained to become undetectable to Matt because they can hide their heartbeats, so he can't hear them... But what about all of his other senses? In the first season, we found out Matt has some kind of heat "vision" (which is this series' equivalent to the comic book Daredevil's radar sense), so shouldn't he be able to detect the ninjas with that? And what about his enhanced sense of smell? Surely the ninjas can't somehow block their body odor too? Also, even if their hearts makes no sound, wouldn't the rustling of their clothes as they move a few feet behind Matt be something he should hear with his super-hearing, given that he's capable of listening to random conversations a mile away?
  • When he was holed up with Vladimir in that abandoned building in season 1, he could tell there was a box with 3 flares in it from across the room. When he and Elektra were at the train yard in season 2, he could tell from outside that one out of many box cars were full because there was no negative space inside it. There's really no way that he shouldn't be able to know exactly where the 3 or 4 ninjas are in a room even if he can't hear their heartbeats.
  • Yes but that's before he went on nights where his eardrums get shredded by explosions, bullets and thug screaming at him. Even if he can control his super hearing he probably had some hearing loss after a while. And how come no one broke his nose yet?
  • His super hearing still works fine in the final episode of season 2, and that's after his encounter with the silent Hand ninjas.
  • Stick points out the ninjas are invisible to him because he's focusing on the wrong things. Matt is so used to detecting people by their heartbeats and footsteps that he's bewildered when they don't show these sounds, thus them being invisible. He finds a solution in the sounds of their weapons, and when they abandon their weapons, the sound of their breathing. So in short Matt probably could track them down via some sound if focused well enough, but he's often not focused enough.
  • Nobu could lower his body temperature to be the same as room temperature, so heat sense is useless. Given that they're (semi-)magic ninjas, the simplest explanation is that they're just good enough to not make any sound while moving.
  • It's still a bit of a blatant retcon, considering the Hand's abilities in season 2 vs. Nobu's in season 1. It appears to be an attempt to avert the Conservation of Ninjutsu, but still, a glaring retcon, and one for Matt's central ability.
  • I think that's why Nobu got some higher authority status than what season one showed, because he is not just a regular hand ninja but, as established in The Defenders, a capo (he controls a Yakuza operation in Manhattan with a bunch of men who take orders from him, but he answers to Murakami). Because let's face it if the reason why Matt can't beat ninja is lack of skill and not throwing off his game he dies on the seventh episode.
  • Even if the ninjas had magical powers to control any sound their biological bodies make, it seems unclear how that would extend to their clothes? Even if their move as smoothly as possible, the fabric of their clothes is gonna makes some sound, and if Matt can hear someone's heartbeat across a crowded court room, he should be able to hear that rustling across an empty, silent space. Also, do the ninjas even know Matt is blind and has a "heat vision"? If they don't, there'd be no reason the lower their body temperature. But that doesn't even matter, because clearly Matt's vision doesn't seem to be based on heat: he can also "see" inanimate objects that have no heat signature. So that power should let him "see" the ninjas too.
  • Maybe the hand ninja just don't have body temperature and they are actually faking most of their body function. Some of them could be considered zombies. Matt then supposed they can lower it because he has trouble with mysticism. And even if he hear their clothes that kind of break a lot of his usual gameplan that is beat the guy because you know where his heart is so you have a good idea where the limbs and joints are. He can't just know if the rustling come from the pants or a tiny ninja's collar, especially not while he is fighting.
  • But even if the ninjas have no body heat and make no sounds, that doesn't change the fact that it's been established earlier Matt can used his radar sense to "see" objects that don't give out any heat, like furniture. So he should be able to "see" the ninjas too, no matter how much they mask their heat or the sounds they make.
  • Yes, it makes absolutely no sense. It implies that the only way Matt perceives people is by hearing their heartbeats, and that he needs to be told how to pick up on other sensory input… and clearly, I don’t need to explain how silly that is. Logically, Matt should not be able to stand five feet from Elektra and not know she’s there. He should not be getting his ass kicked by a crowd of ninjas and not be able to find them. People are loud and smelly and impact space in all kinds of obvious ways, so regardless of the status of your heartbeat, and no matter how sneaky you are, unless you’re not actually corporeally present, Matt is going to know you’re there. The only likely explanation is magic. In the comics, the Hand have all kinds of powers beyond resurrecting the dead, and these occasionally (depending on the writer) extend to an ability to supernaturally cloak themselves. Given their telepathic and other mental abilities, they may do this by impacting the minds of those who would otherwise perceive them. This allows them to hide, to a certain degree, from Matt, who has not been trained to break through this type of cloaking. It's possible that the Hand ninjas in the show also have this cloaking ability, and it's possible that's what Elektra is referring to when she says the ninjas are “trained to hide themselves”, training that Elektra clearly has as well, considering how she's able to appear in Matt’s apartment without him noticing she's there until she speaks up. It would even explain why Matt's "listen to someone's heartbeat to see if they're lying" ability fails when it comes to any lies that come out of Elektra's mouth.
    • In Elektra's case, it seems that she can, to an extent, hide her lies from Matt. She may have a “loud and strong” heartbeat, but if she can effectively suppress changes in her heartrates and perspiration, she may be able to occasionally bluff Matt in the same way a person can throw off a polygraph. But in some instances, like when she confessed she did fall in love with Matt, she may be too emotional to effectively lie to Matt. That and there might be a degree of Matt just not wanting to hear the truth. Also, as a student of Stick's, Elektra is very good at telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and being very misleading.
  • We know that Matt has trouble detecting the ninjas, because supposedly they can cloak their heartbeats in some capacity. And there’s nothing wrong with them having that ability. It would be nice if it were explained (is it magic? Is it some physical skill?), but Hand ninjas have been known to do things like that in the comics as well. The problem is that this should be irrelevant to Matt, because there are a whole lot of other ways to detect people. In fact, listening for heartbeats should be a backup tactic in case footsteps, scent, breathing, etc. are somehow absent and his radar is malfunctioning. If it were some kind of whole body magic cloaking skill, we could accept it. But since it’s never explained, it instead comes off like sloppy, nonsensical sensory writing done for plot purposes.

Elektra's reading of Matt

• When Elektra and Matt first meet, she does a reading of Matt, which is clearly supposed to be impressive. Among the things she mentions is Matt's supposed "video games routine". Why would she think that someone who is clearly blind plays video games? And why doesn't Matt point out this rather obvious flaw in her reading?
  • It's definitely a longshot if you were guessing, but remember that Elektra was there because Stick sent her. It's entirely possible that young Matt enjoyed spending hours just hanging out with Foggy, Marci and their other college friends while they played video games. She just said he was tired of the same old routine, she never said he played the video games, and the fact that Matt didn't quip at it shows that he didn't disagree.
  • There are some video games that a blind person can enjoy, and some people who are legally blind can still see enough to play a game by sticking their face really close to a monitor.
  • True, but Matt is completely blind. Even with his heightened senses, he doesn't have such limited vision. And the words "video games routine" certainly sound like Elektra was suggesting he plays video games himself, though I guess he could just spend his time listening to Foggy and Marci play them. Sounds like a weird routine for someone to have, but who knows, there are stranger things that some blind people enjoy, like, putting on a devil suit and beating the shit out of strangers.
  • Have you never hung out in the same room as friends who were doing something different to you?

About Castle's massacres

• In Castle's massacres, in particular on the Irish Kitchen and the biker gangs, is, he's pretty indiscriminate when firing. Something I wonder is, wouldn't there be more pressure from the police if he inadvertently killed an undercover officer in carrying out the hit? Or even worse, an undercover federal agent?
  • The undercover detective that was shot was killed during the same incident that killed Frank's family and left Frank in the hospital with a DNR order. Frank didn't do that. There were no undercovers with the Kitchen Irish or the Dogs of Hell when we saw Frank come knocking.
  • To the OP's point, there is still a risk of hitting others. During the Kitchen Irish hit, due to the power of the bullets he used, he definitely sent bullets out the other end of the bar, one grazing the dog he eventually takes in.
  • Which is exactly why (almost) everyone wants this loon off the streets as quickly as possible. It's only a matter of time before someone who doesn't deserve it gets killed by mistake.
  • A highly-trained marine sniper and some gun-toting gangbanger are on two whole other levels. Not to mention that he does take care to avoid aiming at innocents. The fact that "others" in the Kitchen Irish case, applies to exactly one innocent dog in a meeting reserved for professional criminals doesn't exactly carry much weight. From his perspective, the relatively low chance of one of his, a trained and experienced sniper's bullets not only ricocheting, but hitting and mortally wounding someone he's actively not aiming for is worth taking if it means a very high chance of ending the guy who kills(or rapes/tortures/mutilates) innocents on purpose. As for the undercover cop problem, it's simple. He does his homework. He knows exactly who he's aiming at when he's aiming at them. Hell, he knew everything about Grotto, from his name to his darkest secret before anyone, including the DA and Daredevil did.

Dutton's mediator

• It might be figurative but when Dutton says the three groups barely spoke the same language, aren't the Irish and Dogs of Hell able to speak in standard English or their accents ruins everything? Sure they are 3 different groups but they are not at odds with each other.
  • He was being figurative, the three gangs have different cultures which would make a large deal like this hard to set up.

Why didn't the other organized crime crews go to war with Fisk?

• In the speech that the Kitchen Irish guy gives before Castle shoots up the party, he talks about how they lost their edge and got complacent enough that Wilson Fisk was able to move into Hell's Kitchen and take control of the rackets. He says, "Some of us feared Fisk. Some, in fact, ran. A few... maybe even deigned to work for him. Siding against their own kind." Which leads me to wonder, why didn't the Kitchen Irish, Dogs of Hell and/or Mexican cartel crews band together to push Wilson Fisk out, and leave Daredevil to do that for them?
  • Fisk has the Yakuza, the Triad, and the Russians with him. And that's just if you don't know the the truth about the first two; if you do, it's much worse. After what he did to the Russians no one was willing to risk it.
  • Aside from that, the Dogs and the Irish are implied to not have nearly as large a presence in Hell's Kitchen as the others, and since the Cartel are mentioned to be "bringing weapons up" from Mexico it can be assumed they didn't previously have a major presence either. The mere fact that the Dogs, Irish, and Cartel were rushing to fill Fisk's power vacuum instead of already in a position of power means that they weren't that major a presence.
  • Fisk also ran an incredibly tight operation. People were so scared of him that we saw Healy commit suicide to prevent Fisk from going after his family. We don't know much about the Dogs or the Mexicans but the Irish got soft in their own words. By the time they realized Fisk was a threat it was probably too late to move against him. Nesbitt's whole speech before Frank slaughters the meeting also insinuates that Fisk undermined the Kitchen Irish by paying off members of the organization to undermine it so he could drive them out of Hell's Kitchen.

How does Fisk gain so much control over the prison?

• He controlled most of the inmates, including the guards, but he didn't have any money to pay them off. If they don't get paid, what do they get out of being on Fisk's side? Like the guards?
  • He took over the prison smuggling ring, and gave the guards a bigger cut.
  • Fisk still has money. Enough money that Vanessa is living off it outside the US and he spends another sizable chunk paying off various people. We're never given a dollar amount other than he burned through it by the end but it was probably plenty. Besides some of the guards and police probably work for Fisk not because Fisk pays them or at least pays them well but because Fisk has emailed them pictures of their daughters through sniper scopes.
  • Over the course of the two episodes we get with Fisk in prison, we see him beginning to establish control: From inside, he identifies inmates and guards who would be useful to him. When he talks to his lawyer, he has him use Fisk's money (since apparently there's still a lot of it) to track down those peoples' families/homes/etc. and either help them out or threaten him. As long as the money lasts, Fisk has the perfect carrot and stick: he's the guy who can get stuff done outside the prison, whether it's paying your mother's rent or having her beat to within an inch of her life. That's a lot of leverage. Once Dutton is taken out, Fisk takes over his prison operations and assumes complete control over the prison as seen at the start of season 3, such that he can now bark orders for inmates to quiet down while he tries to eat an omlette in peace, pay Jasper Evans to shank him, and remotely order the guards and inmates to start a riot from afar in an attempt to kill Matt.

Why isn't there a police investigation into Castle's escape?

• Why doesn't the NYPD open an investigation into Castle's escape? In real life, the escape of such a high profile prisoner should've started an investigation the moment the hit on Reyes was carried out, and some guards would've been indicted, as you can't simply walk out a high security prison without someone pulling strings from the inside, and I say this because quite a fair share of real prison escapes have happened that were only possible thanks to inside help, like the two murderers who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility upstate in June 2015.
  • They probably did but this is a One-Man Army, so it wouldn't be hard to convince them he escaped by his own means, using his time confined in isolation after his killing spree (before the trial) to think of a plan.
  • To the OP's point: In January 2016, three dangerous convicts escaped from a Southern California jail, one of whom was compared to Hannibal Lecter by prosecutors. There was an immediate investigation into the prison staff even as authorities worked to recapture the escapees ^note one of them was recaptured within a day of the escape, and the other two were arrested in San Francisco when they were spotted by an observant civilian. It uncovered guard involvement. Frank Castle is a dangerous one-man army, but to escape Riker's just like that takes serious skill, equipment, and help.
  • Add to that the fact that immediately prior to his escape, he was in solitary after he (as the outside world sees it) somehow gaining access to a secure wing of Riker's, and killing the prison kingpin and his gang. Another thing that could only have been accomplished with inside help. There would be a thorough investigation. Then again, season 3 showed Fisk still had allies on the outside who were in a position to silence any inestigation work.

Corruption and Castle's escape

• Also, considering that quite a fair number of cops were indicted on corruption charges relating to their roles in Wilson Fisk's operation, wouldn't Castle walking out of the jail bring a LOT of attention to Fisk and everyone else in the jail, not just from the authorities but from the media as well? I mean, yeah there's going to be all the attention on Castle, the man who massacres entire gangs single-handedly and, while in prison, murdered like 30 inmates, then as far as the public is concerned, did a sniper hit on a district attorney in broad daylight. But the fact that he conveniently murdered everyone associated with Fisk's rivals, I think THAT might put some suspicion on Fisk.
  • It's not suspicious that the guy who killed a bunch of gangsters kills another bunch of gangsters. And how can he kill people that aren't Fisk's rival? Fisk's known partners in crime are dead or in jail who's to say Punisher didn't shoot one of the unknown one in his rampage? Dude headshotted ninja there is no discrimination in what he kills.
  • OP here: I'm talking about his killings of the Irish Kitchen, Dogs of Hell, and the Mexican cartel folks. All of them happened to be rivals of Wilson Fisk's. What I suppose is a better question to ask is: before Castle is arrested, wouldn't the cops entertain the possibility that the guy committing the massacres was an expert hitman acting on orders from Fisk? He clearly still had the ability to give some orders to the outside even when locked up.
  • They aren't Fisk's rivals, they are Fisk's replacements. And since those groups were being hit by the Punisher before him and Kingpin even saw each other (Fisk didn't even know he killed the Kitchen Irish) it's gonna be easy to see a dead end because there is one. Add that the fact that the D.A already knows what the Punisher wanted (since they are partly responsible for the incident) and no one will think Fisk hired a guy to kill every criminal available at the moment.

Did and how did Matt knew he sunk the 8 ball?

• So Matt is clearly faking being extremely bad at pool to have a moment with Karen and while I can get an idea how he can know where the balls are how could he know the value of those? Only the white ball is different in mass all the others are only different in color.
  • The eight-ball is always in the same place at the start of the game. All Matt would have to do is keep track of it.

Matt saw redemption?

• When Matt is arguing with Castle, he said he saw criminals changing their life for the best. I don't think he saw anyone in the series so far with the closest thing being Vladimir who mostly just chose to go out guns blazing from the corrupt cops.
  • Matt may most likely be referring to ex-cons he represented during his day job, but who didn't warrant an appearance in the series. And even if Matt has never personally met any, you'll find numerous cases of real criminals who have gotten out and turned their lives around, especially if shown enough support and kindness. Look no further than people like Frank Abagnale.
  • Yes but Punisher doesn't shoot ex-cons and timeline wise Matt didn't have that much cases. This is like saying Daredevil didn't kill the rapist dad or the domestic abuser because he believed in their redemption, he just put the fear of God into bullies.
  • He's also Catholic. God offering redemption to literally everyone is a significant part of his faith, thus motivating him to do the same. In fact the Church officially disapproves of the death penalty because it denies the criminal the ability to redeem their self.
  • Melvin Potter is a prime example of a man who went from working for Fisk to helping Matt. Granted, Fisk was threatening his girlfriend, but it's stated more than once that Melvin had a history of violence and that Betsy Beatty is his parole officer. He seems like a nice guy these days and Matt was likely thinking of him when he made that statement.

Why pawn child porn that openly?

• Even though there's no way for that pawn shop owner to know that was Frank Castle, all he sold him was a stolen police radio, the camera footage, and the shotgun shells from his double barrel. There was nothing to indicate that this grizzled, overly cautious man would be remotely interested in any sex tapes whatsoever. Even the most hardened real criminals have a special hatred for pedophiles (that's why child molesters get solitary confinement), so why risk getting your head smashed in for an extra $100?
  • He's just an idiot, maybe combined with the fact that Hell's Kitchen really is that bad. Remember that in season 1, the Russians ran a human trafficking ring that included children.
  • Additionally, almost every criminal gang abused children through blood draining, or using them as bait. And while Madame Gao doesn't do anything like that with her section of the Hand, the same cannot be said for the segments run by Nobu and Bakuto.

Close my tab

• Foggy tells Josie to close the tab, which is how we know that things are changing, because they're leaving the bar. But if you look very carefully at the mirror in Josie's, at around 29:11 minutes, it says "Absolutely no tabs". I don't wanna be picky, but I'm gonna be picky.
  • Foggy and Matt constantly joked that they drink here for free since they helped Josie keeping her bar open despite legal prosecutions, which she constantly replies they aren't drinking for free. The tab is a special treatment she never expected to be paid.
  • Nah, Josie didn't close the tab at all. Matt and Foggy have been going to Josie’s for years, so there’s no way she’d close the Nelson & Murdock tab at all. She'll keep it open, just under another name now.
  • It stands to reason Josie probably refused Foggy's money.

Reyes' bullying/harassment tactics

• As someone not too familiar with legal dramas or real intimidation tactics used by lawyers, I'm curious what Reyes was doing to harass The Offices of Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys at Law after the failed attempt to use Grotto to lure Frank Castle into a death trap. Foggy makes remarks that indicate the firm is losing clients because of Reyes, but the show doesn't go into details. The best I can assume is that most of the firm's clientele are borderline criminals (but innocent or harmless enough to pass Matt's super-senses) or too poor to afford to see Jeri Hogarth or other high-price attorneys. Is there any sign that Reyes is doing anything to them (at least before N&M takes on Frank Castle's case), or is it just implied that word of mouth is scaring away their clients?
  • Well if the prosecution has a special grudge for a law firm it's probably not a good idea to be represented by them. Clients that have pending affairs suddenly losing deals made by the D.A doesn't help either, your fender bender become ridiculously more problematic.
  • Yeah, the DA could decide to use a lot more resources to prosecute the clients of a particular firm. Defendants would avoid a firm if word is they'd suddenly be treated like Public Enemy Number One by hiring them.
  • Related question: in theory, wouldn't Nelson & Murdock have the grounds to lodge a complaint against Reyes with the New York Bar Association and maybe even a wrongful death suit against her for Grotto's death?
  • Could try but they had a bunch of problems to deal with first.

Why no training workouts?

• Daredevil proved to be (arguably) the best vigilante media product out there (not counting Bat-related stuff), awesome writing, acting, fight sequences, parkour, muscles, torture scenes, you name it. But in contrast to a less critically acclaimed series (DC's CW's Arrow), Daredevil features little-to-no training workouts for Matt. We've got a glimpse at how Stick trained him as a kid or how Elektra tested his skills, and at the end of the very first episode of the very first season he was boxing a punching bag… and two seasons out there and that's it. Not counting Matt beating the everliving shit out of criminals as the Devil of the Hell's Kitchen and later, Daredevil… that's it. Is there no room for training workouts for Matt in the running time? Or writers doesn't consider it to be badass enough? Or they think that just violently beating bad guys is the only workout you need? Y'know, no push-ups or other exercises to keep-up the shape?
  • Because it's not relevant to the plot. If something is not relevant to the plot, it's not worth showing. Same reason you never see characters go to the bathroom or see them eat on-screen.
  • The beatdowns are his training, if he starts doing push up after Nobu just split his pecs open it would be dumber and once he is in training shape he is already outside beating hooligans.
  • The training scenes in Arrow were a last-minute addition when Stephen Amell's trainer sent the producers a video of him doing the salmon ladder, and it impressed them so much they decided to show him off. Later seasons largely dropped them in favor of story and character development (let's not go into whether or not the show was better off for it). Daredevil was much more story-focused from the start, so there wasn't any room for gratuitous fanservice if it didn't drive the plot. That's why training scenes only work for instances like at the start of season 3 when Matt's recuperating from his Midland Circle injuries.

Why so much Adaptation Distillations?

• Ben Urich is comic book Ben Urich In-the-Name-Only and I mean personality, not the Race Lift; Leland Owsley is an Adaptational Wimp (so is Will Simpson in Jessica Jones series, in addition to being comic book Frank Simpson In-the-Name-Only) and Father Lantom while awesome is a Far Cry from 2003's Father Everett… Writers try to bring their more own stuff or what?
  • Ben Urich was retooled and killed off because the writers had always planned for him to die to demonstrate no one is safe in an adaptation. As for the Bulletin and Mitchell Ellison instead of the Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson, that's the result of a rights dispute.
  • Leland is the Owl's father. because it would not make sense to throw a half-owl man as the accountant and what we know of his father fit the show's role. And Father Everett was already only made for the movie if they adapt from this adaptation why not making Elektra's father murdered by Kingpin or bring a biker Bullseye?
  • Urich was also pretty close to the comics personality-wise, a reporter with more nose for news than political sense who'd "tilt at windmills" no one else wanted to take on, kept around because, for as much of a pain in the ass as he is, he tells a damn good story that sells papers. Ellison in the series finally got fed up with Urich and fired him, and it's more or less a running gag in the comics that JJJ fires Ben Urich at least once a week, but never really means it. Even the idea of Urich finally, permanently, losing his job and starting up a blog has roots in the comics, specifically the Civil War arc if memory serves. Father Everett was, as mentioned, only a character in the film, and really could have been cut completely for all the impact he has. Father Lantom, on the other hand, really helps Matt deal with the moral and ethical implications of vigilante justice, and brings up some of the series' most hard-hitting philosophical questions. Leland Owlsley is, indeed, apparently intended be the father of "The Owl" from the comics, since he rather frequently mentions his own son Lee (presumably Leland Owlsley, Jr.), and Erik Oleson actually had plans to feature Lee as the main villain in season 4 had the series not been canceled. Can't speak much to Wil Simpson/Frank Simpson, as I know little about Nuke from the comics, but he was certainly a very scary secondary villain to Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, and is still out there. But point of fact, the comics have been running more or less constantly since the 1960s, there's only so much they can do with a 13 hour TV season or a three-hour movie. Truly doing any character "justice" would require 50+ years of storytelling, which the TV and films just don't have.

Why did Fisk need Frank Castle to kill Dutton?

• The stated reason was that Fisk only had one guard onside and couldn't easily get to him. In reality he had most of the guards bribed/threatened into working for him, so he could easily have sent one of them in to do the job.
  • He did have one guy. The only reason the others went along is because now that Dutton is dead, Fisk is the one that can fill their pocket with a bigger offer and had a safe plan. The guards wouldn't have killed Dutton because there are 10 of his guys in the cell block to kill next so they don't say a guard stabbed him. After that he can try using one of the Valdez brothers, but any investigation would see the obvious connection between Fisk and the brothers. Frank had all the qualities: crazy enough that it's just him killing a guy that was linked to his family's deaths and won't be traced back to Fisk, expendable enough to let Dutton's men go to isolation or be too injured to take back their boss's place by killing Frank and tough enough to kill Dutton and his cellmate. If he didn't have the Punisher, Fisk couldn't have a good plan so the guards decide to join him.

Editors' priorities

• In one scene, Ellison mentions to Karen that it took several days before the Bulletin was able to run a story on the gang massacre in Central Park that killed Castle's family. Question is: did Karen have to rely solely on the Bulletin to look for information on the deaths of Castle's family? Because I'm pretty sure that a gang shootout with that many bodies would have been covered by the New York Times and other New York City area newspapers too.
  • Apparently Reyes was able to cover up the story, I don't know how she can silence the press (maybe a national security thing after the Chitauri invasion she could try it) but apparently she succeeded.
  • The Punisher (2017) implies that Carson Wolf may have also had a hand, given Ellison mentions there that he had been pressured by Wolf into killing the story about David's faked "death". Stands to reason that the plotters behind Operation Cerberus probably did the same thing with Frank's family.

The Tool Shed

• It being dark in that scene, I couldn't really get a sense of where tool shed sits geographically, but it does belong to Col. Schoonover, right? Are we to understand that it lies somewhere on his property? I mean, hopefully Frank moved all that loot somewhere else, otherwise it would be a bit of a problem to have your armory located on the property of the guy you killed.
  • It's either on his property or just outside it. However, it's highly likely that Castle moved it all. Packed it up, and took it someplace else.
  • Since Colonel Schoonover was intending to kill Karen and make her disappear, it was likely his cabin.

So how has Foggy's perspective of Matt changed?

• So I've always wondered, now that Foggy knows Matt's Daredevil, his opinion of Matt has changed. So what exactly does he see 'Daredevil' as? I mean, I keep thinking there are a few possible different ways his view of Matt has changed:
  • For one, I think he sees Matt's vigilantism as something akin to a drug addiction and a suicidal death wish that Foggy has no wish in enabling. After all, in reality, eventually Matt will come across someone who will just shoot him in the face instead of martial arts.
  • Alternately, I think Foggy feels like Matt is being selfish, and the breakdown of their friendship is because of Matt's lack of trust in Foggy. Let's remember that Foggy has no connection to anything in the other half of Matt's life. Foggy doesn't see Matt out there getting beaten up and chasing down the Dogs of Hell, the Kitchen Irish, the Yakuza, the Hand, etc. To him, Matt is simply going out and fighting bad guys, which is exactly what the cops are supposed to be doing. For Foggy to trust Matt, Matt has to trust Foggy with the truth - which he clearly doesn't. And Foggy clearly can't trust Matt as much because Matt has lied to him for over five years.

Castle's diversion with the truck

• So, Castle sends in the semi rig as a diversion to distract the cops while he prepares to snipe Grotto from the water tower. ESU opens fire on the truck. They approach the cab, open the door, and find the dead body of the power-washer from the earlier scene in the driver's seat. A question I have is, was the driver already dead when the truck crossed that railroad track to enter the lot, or was he fully conscious and killed when ESU opened fire?
  • Most likely, he was dead. When we last see him, he's staring down Frank, who looks downright pissed and is packing heat. He probably just wasted him there and then tied him up.

Why doesn't Claire go to the police?

• So Claire quits in anger when the Metro-General administration not only intends to cover up the killing of a nurse by a Hand ninja by claiming it was a junkie but also ignore the body of someone about to undergo a second autopsy. Question: why doesn't she go to the police with what she knows? If Claire and her friend Shirley told the cops what they'd seen, I'm sure the cops would listen to them, right? I mean, the NYPD is 35,000 strong (they can't be all occupied with the Frank Castle matter) and I would think an incident like what happened to Louisa would warrant a police investigation to begin with.
  • "The guy dressed as a ninja with nonsensical scar on him was not a junkie but a secret warrior raised from the dead, detectives." Even if they believe it that sounds like something the cops have to call the FBI for, and they have to convince them of it.
    • He's only one guy, but Brett, who is an NYPD cop, was involved in moving the Hand children from the lab to the hospital. And there were a bunch of other cops who were called to secure the scene.

The Hospital Shooting, Part II

• So I'm curious. Castle shows up at the hospital, firing the shotgun down the hallway, which is designed to drive Karen and Grotto down to the car, where Castle then tries to pick Grotto off with the sniper rifle on the roof. But I'm wondering, did he really have to go that route? Why not just look through the window on each room door until he found the room where Grotto was, then walk in and shoot him?
• Furthermore, since he's attacking in public with civilians around, why not wear a ski mask or something to hide his face? There's a lot of people around who could describe the shooter as a male, 5'10½" with a shaved head and leather jacket. I mean, is there a part of Castle that wants to get caught or what?
  • Well because he already got his cover blown by a cop who spot him walking with a gun? Even if he wasn't what do you think nurses says to people who keeps peeking through the doors? Also he made a whole point on why he is not wearing a mask to Matt he doesn't want to hide who is the Punisher he wants criminal to know who he is and cops that who they can't stop.
  • He wouldn't have been allowed in the hospital with a ski mask on. Someone completely covering their face, especially in the summer, would be suspicious enough activity that any hospital security would have at least stopped him and told him to remove the mask, if not actually called it in as something overly suspicious and alerting any police in the area that "something may be almost in progress here." By wearing just his "normal" clothes, Frank could move freely about the hospital without (much) suspicion, and when he found Grotto could pull out his concealed weapon and start shooting.

Fisk's trial

• Rewatching the scene where Matt visits Fisk in prison, I have to ask a few questions. 1) Had Fisk already been convicted or was he awaiting trial? 2) It seems like all three members of Nelson & Murdock must have testified, either before a grand jury or in a trial. So what information would the firm be able to have to testify against Fisk?
  • Yes he was totally convicted. He tried shooting his way out when he was caught, which led to the deaths of several NYPD cops and FBI agents. There's enough to convict him on just THAT charge alone. As for Nelson & Murdock, the firm has everything related to Elena Cardenas' case, her refusal to sell, and Armand Tully's ties to Fisk. Then there's whatever was on that USB drive Karen had snuck out of Union Allied, which forensics accountants would be able to link back to Fisk. There's also Healy, who could be linked back to Fisk through money transfers and whatnot. And there's Hoffman, who can testify to killing Detective Blake and being threatened by Fisk into doing so. Hoffman also presumably named every corrupt cop who was on the take in that precinct.
  • Season 3 establishes that Fisk was convicted of five RICO counts in federal court. While they never say which crimes of his explicitly made up those five counts, so we can only guess. Everything Marci smuggled out of Landman & Zack was able to implicate Fisk in a variety of fraud charges, and if Parish Landman turned state's witness, he probably testified to the connection between Fisk and Owlsley. Senator Cherryh likely linked Fisk to political corruption and gave up the names of other people who took bribes from Fisk. And while Fisk is known by the press to be a cop killer who ordered the murders of Detective Blake and the other cops (as evidenced by some of the protesters' signs outside the Presidential Hotel), he never was convicted of that, as evidenced by the conversation between Hattley, Nadeem, the police commissioner and Blake Tower prior to Fisk's transfer. When the Commissioner snorts "Good, he's a cop killer" after learning Fisk had been shanked, Hattley fires back "That wasn't proven in court." What we're probably meant to imply from this is that Fisk's lawyers were able to discredit Hoffman's testimony (which is pretty understandable, seeing as with Blake's murder, the only evidence of Fisk directly ordering Hoffman to kill Blake is Hoffman himself, since the only other person in the room when the order was given—Wesley—is inconveniently dead), but weren't able to discredit other witnesses and evidence they could produce.

Reyes and Grotto's death

• OK, while I don't deny that Reyes was at the very least liable for double-crossing N&M by using Grotto as bait for the Punisher, is it really possible to put any blame on her for Grotto's death? Because, watching it, Grotto's decision to run from the scene was his own. If he'd just stayed there, the protection offer would still be valid, and whatnot. (Come to think of it, I'd have to think a couple of guys from that ESU squad probably received reprimands for failing to stop Grotto from running).
  • Wouldn't have been valid, the drug dealer he was supposed to catch didn't show up, deal is off. Grotto didn't even have the decency of dying from an ESU stray bullet.
  • That aside, the ESU opening fire on the Punisher and Daredevil does raise the question of whether or not such orders would be legal. I mean, cops do have pretty strict rules as to when lethal force can be applied, but the way in which Reyes gave the "take the shot" order to the snipers could easily have been argued by N&M to be an order to commit murder.
  • After Frank shot up a hospital, safe to say that the police probably had "shoot on sight" orders regarding him since he's basically graduated to the level of being a domestic terrorist, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that he isn't be the kind of guy who wants to be taken alive.
  • That however, raises a couple other questions since it was explicitly stated that Daredevil was in the line of fire. At the very least, it would've been manslaughter if they ended up killing Matt. Not to mention the fact that Frank was visibly unarmed and preoccupied.

Whatever happened to Brass?

• So the deal that Reyes made to trick Grotto into being police bait for the Punisher was that he would ostensibly buy drugs from a guy named Edgar Brass. Of course, the guy that Grotto thought was Brass turned out to be a suited-up ESU officer with his back turned. Brass never showed, so whatever happened to him? Did the Punisher already get to him first and Reyes was lying through her teeth, or what?
  • The plan Reyes and the cops had was that Castle would show up to finish off Grotto and then ESU would take the Punisher into custody/shoot him on sight (with the latter being the more likely outcome under the circumstances). The whole story about meeting a drug dealer was fake. Reyes just wanted Grotto out in the open so Castle would take the bait.
  • The question is, what really happened to the guy that Grotto thought he was going to meet? Under the circumstances, I'd think Brass may have already been killed by the Punisher.
  • Maybe, or maybe there never was going to be a meeting. And Reyes just randomly picked one of Grotto's old crime contacts to make the deal sound legit. Brass may have already been killed, or he could have been home watching TV.

"Treat witnesses like mushrooms"

• So when talking with Foggy and Karen at the precinct in "Dogs to a Gunfight," Brett mentions that the late Oscar Clemmons always said "Gotta treat witnesses like mushrooms. Feed 'em shit, and keep 'em in the dark." That's actually an old statement that goes back decades, but how exactly does it apply to Grotto's case?
  • An elaborate way of rephrasing the saying is "Sometimes, to get someone to help you further your own goals, you have to trick them into helping you, and use false pretenses to convince them to help you, while keeping them in the dark about what you really are doing." In this case, the saying is exactly how Reyes is using Grotto. Reyes wants to use Grotto as bait to lure the Punisher out into the open. She also knows that the Punisher can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with, and doesn't feel pity, remorse, or fear, and he absolutely will not stop, EVER, until Grotto is dead. Thing is, her office can't just tell Grotto "We want to use you as bait for the Punisher" because most criminals would probably never agree to such a deal on their own. Thus, Reyes deceived him into thinking that he was going to make a drug buy with one of his associates, and kept him in the dark about she was really doing.

What happened to the dog

• So Frank Castle managed to acquire Fido, the dog that belonged to the Kitchen Irish. Fido was still with him when he escaped from being tortured by Finn and his crew. One thing I do wonder is, what happened to the dog after Castle was arrested?
  • Kennel, I guess. That's probably what happens to animals when the owner is dead or in jail.

"You got to get me out of Hell's Kitchen"

• So Grotto survives the machine-gunning of the Kitchen Irish meeting, flees to Josie's, and is spotted by Nelson & Murdock. While he's talking with them, he says something along the lines of "you have to get me out of Hells Kitchen". Huh? Last I checked, Hell's Kitchen is like a 20 block area of Manhattan. I understand the part about wanting witness protection and whatnot, but was taking the subway to another borough, or a bus from the PABT, or a LIRR / NJT train to somewhere else in New York or New Jersey not an option? Those are options that could easily be done without anyone being able to track him (well, except the Punisher, but that's something different).
  • Yes and then he gets shot in the head the moment he has to go back to Hell's Kitchen to get his stuff. He wants to move out and settle not run like a fugitive all his life.
  • He wasn't being 100% literal, he meant he wanted to make a deal that would put him in witness protection and out of the city, away from the Punisher. Just leaving Kell's Kitchen would just mean he would die somewhere else once the Punisher finds him, he needed some sort of protection.

Major broken morality aesop

• Doesn't anyone else think it completely tramples all over Matt's Thou Shalt Not Kill arguments toward Frank Castle when this is set in the same universe where the big green guy and his crew pretty much slaughter every Mook in their path? Why is it the so-called Darker and Edgier superhero media like DD and Superman's movies have a better grasp of morality than Marvel's so-called Lighter and Softer movies?
  • Well, for the most part, their actions are in self-defense or direct defense of others. There's a big difference, morally and legally between justifiable homicide, and murder. Granted, there is still a moral dissonance here, as Tony Stark personally went after criminals himself in the first and third Iron Man movies, and in both, did what could very well be described as murder by leaving Raja's second-in-command in the hands of a lynch mob and leaving a guard he knocked out submerged headfirst in a fountain. In which cases, however, the public doesn't know about either incident, they only know Tony set out to fight terrorists, and terrorist casualties resulted. No one can conclusively say whether or not said casualties were out of self-defense, and given what they were up to, no one's gonna be shedding tears for them. No one knows that Karen killed James Wesley until season 3, but it's pretty much a clear cut "it was him or her" situation. With Castle, the public knows and has conclusive proof that he murdered dozens.

Vibranium weights?

• I know that consensus is that the weight that Fisk is bench-pressing when Frank Castle approaches him in jail are said to be a 500 pound weight. Is the weight supposed to be made of vibranium or is it much lighter than 500 pounds (if it really were 500 pounds, it'd probably be bending or something)?
  • It's probably just a special effect failure. It would have been harder to fake the iron's elasticity or find a Vincent D'Onofrio stunt double who can bench press 500 pounds on cue than just shrug it off as the bar can take it and move on.

Why didn't they shoot him?

• I'm curious why the corrupt cops who rolled up on Matt wailing on Vladimir didn't just open fire on him the moment they got out of their cars, instead going through the rigors of putting the bracelets on him, before finishing off Vladimir. It strikes me that shooting him would be the best option so that Matt wouldn't get any information out of Vladimir. What I also wonder is what these cops were going to do with Matt before he fought back, as they were clearly dragging him towards the patrol cars to take him away (although my best guess is they were probably going to just kill him somewhere else).
  • I think they wanted to scapegoat Matt for Vladimir's murder and whole gang war that happened. They can say they broke out the fight, the masked men took one of their guns, and shot Vladimir while they were cuffing them. Fisk wasn't personally gunning for Daredevil at this point, and the media circus around the vigilante trial would have kept the press occupied, and is something Fisk would've found a way to spin for his own gain.

Was Detective Blake's death necessary?

• From a narrative standpoint, Detective Blake's death makes sense, as it provides a reason for Hoffman to rat Fisk out to the FBI in the season 1 finale. However, in practice, was it necessary for him to get shot (Fisk having him killed in the hospital makes sense as Blake certainly knew Fisk was behind the shooting and probably was pissed off enough that he'd go to the feds when he recovered, but that's a different matter)? I can get that Fisk doesn't want loose ends, but his reason (that they weren't alerted that the locations of the Russians had been compromised due to Matt accessing Blake's phone) seems kinda weak, given Blake probably may not have been able to see that Matt had seen Wesley's text with the addresses.
  • Matt took his phone; we see a scene of Matt in his apartment showing it to Claire. When Blake woke up with his burner phone missing, he had to have known Matt saw the addresses. If anything, Blake must have been panicking that whole night between when he recovered and when he got shot. Because he had to know Fisk would not take him losing his phone lightly.
    • Fisk wasn't mad about Blake losing his phone. He was actually more than willing to forgive that. What he wasn't happy about was that Blake had failed to notify Wesley in a timely fashion about having been compromised (which isn't exactly Blake's fault since he must've spent an hour or so in the hospital getting a cast for his broken arm before the thought of notifying Fisk ever came to mind). By the time they learned it, Matt had already found Vladimir.

What if Detective Blake hadn't died?

• If Matt had shown up at the hospital earlier, and stopped Hoffman from poisoning Blake, how would that have changed his investigation of Fisk?
  • It's unclear what Detective Blake would've done if he survived. Seeing as he and Hoffman were friends for 35 years, he'd know off the bat that Hoffman had been threatened by Fisk into trying to kill him. Maybe Hoffman would have spun a false narrative in which Hoffman was overpowered trying to stop Matt from killing Blake. But it's more likely that Blake and Hoffman would decide to come clean about everything they'd ever done as cronies for Fisk. Meaning Fisk's best chance at keeping them from bringing him down would be to discredit them, much like he and Felix Manning later consider doing with Ray Nadeem in season 3 after they prevent his grand jury testimony from being usable (until Vanessa made the decision to have Nadeem killed). We know in season 3 that Fisk exerts control over the FBI agents on his protective detail by having dirt on all of them (artifically manufactured in Nadeem's case), so it's safe to assume that he probably also had dirt on the NYPD cops who were doing his bidding in season 1, including Blake and Hoffman. So the likely scenario is that Hoffman goes before the grand jury, Fisk intimidates the grand jury, and Hoffman goes into hiding and is still scooped up by Owlsley to be used as a bargaining chip. Blake meanwhile gets his name dragged through the mud and can't really fight it while he's still recovering. It's hard to imagine that Fisk would ever get another chance to kill Blake without drawing suspicion, as the police would probably beef up security on Blake's hospital room.
  • Fisk already decided that Blake was incompetent for losing his phone to the man in the mask. Also, Blake knows too much for Fisk to simply have him fired or even just moved to a non-administrative position, since either of those moves would likely just lead to Blake spilling his story to the press out of spite. Plus, Fisk really wanted to kill some cops for the sake of spinning the press, which was the whole reason his sniper shot those two uniformed cops after shooting Blake. So it’s more likely that Fisk would try to manipulate Hoffman like he later did Nadeem, whereas he would’ve still found a way to kill Blake after Blake’s failure with the addresses that wouldn't raise suspicion with the non-corrupt elements of the NYPD (it would probably necessitate something like bribing a nurse to administer drugs to Blake to poison him in a way that looks like he had a heart attack), and also intimidate Hoffman into getting in line.

"Saving a man, or saving a vigilante?"

• Seriously, what the hell, Foggy? You don't like what Matt does, fine. You call him out when you think it's due, fine. But "saving a vigilante"? You're just going to sit there with a straight face and try and claim that Matt's sole reason for wanting to save a life is because they both practice very different brands of vigilantism. Foggy, as you like to say so often: are you even listening to yourself?
  • Well what's the other reasons? I mean to Foggy, it's Matt trying to save Nobu or Wilson Fisk's life (which Matt confessed he wanted to kill the latter multiple times) because they are men. Seriously, Foggy had to go through four rooftops because Frank shot Matt in the head but this guy gets a treatment that Matt never offered to other criminals because what's lying half dead and unmasked on top of a building between pals. And why he does that? Because Frank is a vigilante, not because Matt went out of his way to save a mass murderer, because he never did that.
  • 1. It's the right thing to do. 2. It's the responsible thing to do as a defense attorney who cares about his job. 3. As Matt says himself, Frank Castle is a person and shouldn't have to die, which is exactly what will happen unless he gets a proper defense. Plus, it was offered to another criminal - Fisk's assassin John Healy - who they successfully defended.
  • 1. He did defend Healy. But then he beat the shit out of him after he was bailed out (not by Matt, Fisk bribed the jury) and put him in a situation where he killed himself. 2. How many scenes we had where Matt scolded Foggy to accept defending people with dubious morals and suddenly Frank Castle, the mass murderer who he knows will keep killing criminals if he has the chance, suddenly get a pass because "I don't want him to die but I also don't want to stop a clearly distraught man from faceplanting on a pike after I got what I wanted" and 3. It's not the right thing to do since they can't properly defend Frank and they know it (they have zero resources, Matt is busy with his vigilantism and Foggy is too conflicted with the whole "shooting Matt in the head and shooting a shotgun nearby Karen" to provide good defense). Most of the cases where Matt has been showed focusing on was pure self interest (he liked Karen,¸and he wanted to defend Healy only so he can get information on Fisk.) So yes, Foggy has a point asking why suddenly Matt take an interest in the guy who shot him in the head despite everything he has done before.
  • 1. "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" revolved around Wesley hiring Nelson & Murdock to provide Healy's legal defense and Matt personally gave a closing statement as it was his job. Also, Healy put himself in the situation by working for Wilson Fisk in the first place, and Matt had no way of knowing this. When it comes to Frank Castle, they know exactly what will happen to Castle if he doesn't get a proper defense. 2. Frank does not get a free pass. He gets a way off of death row, something no other criminal they encountered was facing, and that Frank's incompetent public defender was allowing, a blatant slap in the face to everything a defense attorney stands for. As for Healy, Matt was visibly shocked, and given that he can only "see" in a dark, almost silent room and it happened in literally a second it's pretty clear he didn't see that coming. 3. Saving a life, despite the difficulty or circumstances or personal feelings involved, is one of the most virtuous and selfless actions there is. As a hero, a lawyer, and a decent human being, Matt has a moral and ethical obligation to do so, as does Foggy, and the trial showed they not only can properly defend him, but they did. As Jeri Hogarth pointed out when hiring Foggy for her firm, the only reason they lost the case was because Frank had been provoked by Fisk's proxies; Matt's unavailability during the trial ended up having nothing to do with them losing the case. 4. While Matt did have self-interest in those cases, it was not Matt's sole motivation. Matt helped Karen because he knew she was innocent. He made clear he did not like helping Healy, but acknowledged that it was for the best, and at this point, Foggy knows all this. He also knows Matt is a good, righteous man, to the point where he quit a cushy job at Landman & Zack because he couldn't stand their shady practices. Foggy has a right to be upset, but he does not have the right to question why a good man would want to save a life for any other reason than it being what's right, and certainly does not have the right to suggest Matt's sole reason for doing so is because they share a profession.
  • It's established repeatedly that Matt often plays things close to the chest and doesn't necessarily tell Foggy everything that's going on. So what Foggy knows is that Frank shot Matt in the head, chained him to a building, and tried to get Matt to shoot a helpless Grotto in cold blood. Matt probably didn't tell Foggy anything about the conversation he had with Frank in the graveyard in which Frank described the shredded body of his daughter. The result is, Foggy can't see past Frank’s criminal record, while Matt and Karen have seen (from the graveyard conversation and breaking into Frank's house respectively) the broken man underneath- a person who seemingly needs help, and Matt is not one to walk away from someone who needs his help.
  • Foggy just isn’t seeing clearly in regards to the whole vigilante thing because of his reservations on the subject, especially since Matt is one of those vigilantes. You can kinda see where he’s coming from, and a lot of it is mostly just out of pure terror since Foggy had seen firsthand what Matt had been through at Frank’s hands. But yeah, the original poster is right: you would think that Foggy would know Matt better than that to think that "he's a fellow vigilante" was the only reason Matt wanted to take Frank's case.
  • Oh yeah that line was baffling. Like, "do you really think this is about his being Daredevil at that moment, Foggy?" I do think it was about saving Frank's life at that point. Although I will say when Matt snapped during his questioning of Frank during the trial, he made it about himself. Again this comes down to miscommunication and misunderstanding- if they could have truly listened and talked as adults, it could have been a lot better between them. Foggy does and says certain things that exacerbate the growing rift between him and Matt. The eventual end of Nelson & Murdock is not solely Matt’s fault.
  • Just as Matt and Karen had many good reasons why they should defend Frank, Foggy had a number of good reasons why they should not: for starters, Frank as a client goes against everything that Nelson & Murdock stands for. Nelson & Murdock stands for the helpless people and just borderline-criminals in Hell's Kitchen who can't afford high-price attorneys. Frank is not as innocent as those people, considering the crimes he’s committed (and can he even pay them anything?). Plus Foggy knows from his conversation with Marci that Reyes plans to use the Punisher case to advance her own career and she clearly has a grudge against Nelson & Murdock, so defending Frank feels more like career suicide.

Why doesn't Foggy ever give Matt a break?

• In season 1, Foggy's anger about Matt being the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and wanting him to stop was for the most part justified, considering that Foggy found out because he discovered Matt bleeding out from being attacked by Fisk and Nobu. But in the second season, six months have passed by. By this point, Foggy ought to know Matt's never going to stop his nighttime activities, so why doesn't he either just get on board and support Matt? Or at the very least, accept that there are going to be complications? Or just separate himself from Matt and go his own way? Instead Foggy just continues to nag Matt about stopping when he knows it's not going to do any good, and begins to berate Matt as a person in general, going so far as to call Matt a fake friend and a bad person in general, despite the fact he has seen first hand that people have been killed or were targeted under their care (Elena, Grotto, Karen), yet he makes the situation more about himself instead of his near-dying friend, even after being informed that Daredevil had nothing to do with the deaths. I'd be marginally upset as well if someone I thought was close to me had this kind of secret life without dispelling me, and was constantly getting hurt because of that, but why would I go so far as to demoralize my friend's personal character for it as if he killed my mother? And why did Foggy keep assuming other things that weren't there (like he thought Matt wanted to defend Frank Castle because Frank was another vigilante, even though Matt had made quite clear on several occasions that he didn't agree at all with Frank Castle's methods)? Other than make Matt justified in eventually telling Foggy "I'm done apologizing for who I am."
  • Well, the alternative is, "And Matt perfectly balanced his life as a vigilante with his life as a lawyer, all his friends were cool with it, he got lots of coffee, and they all lived happily ever after. The end," which isn't a very compelling show.
  • He found Matt half dead on a roof and you want Foggy to give the guy a break? Like the second season premiere shows exactly the kind of hell that Foggy has to put up with every time Matt gets his beating boner on. Foggy almost got hurt trying to go into that biker clubhouse for information. He cleaned the blood off Matt's hair after Frank shot him, and he has to lie to Karen every time for something he does not condone. It's like asking someone why he doesn't give his drug addicted brother a break as he goes to get another shot.
    • It's important to understand that the vigilantes/superheroes of the Netflix shows are seriously messed up people with HORRIBLE coping mechanisms. Jessica Jones is so broken by the traumas of being Kilgrave's slave for a year that she drinks copious amounts of alcohol and booze just to get through a regular day. Luke Cage is someone who's developed trust issues in light of what happened to him in Seagate and ultimately being betrayed by both Reva and by Diamondback. Danny Rand has stunted emotional growth from his time in K'un-L'un and has some issues managing his impulses, as well as trust issues stemming from the ways Harold Meachum and Bakuto betrayed him. And Matt Murdock has his Messiah complex and by his own admission is partially doing the Daredevil thing because he likes hurting people. Crime fighting is dark and bloody, and the people who do it aren't in the habit of reaching out to others for help. It's a little disingenuous to say Matt needs sunshine and puppies in his life when he's intentionally turning his back on every support system he has. Much of season 2 pushed this metaphor about Matt's need for violence being akin to a drug addiction, and that Matt's fall into doing the vigilante thing at the cost of his friendships with Karen and Foggy is not healthy.
    • Matt made bad decisions, they spiraled out of control, and then he kept making more bad decisions until he hit rock bottom. He's not going to stay there - that’s what redemption arcs, The Defenders, and season 3 are for, after all - but yeah. Matt is responsible for the vast majority of the depressing fallout from season 2. Sure, Foggy’s reactions to every shitty situation he found himself in because of Matt could have been better, but on the same hand you might as well be saying Foggy should have been acting more like Mother Teresa. Foggy might have handled it better, but Matt was the one flaking out (on a super important case he insisted they take, and Foggy wasn't that comfortable with taking), keeping them in the dark and feeding them shit. Just because Matt had good reasons (that he wasn't sharing) doesn't mean Foggy (and by extension Karen) should have put up with that shit. People are allowed to keep secrets, but Matt let his secret nearly destroy his friends' careers, strained his relationships with said friends (and the budding romance with Karen) and he was seeing his ex behind Karen's back while they were dating, which he couldn't tell her because, again- secrets. It's easy to see things from Matt's POV because the show is from his POV (after all, the show is called "Daredevil," not "Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys at Law"), but Foggy and Karen are not privy to Matt's past and inner turmoils like the viewers are. They tried very long and hard to find out what's going on and help him, but he insisted on pushing them away. That was on him. Foggy and Karen were extremely reasonable. Matt let himself be consumed by his double life.
  • Foggy was never OK with Matt being Daredevil. He just accepted that he couldn't talk him out of it ("You're an asshole. But if I can't stop you, the least I can do is help.") As Charlie Cox has described it in some interviews, Matt's addiction to violence (manifesting through his obsessive need to be Daredevil, and the way he falls back into bad habits with Elektra) is akin to a drug addiction. In fact, Elektra is like a drug, too: he has a history of making bad decisions with her but he loves the high of someone who will match him toe to toe. To Foggy, Daredevil is Matt's suicidal death wish that Foggy simply has no interest in enabling. All he wants is his friend - not necessarily the normal Matt Murdock, but the Matt that isn't going out every night looking to fight an endless war that's going to get him killed. On top of that, from Foggy's point-of-view, Matt appears to be doing what he does because he enjoys hurting others, which is something Foggy never would have expected from his best friend.
  • Foggy doesn't see Matt's actions as particularly noble, especially when you consider that his actions are shutting out and negatively affecting the two people closest to him. Perhaps calling Matt an "egotist" and "a self-centered asshole" would be pushing it, but Matt's actions are primarily self-serving and not altruistic in nature; how could they not be, when they're hurting the two people he's closest to? Plus, Foggy probably hates that he's now in on the lie. He can't tell Karen, which drives a wedge between them because it affects their personal and professional lives. So every time Matt puts on that Daredevil costume, he jeopardizes not only his own well-being, but Foggy's career and his only two friendships. And Foggy has no control over that. That's the big thing here - Matt's bringing this giant elephant into Foggy's life, risking everything that he's worked for for so long, and Foggy can't do anything about it. By the end of season 2, Matt is starting to realize that, and is torn apart because he knows that his actions are having that effect but feels that his work is too important to give up.
    That said, Matt is doing the best he thinks he's capable of doing. But one of his struggles is that he's unwilling or unable to see things from other peoples' perspectives because he's so intent on doing what HE feels he needs to do. This means that Foggy is unable to see the good in Matt's actions because he can't see everything that Matt's doing. To Foggy, all of Matt's actions as Daredevil exist in the abstract, as stories and images that play on the evening news. He doesn't see what Matt does in the same way the audience does, and because Matt doesn't tell him about everything, Foggy has to actually trust in the word of a best friend that he has recently learned has been lying to him for nearly all of the time they've known each other. For Foggy to trust Matt, Matt has to trust Foggy with the truth, which he clearly doesn't. And so Foggy reacts in a very human, very understandable way. It's hard for many fans to understand this, in part because they are analyzing Foggy's behavior from the perspective of someone who is far more aware of Matt's actions and much more predisposed to be sympathetic to Matt's cause than Foggy would have any right to be at that point.
    • With that said, though, Foggy probably would have been able to get behind Matt's activities if he, say, spoke to those who are supporters of Daredevil and the Punisher. And by that I mean, people who say Daredevil inspires them to be better, or braver; people who are grateful for the Punisher because he saved them from a rapist, or because he made sure their son's murderer died. People who argue that taking criminals off the streets is only any good if it's permanent, and people who say they can walk home without fear because the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is on their side.
  • In one interview, Elden Henson described how the Matt-Foggy dynamic changed between seasons 1 and 2:
    Elden Henson: It is changing, but it’s also much of the same. Matt and Foggy have a brotherly kind of relationship. Ultimately, Foggy just really cares about his well-being, no matter what he’s doing. He just wants him to be safe and he wants to protect this thing that they’ve built together. And now that Karen has entered their lives, he just really wants to keep everything the same. He gets a little bit stressed out with change.
    • Essentially, we know that Matt and Foggy took decent strides in moving forward since Foggy learned Matt's secret, but it wasn’t perfect ("I'm past worrying about the broken bones, finding you beaten into a coma"). One reason was because the knowledge of Matt’s enhanced senses has left Foggy feeling newly self-conscious. At first, Foggy probably dealt with it like he usually did, by joking and bluffing the awkwardness away. But though he tried to push past it, Foggy couldn’t help but be a little more careful around Matt. A little more reserved. But Matt picked up on that new, uncharacteristic reserve and misinterpreted it as judgment. Because of course he would. Foggy’s new unease around him quietly reinforced to Matt the idea that Foggy would never be comfortable with the idea of Daredevil. That Foggy didn’t even want to understand that part of Matt. The possibility that Foggy could still be dealing with the discomfort of Matt's unintentionally invasive senses, and the sudden power imbalance that came with them, never crossed Matt's mind, almost certainly because he’d never had to deal with a ‘normal’ person being in on the secret beforehand (Elektra doesn't count as 'normal'). Therefore, he came to his own conclusions.
      But then Frank Castle and Elektra happened (…and Karen a little bit, too, with Matt starting to date her), and thus Foggy doubled down on keeping the status quo. Matt also felt justified in doubling down on keeping his two worlds separate by not telling Foggy or Karen what was really going on. This escalated until the breaking point and his Daredevil life did start to interfere with Nelson & Murdock activities: losing their best chance at getting Frank a mistrial due to Elektra intimidating their witness, and Karen getting kidnapped by the Hand because of that time Matt had saved her from Fisk's assassin.
      Foggy being vocal about his fears for Matt’s safety on the street was understandable. And this might just be WMG, but it would not be a huge effort for Foggy to conflate his anxieties about senses-related things and his anxieties about Daredevil-related things. That's one of the many issues they really should have discussed at one point. It probably would've made things a bit easier.
  • It's one thing to dig someone running around the city and saving people, and something entirely different to find out that someone you care about has been going out picking deadly fights and you didn't even know. Being okay with what Daredevil does doesn't mean you'd be okay with your best friend doing the same. We see the same thing with Karen in The Defenders.
  • There are several different factors involved in why Foggy doesn't seem to cut Matt any slack.
    • The first is that Season 2 represents a massive upheaval in their lives. We don’t know what has happened in the roughly six months that have lapsed between the end of season 1 and the start of season 2^note That's the approximate length of the time skip according to Deborah Ann Woll, but Matt probably got into his fair share of risky situations. But for the most part, it was a period of relative calm (otherwise the second season would have started earlier– or would have at least acknowledged any major events from the six month time gap^note Clearly the three weren't involved in the Kilgrave saga's fallout). By the start of season 2, Foggy has calmed down a little bit about Matt’s Daredeviling. He’s still not completely comfortable with it. And if Frank Castle, the Hand, etc. hadn’t shown up, and if the relative calm had continued uninterrupted, and if Matt had avoided serious injury for long enough, it’s likely that Foggy eventually would have hopped on board and become more supportive. These things take time, after all, and this is a huge thing for Foggy to get used to. He's not going to get behind it overnight.
    • For obvious writing reasons, new threats and danger are needed for the story, otherwise, Season 2 would have been very boring. And along with these new threats, it’s important to remember that Foggy’s main concern with Matt’s Daredeviling– and the reason why he has such a visceral reaction to it– is because he’s frightened for his best friend’s safety. Yes, there’s more to it than that, but fear is at the heart of his distress^note "Every time I walk up those stairs, I wonder if today's the day [I find] you're dead in your living room".
    • When Foggy found out Matt’s secret in the comics, it was after Daredevil had been in action for years, and had shown himself to be a capable and formidable superhero. He discovers Matt-as-Daredevil while Matt is in a state of emotional shock, but not in any kind of imminent danger^note To elaborate, Matt has faked his own death for the umpteenth time, and is operating almost exclusively as a new, tougher version of Daredevil, and for the everyday activities that require a civilian identity, he comes up with a new persona with the not-at-all-conspicuous name of "Jack Batlin". Life for “new” Daredevil is going about as well as Matt had hoped, until some guy shows up wearing the original yellow DD outfit, claiming to be the real Daredevil. Matt becomes increasingly confused and unsure of his own identity. This, combined with the sudden death of his ex-girlfriend Glorianna O'Breen, and the triggering of some suppressed memories from his childhood, causes him to have a huge mental breakdown. These are the less-than-ideal circumstances in which Karen and Foggy find him. In the show, when Foggy discovers Matt’s secret, it is while he is unconscious and bleeding on the floor of his apartment after trying some unsuccessful amateur heroics. And he has to discover Matt unconscious and bleeding again in the second episode of season 2 after trying to take on Frank Castle. Essentially, the show's Foggy reacts similar to how the comics' Karen reacted when finding out Matt's secret. Comics!!Karen discovered that Matt was Daredevil when Daredevil was still a relatively new superhero^note That time around, Matt had faked his death– to throw off a supervillain who had discovered his secret identity, and he was operating as Daredevil full-time. At this point, one of his major life goals was marrying Karen, and with Matt “dead”, he planned to propose to her as Daredevil and then make up a permanent new civilian identity for himself. Fortunately, the supervillain in question died, the threat to his secret identity passed, and he was free to use his real name again. He decided that he was going to propose to Karen once and for all, and to do that, he needed to let her know that he was still alive… and he also needed to tell her about his secret superheroics. He bid his time, and in Vol. 1 #57 he broke the news to her in the least romantic situation possible: right after her father’s funeral.. There are clear similarities here between the show's version of Foggy and the early comics version of Karen. Unsurprisingly, both are insistent upon the idea of "You're going to get yourself killed if you keep this up. You know that, right?" Karen and Matt have similar arguments to those between Matt and Foggy in the show, and they have a major falling out over Matt’s refusal to give up his life as a superhero. Karen does eventually come to accept that Matt knows what he’s doing, but it takes a very long time before she is completely convinced that he isn’t going to end up dead in an alley somewhere.
    • A consequence of this in the show, is that Foggy is left with this very clear impression that Matt does not have things under control, that Matt is in way over his head, that he could easily die in a fight, or from lack of medical attention afterward. Foggy even points out that he did not sign up for this level of worry when he entered into this friendship^note "Me, Karen…we're a part of this now, because of you. And we didn't get a say in that". Yes, Foggy knows Matt has no interest in stopping, and he knows at this point that the argument is futile, but Season 2 reaffirms Foggy’s belief in the danger inherent in the situation. It proves that Matt is still capable of making some very dangerous mistakes as Daredevil. Foggy argues for Matt to be careful because, as he sees it, he’s trying to save Matt’s life. If Matt were able to prove that he was on top of the situation, Foggy would have a reason to stop being fearful, but that hasn’t happened yet.
    • In addition, Matt’s Daredeviling crosses another line in Season 2: it actively interferes with the success of their law firm. This is a major sore point for Foggy, and not just because of the impending threat of bankruptcy. Nelson & Murdock is not only the embodiment of Foggy's childhood aspiration to be a lawyer, but it is one of the core elements of his friendship with Matt. Matt talked Foggy out of taking a cushy job at Landman & Zack to start this independent practice; this big, shared dream of theirs. And now Matt’s reckless superheroing is getting in the way– and from Foggy's point of view, it looks like Matt doesn’t even care (obviously, he's wrong; Matt does care, he just has a very shitty way of expressing that). Matt is unwilling to curb his behavior, even though he knows that it is destroying their friendship and everything they’ve worked so hard to build since college. Foggy has every reason to be upset about that.
    • As for why Foggy doesn't just separate himself from Matt and going his own way sooner? Well, that’s a testament to the strength of their friendship that it takes him so long. It would have felt wrong and out-of-character for Foggy to just walk away. He requires Matt’s prompting to actually take that step, because he still cares about Matt. He doesn’t want the dream to end, and as angry as he gets, he’s too loyal to give up on his friend that easily.
    • With all that said, it's worth noting that Foggy is not completely blameless in the firm's closure. Yes, Matt made a lot of big mistakes, but Foggy is no saint either. There is a lack of understanding on both sides, and Foggy’s harsh, unsympathetic reactions to Matt’s behavior only escalate the situation. Because while Foggy might not have known the specifics, he had a general idea of what Matt was doing when he kept pulling his disappearing acts; and even though he never really understood the whole Daredevil thing or why Matt felt this need to be Daredevil, Foggy ought to have at least realized that what Matt was doing had a higher purpose, and should have realized that Matt wasn’t deliberately bailing on him in court just for the hell of it. Foggy’s behavior stems from the fact that he doesn't understand why Matt does what he does, and sees Daredevil as nothing more than selfishness and reckless endangerment. Likewise, Matt wants Foggy to understand his passion for his crimefighting, and he tries his best to balance his crazy whirlwind of opposing conflicts in Season 2, but the lack of emotional support from practically everyone, and especially from Foggy, leaves him feeling isolated and depressed. Matt initiates the break-up of Nelson & Murdock at a point where A) it seems to him that Foggy will never support him, and B) he doesn’t want to cause his friend any more pain. It all comes down to a misunderstanding and lack of communication, to which both of them contribute.
  • It's important to understand how the reveal has changed Foggy's perspective of Matt, because if one understands what Foggy is having to deal with, one can understand why he can't exactly give Matt a break. It's important to know that Matt and Foggy have been friends for a long, long time now. They've schooled together, and worked together, they're best buds who have finally reached a goal of setting up shop together. That's an important part of this; together. When Foggy learns Matt's big secret, his reaction isn't just to the fact that (from Foggy's perspective) his best friend is a life-risking vigilante eschewing the justice system they're trying to use to bring down Wilson Fisk. His reaction is also towards the fact that the one person he trusted the most was lying to him every single day, from the very beginning. To someone like Foggy this is the ultimate betrayal, but what can he do about it? He can't really go to Karen with it, he can't convince Matt to quit. He doesn't even feel like he knows Matt anymore, and if Matt was able to hide this from Foggy for so long, what else could he be hiding? It's a world-turning-upside-down moment for Foggy, and he's powerless to do anything about it. He could try to understand it and accept it, but Matt doesn't make that easy either; because Matt's lifestyle is one where he has to lie or leave out information to keep his friends safe.
    • The subject of "Matt had lied to Foggy every single day," is important, because Foggy now realized that Matt isn't really blind, or rather, his blindness is different from the sort of blindness Foggy had thought he had. Yes Matt can't read flat surfaces, or watch TV without descriptive audio, or drive a car, but his "world on fire" means he can sense pretty much anything with a three-dimensional shape. And like it or not, having a disability and/or being close with someone that has one can make life more challenging, or at the least you make conscious choices to accommodate their needs. Which is certainly something Foggy had to do when he and Matt became roommates^{such as} always pushing in chairs, immediately informing Matt when rearranging the furniture even by one inch; try not to grab onto him unless Foggy thinks it's a life-or-death situation. He prefers to be the one doing the holding on to someone's arm if need be. And now Foggy has learned that Matt is this backflipping ninja with freaky super senses. Which means, this major defining trait in how Foggy has understood his best friend is partially false. A side effect of this is that Foggy ends up having to second-guess the rest of how he and Matt defined their friendship.
    • It's worth pointing out the extreme nature of early comics Matt’s approach to keeping a secret identity. Matt had a bit of a Jekyll & Hyde thing going in the early comics, where not only did he hide his superpowers and heroics, he took on an entirely different personality in his civilian life. Matt Murdock and Daredevil were two different people: one genuine, the other fabricated for convenience. When Karen found out the secret in the comics, she had to accept the unsettling fact that the Matt Murdock she cared so much for wasn’t even a real person. In the show, Matt doesn’t disguise himself to this extreme degree, but there’s always a bit of discord where his double life is concerned. The straight-laced blind lawyer is never going to be the first suspect for superheroics (except when he is, of course, but that’s a different story…) and while, in the show, Foggy is well aware of Matt’s moral code and passion for justice, there’s a pretty big difference between that and what Matt gets up to in his off-hours. So when Foggy finds out, he questions just how much of himself Matt has been faking and concealing^note "Was anything ever real with us?". And this means he develops trust issues that are going to make it hard to get behind Matt's nighttime activities.
  • It seems that the issue is that Foggy just cannot wrap his head around Matt’s other life. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over finding Matt half dead in his apartment ("Every time I walk up those stairs, I wonder if today's the day [I find] you're dead in your living room"), and as he tells Matt in season 2, every time he goes to Matt’s apartment he’s afraid he’ll find the same thing. Plus, Foggy had to track him down after he had been shot at, so at his core, Foggy is just so terrified of Matt getting killed doing what he’s doing that that overrides everything else. By the end of The Defenders, Foggy has gotten to a place where he's be more accepting of what Matt does, but no question they’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. First and foremost, they do need to sit down and have an actual conversation with each other.
  • The conflict between Matt and Foggy is best illustrated in this exchange in 2x09:
    Foggy Nelson: I came to talk to my friend, not the vigilante.
    Matt Murdock: They're the same person, Foggy.
    Foggy Nelson: They weren't always.
    • In summary, Matt (and by extension, the audience) knows that Daredevil is a part of who he is, but Foggy does not see this. Through season 2, it seems that Foggy has never accepted the idea that, even before Matt started the behaviors that are Daredevil, the violence behind the behavior has always been a part of him, even if Foggy didn’t see it. Which is totally understandable, as that would absolutely be a hard thing to accept about your best friend, who you thought you knew so well all these years! The downside to this is that it means that Foggy thinks he’s rejecting the things Matt chooses to do, while Matt thinks that Foggy is rejecting who he is, and that difference in how they see their conflict is what makes it so hard to reconcile.
    • Furthermore, not once in season 2 do Matt and Foggy get a chance to get the one thing that would fix this issue: a discussion, not an argument, no speaking over each other, no storming off, but like two lawyers and two close friends talking and confronting what is clearly a painful subject for Matt and Foggy. They need to talk through their issues. No yelling at each other, no talking over one another, and no sweeping them under the rug, which is what actually happened after their season 1 fight. Sure, they made up enough to take down Fisk, and have six months of relative calm, but that was primarily because Karen forced them to start talking to each other again. If anything, Matt and Foggy really just papered over the cracks and tried to pretend that everything was fine when it wasn’t. They need to really listen to what each other has to say, and try to understand each other’s viewpoint, instead of feel like they’re right and the other is being unreasonable. Matt needs to explain to Foggy why it’s so important to him to be Daredevil, and Foggy needs to hear him out. In return, Matt needs to actually listen to Foggy’s concerns, and not jump to the conclusion that Foggy is judging him when he takes issue with the things Matt does at night.
    • The "Every time I walk up those stairs, I wonder if today's the day I find you dead in your living room" conversation is very telling. Matt’s being a stubborn jerk who’s too caught up in his own shit, and Foggy can’t handle it, but the parting is sort of mutual. There’s blame to go around, without one person getting off scot-free. It’s obvious that (a) they both know their relationship is too toxic to work, and (b) they really want to hold on to at least the meaning of it, so they’re on the precipice. Matt’s the one who pushes, but Foggy is ready to be pushed.
  • It seems that Foggy didn’t even try to listen/accept the Daredevil part of Matt’s life. You can’t really blame him because he found him nearly dead (again) on some random roof mid-day, and Matt should have admitted he made a mistake. But as time goes on, you would think that Foggy would have at least TRIED to listen to him when giving him a reality check. Like, “I know that what you’re doing as Daredevil is important to you, Matt, and you’re doing good things for the city. I accept that. But you have a job here, too, Matt. You wanted Frank as a client. You do not get to run off and leave me and Karen to handle this trial on our own.”
  • The Matt and Foggy conflict is like a strained marriage when one partner (Matt) has hurt the other one (Foggy) in some way and the trust is broken, but they love each other enough to try again. So they talk and there are some rules established and they get back together and work on their relationship, but... the hurt partner never stops making the other one pay for having hurt them, there are constant digs and reminders about how they fucked up, and they hold their continued presence and forgiveness over the head of the other one constantly reminding them that "you are a basket case", and the one who fucked up ends up distancing themselves more and more because even though they both love each other, it's almost like they're kept around so they can be kicked daily, like they're made to pay penance because they fucked up that one time. That very anger and distance is what chips away at their relationship the second time around. Matt is at fault for not confiding in Foggy about Elektra, especially since she obviously hurt Matt so badly the first time around^note and kind of ironic that Matt always seems to come back around to get kicked by people and not get away from them, to just let them hurt him over and over again, but if Foggy had been willing to accept and forgive Matt for fucking up the first time and not extract a death by a thousand cuts for six months, if he'd actually accepted Matt for who he is without wanting to change Matt, maybe Matt wouldn't have kept Elektra secret at all. Maybe he'd have been willing to be more open to Foggy. But, maybe not, there's no way to know since it all went to shit so fast. Matt and Foggy definitely needed serious therapy. They both jumped the gun on getting back together and it kind of blew up in their faces.
  • If the problem was merely that Foggy didn't like Matt being Daredevil, he would have cut ties with him sooner. So ostensibly, before season 2 began, Matt was better at balancing his lawyer life with Daredevil. Most of Foggy and Karen's frustrations with Matt in season 2 boiled down to how out of character he was acting (by acting incredibly sketchy, etc). As broke as they are, their firm has clients. Matt and Foggy are working. At the beginning of the season, they're in a reasonably good place. Matt has brought some sort of a balance and is being honest with Foggy - he does tell Foggy when he's going out so that Foggy knows, they even joke about Daredevil. And then Elektra appears and she brings out the darkness in Matt. The part that enjoys beating people up, enjoys fighting. With her Matt can let himself just BE Daredevil, but to the point that it consumes the other parts of him, the part that is a lawyer, the part that is Foggy's friend. And Foggy covers for Matt. Time and again he lies for Matt, makes up excuses, all because he thinks that "yes, I might hate Daredevil and the danger that he is to Matt, but it's important to Matt". Foggy covers for Matt because he thinks that Daredevil is important to Matt, but so is their practice. Their firm is important too. Their everyday lives. And Matt fails him. Matt fails him again and again, lies to him again, and it's starting to look more and more like the firm isn't as important to Matt as Daredevil. That it isn't as important as Foggy thought.
    Sure, Foggy could have done things better. It would have helped a lot if he could have stopped hating Daredevil and resenting Matt for lying to him all those years. These are both reasonable reactions, but it meant Matt wasn't able to go to him for help in a way he might have done and instead had to lean on Elektra. However when dealing with a friend who has problems (and does Matt have problems) there will come a point when, no matter how much you want to help them, you have to say no for the sake of your own sanity, and Foggy had reached that point. Particularly because so much of Foggy's life and wellbeing was tied up in how Matt acted. Wanting to make your rent is not a sign you're a sellout, it's a sign you're a grown-up. That has very little to do with their friendship at all, the writers loaded the dice against them, Matt was self-destructing all over the place and Foggy very sensibly refused to go down with him. By getting the Hogarth Chao & Benowitz job and making sure his financial wellbeing is not dependent on Matt, Foggy can take a step back, actually process everything and maybe go back to being Matt's supportive friend without having to also be Matt's boss, caretaker, emergency nurse, and worrier in chief.
  • It'd be great if Foggy would settle down and accept who Matt is, but he would only be inclined to do so if Matt would drop his "I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders" world view. Foggy already knows. He's already involved. Matt is like a brother to him, he said so himself, so he's afraid when his best friend goes around flipping like he's a member of Pippin's ensemble. He kind of deserves to be that way when Matt is screwing him over and leaving Foggy to pick up the pieces, like bailing on him during Frank Castle's trial without explaining what he was doing or why, and when he did eventually explain things it was too late, the damage had been done, and Foggy didn't want to listen to him. Matt could have gone to Foggy and said "My ex-girlfriend is crazy, what do I do?" And then even if Foggy couldn't help, at least he'd understand why Matt is disappearing midday.
  • Foggy is very harsh with Matt once he starts explaining himself. Understandably, he worries about Matt, but another part of it is also because at this point in time, prior to being hired by Claire to defend Luke Cage, Foggy has never accepted or supported Daredevil, or vigilantism in general. In the six months between season 1 and season 2, Foggy presumably felt really conflicted about it, because on the one hand, he knows from what Matt tells him and from the news that Daredevil helps people, Daredevil saved Karen's life, and Daredevil stopped Fisk from escaping, yet he just doesn’t think vigilantism is right. He might even tell himself he’s just worrying about Matt’s safety, because it'd be too much to just admit how he really feels. The fight they had in "Nelson v. Murdock" was hugely upsetting for both Matt and Foggy, and both probably were left willing to think that they’d settled their differences, when they really just put them aside and stopped talking about them. Therefore, the moment Matt’s vigilante activities start actively interfering with his job as a lawyer, Foggy finally feels justified in his discomfort. So when Matt tells Foggy about Elektra, he’s handing Foggy proof that Daredevil is harmful, so Foggy unloads on him.
    Foggy is justified in his anger that Matt neglected his professional responsibilities. Anyone would be pissed about that. It was never Matt’s intention, as he honestly thought he could handle both. But he was wrong. And Matt does need to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions, not just his intentions.
    The root of their conflict is that Matt sees Daredevil, and everything that comes with it, as part of who he is. Foggy sees it as something Matt chooses to do, and understandably has a difficult time accepting that the violence behind it has always been a part of Matt for as long as Foggy's known him. And the truth is a bit of both: the violence is a part of Matt, and Foggy needs to accept that, otherwise they'll continue having the same arguments over and over. But Matt is also making choices about what he does as Daredevil, and he has to accept the consequences of his choices, and own up to what he’s done.
  • It's not just that Matt is flaking out on his lawyer duties, but the fact that no matter what Matt does, Foggy and Karen are likely going to bear the weight of the consequences of his actions:
    • Put it simply, being a member of the justice system, whether as a lawyer, a police officer, a judge, or whatever, is like walking a tightrope, even if you aren’t hopping around in Devil pajamas wrestling with evildoers every night as a side project. There are a ton of of ethical rules you have to abide by that, depending on what you’re doing and what jurisdiction you’re working in, can subject you to anything from a slap on the hand to full disbarment. Or you can be sued by your client(s) for malpractice. Or sanctioned by the courts. And these rules aren’t just broken by obvious, often criminal stuff. Missed appointments, inadequately preparing for a case, not keeping in touch with your clients–can all lead to unpleasant stuff. And this is after surviving the crucible of law school and the Bar Exam.
    • Not only that, but a lot of a lawyer’s stress can get put upon the shoulders of the other lawyers in their office, and/or very often, gets put on their staff, who have to bust their ass to keep the attorneys in line as far as due dates, appointments, and what have you. A lot of it is purele administrative red tape process bullshit. But it can get frustrating, especially if you’re someone like Matt or Foggy who got into law to try and achieve justice, because a lot of the legal system runs on practicality, not fairness. You put in a lot of hard work at times to come up with something not entirely ideal, and you just come up empty handed.
    • All that said, it’s understandable if Karen and Foggy are so concerned about Matt and his double lives. Being a vigilante is still against the law. Besides, if someone were to find out that Matt or his compatriots (and we're looking at you, Elektra) tampered with evidence or witnesses related to cases Matt worked on as an attorney, it's game over. And say Matt does put aside his briefcase for the sake of the cowl. What is he going to do to support himself financially? Daredevil doesn’t bring in any income that we know of. And it seems like Matt and Foggy are still pretty new lawyers at this stage, having likely only passed the Bar and such a few years ago and then spent some time interning at Landman & Zack. The price tag for a legal education easily reaches into the six figures, so unless they got some sweet full-ride scholarships plus good salaries during their Landman & Zack internships, Matt and Foggy also have that hanging over their heads.
    • Karen and Foggy doubtless busted their asses to keep Nelson & Murdock afloat while Matt was flaking out, and post-breakup, they’re continuing to work hard on their careers. They also love Matt, and have seen him devote a lot to his legal career. So this means their concern for Matt isn't just about the physical toll that Daredevil takes on him, but also on the very dangerous position it puts him in professionally, financially, and just overall. And any potential backlash against Matt has the potentially to end up falling on Karen and Foggy both personally and professionally from their association with Daredevil’s alter ego, which must be nerve wracking. Foggy says just as much in The Defenders when he's bringing Matt's armor to the precinct^note “Did you hear what that cop said? If you're ever investigated, you'll lose everything. They re-open every case; matter of fact, I come down with you, we both get disbarred.”
    • So as much as Matt’s drive for justice is commendable, and his feeling like he can better achieve it being Daredevil than being an Esq. is understandable, Karen and Foggy are not wrong when it comes to the practical stuff. The tension between Matt Murdock and Daredevil and each man’s respective existences is part of what makes his character and show so interesting, and Karen and Foggy, in more ways than one, serve to remind the audience of the great stakes and risks involved in his unavoidably being both men.

They stay down but so Daredevil's

• Frank says his opponents stay down, unlike Matt's. Yet most of Matt's villains died because of him beating them, even though Matt wasn't the one who killed them: Healy committed suicide, Rance was murdered in jail. Most of the upper level players in Fisk's syndicate ended up being killed by Fisk because of Matt driving a wedge in their relations, and Matt technically killed Nobu twice (setting him on fire and then throwing him off that roof). Even worse: later on, by wiping Dutton's crew out, Frank ends up enabling Fisk's regime only with the promise that he'll come back for him, and he went lighter on Fisk than Matt went on Turk. So what does Frank base his "let them come back" policy on?
  • There's a big difference between Matt's and Frank's ideologies. Matt is only a threat to the criminals. Frank is a threat to criminals, but he's also a threat to the justice system. Fisk couldn't let Matt continue his crusade because Matt was taking down his criminal associates, rooting out corruption in the justice system, and emboldening honest cops like Brett, lawyers like Marci, and government officials (like the FBI) to better deal with the crimes that Fisk was committing. Fisk lets Frank run free because Frank is tearing down the justice system, making people lose faith in due process. That sends the message that laws and the courts don't mean anything, and it creates an atmosphere of chaos that allows Fisk to reclaim his power with ease in season 3.
  • There’s also a difference between someone dying after you’ve subdued them due to extenuating circumstances/outside forces/etc. and actual murder. Matt doesn’t kill people, as a rule, unless he is given no other option (e.g. desperate, last-ditch-effort self-defense, as was the case with Nobu), whereas Frank approaches every fight with the intention to kill. It’s this difference in attitude that Frank is criticizing. He doesn’t believe in Matt’s assertion that criminals deserve a second chance. Whether or not they actually, in practice, get that second chance after Matt has apprehended them is irrelevant.
  • There is no difference if in both case they don't come back, it just shows the Punisher enjoy deciding who lives and who dies in the criminal world. Plus beating someone with billy clubs and fists like Matt does is not subduing, it's assault to attempted murder.
  • Daredevil is as much as a threat to the justice system by showing people dressed like a demon can beat up and arrest criminals better than the cops. And it still doesn't answer why Frank says Matt's criminals get back up when they don't. If anything, Frank is just making shit up to cover the fact he just like shooting people. Because right now both gave their nemesis a chance to come back and left Turk live so really there is not much difference in their results despite the change in methods.
    • Frank didn't kill Turk because he had nothing to do with his family or the park shootout. Across Daredevil season 2 and The Punisher season 1, it's very rare for Frank to kill people who had nothing to do with the Central Park shootout.
    • Lance had nothing to do, so did the pedophile. Turk is an arms dealer but Frank spares him because he doesn't even believe in his own ideology, those he doesn't kill he tortures because that's what he likes to do.
  • When it comes down to it, Frank's methods put people at risk, and even more so. The debate of whether or not people deserve a chance or can be saved is kind of shown through events in the last few episodes of season 2. Turk, a low level thug that Frank would probably kill (and only lives because Turk has Plot Armor), is convinced by Karen to turn on his ankle monitor so the cops know where the Hand hostages are. If Matt was the kind of person that Frank is, that would never happen because he would've killed Turk a long time ago, and chances are those people never get found or saved. But at the same time, Matt throws Nobu off the rooftop without a care in the world for what happens to him, because Nobu's done this already. He's had his second chance, he's not going to change. And both seasons 1 and 3 had lengthy amounts of time dedicated to Matt exploring the idea of whether or not he should just kill Fisk.

Wesley's death, self-defense or premeditated?

• So Karen's reason for shooting Wesley was pretty straightforward, he was threatening her friends. But was it self-defense or murder?
  • Karen has a very strong argument she acted in self-defense both objectively and subjectively. First, Wesley had drugged and kidnapped her. Second, he placed a gun on the table where he could use the weapon on her. Third, he made a verbal threat that Karen and all of her friends would be killed if she did not submit to Wesley’s demands to effectively live in captivity indefinitely.
  • Therefore, Karen subjectively could believe she was in mortal danger given the fact Daniel Fisher had already been murdered in her apartment, that she had been framed for that murder, and that two assassins had already tried to kill her (Farnum in jail, Rance in her apartment). Moreover, she also knows Fisk has killed several other people (Elena and Detective Blake).
  • The one thing against Karen is that she paused after firing the first shot. Wesley had been seriously injured by that first shot. It appeared she verified the gun was actually loaded and thought before firing multiple times. Wesley was physically unable to threaten Karen after the first shot. Opening fire on Wesley looks like premeditated murder. But Karen could argue that as Wesley had kidnapped her and had the power to order her death if he was still alive, she had no choice.
  • It's not gonna be a problem with the police unless her dark secret comes back during the investigation (and her secret is that she escaped justice before ). Someone kidnapped her, she was drugged and killed the guy with his own gun, even if she took time there is no premeditation to it and shooting your aggressor more times to be sure is kind of heat of the moment thing. Karen doesn't know if Wesley is faking or has a second gun. Her reluctance to come clean with anyone is laid bare for us in season 3: as she puts it to Matt when coming clean with him about what happened, she didn't want to break the image of innocence that Matt had painted of her. (When she came clean to Foggy, it was because she felt she had to because the FBI were snooping around; when she weaponized it in front of Fisk, it was an impulsive reaction to Fisk revealing his knowledge of Matt's secret identity).
    • With all that said, Karen can still be charged with a crime for Wesley's death if anyone wants to bother. Three people now know the truth about what she did (Foggy, Fisk, and Matt), and given her habit of blaming herself when things go wrong, she probably wouldn't fight it. It's worth noting that New York doesn’t have “stand your ground laws” in the same way states like Florida and California do, but there is also no “duty to retreat” either. It's not first degree murder because Karen didn’t plan it. It’s also not involuntary manslaughter, because when she grabbed the gun, it was with the full intent of killing Wesley. So at worst, it would probably be voluntary manslaughter, or what they call “crimes of passion”. It still carries a prison sentence from 5-25 years, though given who Wesley worked for and the police corruption that was prevalent in the NYPD and the FBI at the time, it's unlikely Karen would see any jail time.

Matt's senses failing him

• How did Matt not notice Elektra was in his apartment when he came back at the end of episode 4? Someone sitting alone in an empty room should be really obvious to Matt– especially since it’s his apartment, and he knows on a subconscious level what it’s supposed to smell/sound like. If you walked into your apartment and… say… there was music blasting, even if you were distracted and slightly drunk, you’d still notice pretty quickly. To Matt, people are very loud and stinky, and his radar should be attuned enough his living room that he would notice a big shape that didn’t belong.
  • There's two factors going on here: the first is that Matt is in a bit of a love daze from kissing Karen just moments prior, and before that, he was having drinks at Josie's with Karen and Foggy, and they're quite heavy drinkers, so Matt may also have been a bit tipsy.
  • Frank's headshot on Matt was likely to Hand Wave why he gets surprised by non supernaturally stealthy people (which, come to think of it Elektra kind of is, since she has the same ability to cloak herself that ninjas like the Hand's do) in future episodes and series: his ear drums are messed up. And that's not counting regular beatings he gets, and cold night conditions (by the time the Hand comes along, it's autumn where the nights are much colder), which make it more difficult for Matt to use his senses passively.

Why does Daredevil just let Gao walk away?

• So in season 2, Matt finds Madame Gao in a basement at Chinatown. He and her have a conversation, and he gets information from her. Why the hell doesn't he bring her in? Turn her into the cops? She's just as bad as all the criminal he beats up, in fact worse, since she's secretly a Hand leader.
  • For two reasons. One, you gotta pick your battles. Matt had more pressing and immediate concerns, as his main priority is stopping the Blacksmith. Two, he has a need for legal insulation. Arresting Gao or any of her Hand co-leaders would take the same kind of elbow grease it took to lock up Fisk. Not to mention, the last time Matt confronted Madame Gao with the possible intention of taking her in, she almost killed him. Matt's not going to risk that again when she's not his priority, he has no evidence, and she would probably not even be taken into custody much less charged, and particularly when he's appealing to her as an information source right now.
  • She was in a drug den. They don't need much to arrest her when the cops show up. Matt just didn't expect her to still be in New York and wasn't ready to fight her. And he had bigger fish to fry.

Is Matt responsible for the outcome of Frank's trial?

• Why does Matt shoulder the lion’s share of the blame, both in character and out of character, for how Frank Castle's trial imploded? Because that end result was not remotely Matt’s fault at all. This isn’t to say that Matt hasn’t been an asshole at various parts throughout the season, or that he hadn’t been unprofessional. But Matt Murdock did not make the mistake that tanked the Frank Castle case.
  • For one, that case was unwinnable. There was no way that anyone was ever going to salvage that case. Johnnie Cochran couldn’t have salvaged that case. There were, however, some screwups along the way.
  • The opening statement was Matt’s biggest professional screw up. He didn’t show up on time, and Foggy had been left in the lurch. Foggy and Karen are justifiably angry here. While Matt personally fucked up here, it is not what tanked the Castle case.
  • Then there's the Medical Examiner: what did the heroes think they were going to gain from Tepper to begin with? I appreciate that Karen’s trying to solve a mystery, but you don’t solve a mystery on the witness stand. Whether or not Dr. Tepper lied about the Castle murders doesn’t really add anything to the idea of Frank not being legally culpable for his crimes. It’d be one thing if they were trying to cast doubt on Tepper’s results when dealing with one of Frank’s victims, but Frank’s defense has never been “he didn’t do it.” Even assuming that Tepper would have been the smoking gun after all, his testimony being discarded still wasn’t Matt’s fault. Now, it did happen because of Matt, specifically because Elektra decided to take it upon herself either A) to “help” Matt or B) to sabotage Matt's relationship with Foggy as part of Stick's plan. Regardless, this wasn’t something that Matt ever asked Elektra to do, nor did he have any reason to assume she knew who this person was or that she’d interfere. So Her decisions are not his fault.
    Now, after the Tepper fiasco, Matt stops showing up to the trial. But we also learn from Foggy that he actually told Matt to stop showing up. (He said that in a moment of anger, and people often say things they don't mean seriously when they're angry; Foggy did want Matt there, he just didn’t think Matt would take his words at face value.) Now Foggy does a pretty good job actually with what we see of his case in chief: particularly with the x-rays and the testimony of Colonel Schoonover and the doctor testifying about Frank's brain injury. So it’s again a case of Matt being unprofessional, but without an adverse effect on the case.
  • The next mess-up is Foggy and Karen's decision to call Frank to the stand to testify. Matt didn’t fuck that up. Sure, his vigilante speech never would have flown in a real courtroom, but okay. Foggy didn’t like Matt’s approach, but well, Foggy kind of gave up that decision when he insisted that Matt perform the direct examination. If Foggy wanted to control the approach, then he should have conducted it himself. Besides, at this point, Frank was playing to Fisk's tune and he was going to do whatever it took to get himself convicted so he could meet with Fisk, regardless of whether it was Matt or Foggy who did the cross-examination on him and regardless of whether or not they called Frank to testify.
  • Again, to be clear, there are more than enough things to legitimately blame Matt for: being unprofessional and leaving Karen and Foggy in the lurch, being an asshole, lying to them and driving them away. But Frank Castle’s trial and its fallout were not his fault.
  • Because he didn't even try, the vigilante speech was bullshit, he had no preparation and given Frank already fucked them over once and Foggy knows Matt can listen to heart beat he is even more aware that Frank is gonna fuck them during testifying but he went along with Karen who is a terrible judge of character when it comes to Frank and Foggy who was exhausted over carrying the whole case because he didn't give a shit about doing his work. Indirectly he also hurts the case with Elektra whether he wants it or not she wouldn't have falsified evidence if Matt wasn't on the case. It's easy to say being unprofessional and doing a piss poor job isn't the main problem in a game that is rigged but that's still a problem. From an outsider view Matt just half-assed the case and let his partner do most of the work, that shows that if he ends up with a case he judges unwinnable he won't decline it nor would he try reducing the charge or punishment, he is just gonna do bare minimum and be a bad luck charm because third party likes to fuck with him and won't even feel bad for you going in jail with maximum punishment.
    • That doesn't mean the medical examiner's sabotage is Matt's fault. It would be Matt's fault if Elektra had done it on Matt's orders. As for the rest, well, Foggy was most likely too angry to consider Matt had a valid argument, and maybe needed time to process it.
    • If Matt wasn't there Elektra wouldn't have done it and she knew which examiner to go see because she overheard Matt and Karen discussing the case. Not directly Matt's fault, but if he had made more effort to keep Elektra in the dark about his legal work, they might have had a chance. Their main objective was not to justify Frank's actions, as much as explain he is not a normal criminal and that he didn't belong in the same prisons as regular criminals - many of whom have comrades Frank killed - belong. And a guy stuck in fight or flight who was once targeted even before his killing spree with a DNR sounds like he might need different treatment, because not only is Frank in danger but he might start killing a bunch of people in jail because of this mental state (as he ultimately did), and the prison system is not made with the idea of battle royale between inmmates.
    • Frank is a ruthless serial killer who deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life. Matt only got involved because he didn’t think Frank deserved to die for similar religious reasons, but once the death penalty was off the table (which happened extremely quickly) he would have logically lost all interest in the case, and Foggy hated the case from the start. They were doing their best, but Frank was a REALLY terrible client, who changed his plea and later tanked his own case on the stand. On the other hand, it’s the job of legal counsel to control and be on the same page as their client, and when he showed signs of basically not being interested in their representation and being impossible to control, the ethical obligation for Nelson & Murdock would be to decide, “Okay, we can’t really serve you well, so we’re recusing ourselves.” But then again, Matt Murdock almost never had a case that didn’t have a massive conflict of interest in the comics (like the Kelco case—where Foggy was representing the defendants and Matt was lawyering for the plaintiffs—or that one time Matt had to sue himself and in order to "cross-examine" Daredevil in court, he had Peter Parker dress up in the suit), and never once did he step away because that ended the plot.
  • It's clear from an audience standpoint that Matt is not responsible for the final outcome of the trial. Either Frank or Elektra alone could arguably be enough to ruin things (since Matt had no idea of Fisk's machinations until right before Frank had his outburst). Now, although it's not Matt's fault that he had no idea what Elektra was planning, he is at fault for not setting clear boundaries with her. It's unclear whether or not that would've made a difference, but it's certainly something he could have done (although Elektra having never met a boundary she wasn't willing to violate, it's hard to say would've differed there). Meanwhile, Foggy and Karen blaming Matt for the trial going down in flames? Well, even though their perspective is wrong, it's certainly reasonable why they would blame him rather than stop to consider all other factors. Foggy's got his co-counsel, on whom both he and his client are depending, who insisted that they take this case...and then this co-counsel ducks out of discovery, and planning sessions, and misses his opening statement...all of which together certainly could expose Nelson & Murdock to a malpractice lawsuit. So Foggy can easily be led to think, "I can't say for sure that having Matt around would've changed anything. It might have, but we'll never know because he wasn't there." E.g., Maybe if Matt had worked together with Karen, they could've convinced Frank to cooperate. Maybe if Matt had been around for planning sessions, he could've come up with another strategy that Elektra couldn't have tanked. Maybe if Matt had been around for the whole trial, things would've gone such that they wouldn't have felt a need to have Frank take the stand.

Questions about Matt and Elektra's visit to Roscoe Sweeney

• So, in the comics, of course, Roscoe Sweeney very clearly dies, so scared is he of the yellow devil chasing him down. In the show, his fate is left far more ambiguous. After Matt punches Sweeney’s face into a pulp, he calls the cops, and Elektra vanishes. First off, how did Elektra get away? Did she take the car, which would leave Matt completely stranded? Did she leave on foot, and if so, why didn’t Matt try to track her down, being that she’d be his only point of contact way out in the middle of wherever-they-were? Did Matt get a ride from the cops? Did the cops even show up, and if not, what became of Sweeney? I mean, Sweeney made a very clear threat after recognizing Matt, promising to track him down and kill him. The bloated punch injuries he sustained would likely only further motivate him in doing so. Even if we assume that the cops did show up and arrested Sweeney, we’ve seen with Fisk that even caged criminals can have a hefty influence on the outside world. Sweeney may not be as influential as Fisk, but I very much doubt there wouldn’t still be some loyal killers on his payroll.
  In addition to this, the fact remains that Elektra and Matt committed serious crimes and left their fingerprints all over the place. I mean, there is property destruction, breaking and entering, kidnapping, and serious criminal assault. Sweeney is aware of Matt's identity. And Matt called the police himself. If the police had shown up while he was there, there is no way that Matt wouldn’t have been detained or at least extensively questioned about all the property damage, breaking and entering, Sweeney being tied up and beaten, why Matt was there in the first place, etc.
  • Knowing Elektra, and knowing her clear desire to get out of there as quickly as possible and to not be followed by Matt, she probably took the car. The seventh episode of The Defenders opens with a flashback that appears to take place directly after the scene at the mansion, in which Elektra meets up with Stick at the waterfront and tells him what happened. She’s driving a different car from the car that was taken to the mansion (Matt and Elektra arrive at the mansion in a black Ferrari 360 Modena, while Elektra is driving a white Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG when she meets with Stick), suggesting that she traded vehicles. This seems like the most likely scenario due to the fact that Matt didn’t actually find her afterward. Despite his shattered emotional state, it seems like he would have at least tried, and as quick and clever as Elektra is, she would have smelled strongly of blood and alcohol and other things that would have made her easy to locate. It's possible also that Elektra hitchhiked/stole some other rich guy's car/had her Mercedes stashed nearby. Heck, the Mercedes might even have been Sweeney's.
    Most likely, the police did show up and arrest Sweeney. Since Matt would have been a suspect in the break-in/attack, he probably would have exited stage left as quickly as possible. If he wasn’t gone before the police arrived, he would have at least hidden until they left. And if Elektra took the car or the police impounded it as evidence, he could have hitchhiked or somehow called Foggy and asked him for a ride.
  • As for the lack of retaliation from Sweeney, there are two possible scenarios. One scenario is that Elektra and/or Stick cleaned up the situation soon afterward by arranging for Sweeney to be assassinated in jail. This would have protected Matt and Elektra from retribution, and shield them from any other inconvenient consequences from the botched murder attempt. It's also possible that Sweeney decided to keep quiet to protect his own reputation. Despite his threats to Matt, sending a hitman to kill him would have been admitting that some blind college kid beat him up, and make him look weak in the eyes of his rivals.

Day and night issues

• In episode 8 of season 2, the night/day shift is a bit strange. First it's night, then it is morning in court. In the next scene with Matt and Stick it is night again. This goes on. It's especially visible when Matt is in court and Elektra talks with Stick alone. On the courtsteps it is bright daylight, but when Matt gets home it is night. Where was he all this time? I can't explain it other than it's for the atmosphere of the scene, but for me it makes no sense.
  • It’s mostly tonal. The low lighting makes the scenes in Matt’s apartment seem intimate, and a little bit removed from reality and the normal passage of time, which enhances the events and conversations taking place there. A similar effect was used for night scenes Matt has in the apartment with Karen and with Claire back in season 1. While the show doesn’t do a great job of establishing this, the scenes in the apartment and the scenes in the courthouse are not taking place simultaneously, and the episode is not quite linear. All of the apartment scenes at the beginning of the episode (Stick treating Elektra and then telling Matt the Hand vs. Chaste story) all happen the night before and into the early morning. The Matt-less scenes at the courthouse all take place the next day, during which Matt is doing more of the same offscreen (e.g. hanging out in his apartment with Stick and Elektra, but in less dramatic lighting). When Karen then goes to visit Matt and finds Elektra in his bed, that day has ended and so the apartment is dark again. Matt goes to court the following day, has his fight with Foggy and Karen, etc… and then that night (and it is clearly night again), Elektra kicks Stick out and Matt gets stabbed by the Hand ninja. Most likely, Matt did a lot of boring, non-story-relevant things offscreen. Maybe he took a walk after the argument to blow off some steam, did some shopping, went somewhere and napped (he was probably operating on little to no sleep)… That is all very convoluted, but it’s possible that’s what they were going for. Mostly, though, the set designers probably wanted Matt’s apartment lit a certain way for atmospheric purposes, and allowed the viewer to make their own assumptions about time of day.

Potential problems for Marci

• I know Marci was iffy about helping Foggy and Matt with exposing Fisk, but would she get in any trouble for it?
  • Probably not. The Legal Geeks had a whole article about it. The short answer is "No, due to the Crime-Fraud Exception rule". The long answer:
    • Foggy confronts Marci with evidence that Landman & Zack represents Wilson Fisk, the crime lord who is not yet called The Kingpin. Fisk is the law firm’s highest billing client, and Foggy presents Marci with evidence that Landman & Zack is aiding Fisk in a criminal enterprise. Furthermore, he goes so far as to say that Marci lost her soul at Landman & Zack. Marci responds by sneaking Fisk’s client files out of Landman & Zack and giving them to the law firm Nelson & Murdock.
    • Marci Stahl’s actions are a piñata of ethical issues. Attorneys have a duty to counsel a client to NOT engage in illegal conduct.^note New York Rules of Professional Conduct 1.2(d) A lawyer also is obligated refuse to participate in conduct the lawyer believes to be unlawful.^note New York Rules of Professional Conduct 1.2(f). And lawyers are to avoid assisting a client by preparing a fraudulent document or concealing wrongdoing. As such, a lawyer should advise a client if the requested conduct would violate the law. If a client will not change their conduct and the lawyer’s participation would violate the law, the lawyer should withdraw from the case. Moreover, there are cases where a lawyer would have to disaffirm any documents prepared for the client.
    • Where things get real iffy is that Marci turned over client material to an adverse law firm, as in, the opposing counsel on a case Landman & Zack is involved in. This is highly problematic for her, because a lawyer should not knowingly reveal confidential information. She did this without the knowledge of her firm or consent of her client. The information was clearly “confidential.” However, it was also evidence of racketeering. As recognized by New York State in People v. DePallo, the “intent to commit a crime is not a protected confidence or secret.”
    • Landman & Zack’s work product is likely key evidence in the racketeering charges against Fisk (which at least partially explains the FBI's involvement in his arrest at the end of season 1, and why Fisk makes a deal to become an informant to Agent Nadeem to secure his release from prison in season 3). The fact that Landman & Zack's lawyers assisted a criminal enterprise would make them part of a conspiracy, and subject to immediate disbarment if convicted. Attorneys have been charged in the past with racketeering in violation of 18 USCS § 1962(c), so this is not the stuff of comic book stories.
    • Marci’s best argument for turning over client confidential material to Nelson & Murdock is that she engaged the firm to secure advice on compliance with her ethical duties and whether her client had broken the law. While this argument is problematic since Nelson & Murdock had been adversarial to Fisk, thus on its face should violate Marci’s duty to loyalty to Fisk, it is the least bad position for her. The better plan would have been turning the material over to the FBI in order to prevent her client from committing more crimes. However, with Fisk's habit of getting rid of anyone who opposes his organization, it was objectively reasonable for Marci to work with another law firm before turning information over.
  • Perhaps the bigger question is why didn't Marci end up incurring Fisk's wrath in season 3? Fisk is willing to blackmail Foggy by leveraging his brother and parents, when he could have easily gotten the same result with Marci by finding dirt on her from her days at Landman & Zack (how privy was she to the other corruption that was going on at Landman & Zack? Or even at Jeri Hogarth's firm?) to blackmail Foggy (in a "Back off of me or I'll ruin your girlfriend's career").
    • At a story level, that's probably because Fisk has a lot more respect for women. Obviously, Fisk is not above having them killed (he has Mrs. Cardenas and Julie killed, and he tries to have Karen killed on multiple occasions, although Karen was intentionally causing more problems for Fisk's operation), but it's clear he prefers not to.^note Notice that until he learned about Karen's part in Wesley's death, Fisk only targeted her for death as a last resort. It's clear his attempts to have her killed for the Union Allied fiasco were because Matt and Foggy got to her before his people could, and if they hadn't shown up, blackmail would be in order. Wesley's first action upon learning Karen spoke to Fisk's mother was also try to blackmail her, not kill her, further reinforcing this. It's also possible that Fisk did investigate Marci, only to realize that she's smart, skilled and sophisticated enough that going after her would be more work than it's worth, especially compared to going after Foggy's family members.

Why didn't the Hand seek revenge on Fisk?

• Why didn't the Hand take revenge on Fisk after his sneaky manoeuvre to get rid of Nobu via Daredevil? Before Iron Fist and The Defenders revealed Gao was part of the Hand, it probably could have been hand-waved away that none of Nobu's clan knew about Fisk's intention, but surely Gao would have alerted them to his bullshit as only an episode later she basically lets Fisk know she knows he manipulated Nobu's "pride". Plus, why didn't Nobu have any of his own men stationed outside the warehouse prior to his fight with Matt, or anyone who followed up on his "death"?
  • Gao wanted Fisk to take out Nobu. As revealed in Iron Fist and Defenders, the various clans always fought among each other with Gao being the main offender. They probably chalked it up to Gao's doing or at the very least, they didn't want to escalate a civil war with Gao by going after her ally.

Elektra and Karen

• So, does Elektra accept Matt's interest in Karen or not? When Karen's being held captive by the Hand in the season 2 finale, Elektra gets Matt to focus by saying "You'll find her, Matthew," and also uses the statement that he lost something. As if she knew that he had lost more than he was aware of it. But then there's the way Elektra acts in The Defenders, which makes things confusing.
  • This is a great example of Elektra rocking her dual personality, which in some ways makes her like other people such as Matt or Dex. The "I want to be good and I want Matthew to be happy" vs. the "I am a killer and Matthew is ALL mine". The problem is, what we've seen on screen suggests that the former is a lie while the latter is her default/true position. This isn't to say Elektra doesn’t mean it, because she does. She conveniently lets her own feelings / need to kill get in the way when it counts.
    When Elektra and Matt are about to be crushed under Midland Circle at the end of The Defenders, she still kisses him. She still wants to be with Matt forever, in her toxic romantic way. That’s a bit of a problem: if you love someone, you do not do this. You prioritize their needs and feelings over your own, to a healthy degree. This is somewhat related, but in Karen's flashback episode in Daredevil season 3, we saw that her drug-dealing boyfriend Todd Neiman was to her what Elektra was to Matt. He helped convince Karen that she couldn’t leave Fagan Corners, because he “would miss her too much”^note Not to mention Karen's own feeling that her dad and brother will go broke without her around to manage to the diner due to her dad's fiscal irresponsibility, which is guilt tripping 101. Todd used Karen, and Elektra used Matt, to keep them where they are. In feelings of crushing obligations, again not healthy. They try to keep them right there with them, and it works. Matt and Karen are both kind and caring that they will stay in a place that makes them feel bad if it is to help keep other people safe/happy.
    This kindness is what makes them so vulnerable. They need someone who is just as kind to make sure they are taking care of. This is also why they work. They make sure that the other person is okay. It’s this whole concept of “kind people are kind because they know first hand that the world isn’t”. Matt and Karen both know the world isn’t kind. Through their investigations of Fisk, they have experienced it in the harshest way possible. They are kind, because they know they need to be in order to survive.
    Matt has a very cool ability to undervalue his personal feelings. That how he feels and what he desperately wants are somehow not important. That whatever the mission is, is more important. That’s not healthy. Elektra and Stick take advantage of Matt's self-imposed self-righteous faux selflessness. She and Stick use the fact that he wants to protect Karen and Foggy to isolate him from them, and pull him closer to her. That’s not okay, on any level. Matt thinks that he has to be the martyr. That it is his mission alone, something he learns is not the case in season 3. But martyrdom doesn’t really achieve much in the long run. It’s the whole "dying is easy, living is harder" idea. If Matt did die it would all be over. His feelings of pain and general suffering. Luckily through breaking down his barriers with Karen in the church, he learns that he does not have to go it alone.

Why would Matt turn Karen down?

• So why exactly did Matt turn down Karen's invitation up for sex after their first date in season 2? It seems kinda odd he'd do so as he's a bit of a player (or Foggy's made him out to be one going off his jokes).
  • There's a couple reasons at play. The main reason is probably to do with the scars. In season 3, look at Karen's reaction of "Jesus, Matt..." when Matt is changing into a new shirt in front of her while they're in the crypt. It's clearly a reaction to the scars, not to his abs. Matt's career as a vigilante has left him with a very scarred body. Every time we've seen him shirtless across all three seasons, there are some serious scars across his chest, back, and arms. Some of which have lasted for years (a close observer will notice that in season 3, Matt still has the long scars on his pecs from his fight with Nobu in season 1). Fortunately, Matt's face has never seen much scarring aside from the occasional brow cut, bloodied nose, and black eye, which helps him keep his identity and abilities a secret. So if Matt had stayed the night with Karen, and one thing led to another, his shirt would have come off at some point. And there's no way that wouldn't instantly kill the mood as Karen would almost certainly want to raise questions Matt doesn't want to answer, at least not right then. That's most likely what Matt was alluding to about not wanting to ruin a perfect night, as he knew Karen seeing all his scars would cause her to be upset, and that probably wouldn't be the most optimal way for her to end up learning that he's Daredevil. It's too much of a risk to him.
    • From a Doylist standpoint, there's also plot convenience, as the writers probably wanted Matt to be emotionally available for Elektra. Not to mention it would be problematic for Matt to escalate the relationship with Karen to sex so quickly. It's sketchy enough as it is for Matt to go superheroing with Elektra while also trying to build a relationship with Karen. It would be pretty hard to watch, and make Matt look even worse, if was also actively having sex with Karen while working with Elektra.
  • It's pretty strongly implied that, whatever Foggy's impression of Matt, he's not a player. Foggy thinks he has a lot of one-night stands, but Matt might have been covering his various superhero activities with stories of sexual conquests, which the horndog Foggy would immediately accept. This is supported by the fact that we never see him behaving like a player at any point in the series, past or present. He was quite committed to the one sexual partner we know he's had.
    • Dialogue from Foggy and from Matt in other scenes seems to imply that Matt had a bunch of brief relationships, none of which lasted more than a few months, ostensibly because Matt probably feared them turning out like Elektra.
  • The scar thing is an issue. Matt doesn't want to run the risk of Karen finding out that he's Daredevil until he's ready for her to know, which doesn't happen until the Season 2 finale. With his suspicious behavior, Karen's investigative nose and an inability to explain away those scars that wouldn't kill the mood, well, so much for getting the message across.

Matt turning Karen down, part II

• What would've happened if Matt had accepted Karen's invitation up?
  • Right out of the starting gate, by sleeping with Karen, Matt wouldn't have gone to Elektra's penthouse and she would've had to fight the ninjas all by herself. Given the shirtlessness and scars, Matt would also have to reveal to Karen that he was Daredevil after they slept. In the meanwhile, Elektra would've been irked about Matt not showing up at her penthouse and would've had to return his Daredevil armor to him, with them having a run-in at his apartment. Given he's just come clean with Karen, Matt would likely tell Foggy as much and perhaps would also confess to Elektra's presence much earlier.
  • By knowing about Elektra much earlier, it's likely that Foggy and Karen would've argued Matt out of going with her to the gala when she showed up to the hospital while they were talking to Frank. Since Matt stays at the hospital, he'd be there for Frank's arraignment and subsequently be committed to Frank's trial 100% while also building his relationship with Karen. While he'd keep Elektra at a distance, he'd still keep tabs on what she was up to.
  • The incident at the pit where Elektra got wounded would still happen, since Midland Circle was a property the Hand had secured with help from Fisk, and Stick would still have Elektra brought back to Matt's apartment to recuperate. Instead of staying in his apartment for the next day watching Elektra's recovery, Matt would go to court and deal with Schoonover's testimony. The scene where Karen finds Elektra in Matt's bed would go down differently with Karen knowing already about Elektra's presence, and end on a much better note, although Karen would still keep Matt at distance the next day when they're about to put Frank on the stand.
  • The trial outcome would be unchanged, since Frank would still blow his trial in order to meet with Fisk in prison. But afterwards, Matt and Karen would've gone back to Matt's place, and Matt would've still been wounded by the Hand ninjas that come for Elektra. Matt and Karen would shoo Elektra away. Because of Karen's presence, Matt would not go out to search for the Hand farm, while Karen wouldn't be getting her job at the Bulletin.
  • The events of episode 10 would stay the same, with Reyes being killed, Foggy getting wounded, Matt visiting Fisk in prison, and Karen being shot at in her apartment. However, by not going to the farm, the Hand never attacks the hospital, and Matt instead spends the night in Foggy's room. The events of episode 11 are also the same, but the "I'm not yours to protect" scene is changed in that Karen's refusal to let Matt come along with her is because there's no way Matt can be with her without raising suspicion. Things would differ after the Blacksmith's ship explodes, as Matt and Karen would reconvene afterwards to discuss what happened. Doing so would've delayed Matt's return home to his apartment, so by the time he gets to his apartment, Stick's men would've both already died. Without Matt's intervention, it's likely that Elektra and Stick would've ended up killing one another in their fight, and Elektra would die in Matt's arms at Stick's base. The next day, Matt and Karen would've gone to Colonel Schoonover's place together to get more information about Frank (and get Ellison the exclusive she promised him for the Bulletin). Schoonover would still die, but the lead-up to it would instead be that Matt beat him unconscious, then as Matt and Karen leave, Frank shows up to kill Schoonover.
  • Season 2 would end with Nelson & Murdock still open, and Matt and Karen still dating.
  • Season 3 would be impacted in that Matt wouldn't have distanced himself so much from Karen and Foggy, and there'd be much more teamwork between them in bringing down Fisk. Them working together would probably throw a wrench in Fisk's attempt to scapegoat Matt to Nadeem, since Matt would've had Foggy be his lawyer and they'd have used his new knowledge about Jasper Evans as leverage.

"Warning shot" to the head?

• How did the Punisher know that Matt’s helmet would deflect a bullet from such a short distance? There’s no way Frank could know that a shot from that distance wouldn’t kill Matt. No way in hell was that a warning shot, despite what Melvin says when he's looking at the helmet in the next episode.
  • Frank didn't know. For some reason, a lot of people think that Frank is aware of way more than he actually is during season 2. When he shot Matt in the head, it was heat of the moment, he was down and made a desperate move. In that scenario he knows he lost, and is likely about to be stopped and taken to jail if he doesn't pull the gun and take a shot. He doesn't really think about who Daredevil is or anything. To him, it's just the enemy right now. He doesn't think he's a crazy mob enforcer.
  • Reasonably speaking, Frank probably is aware that Daredevil helped bring down Fisk, but at the same time Matt is getting in Frank's way. He shoots him out of desperation because if he doesn't, Frank goes to jail in episode 1 rather than 4. The show likes to suggest that perhaps Frank is aware enough to make this a warning shot (through Melvin's dialogue) but this is presented more to be ambiguous to the viewer and it's more interesting to think about than to believe it strongly one way or the other. Is Frank just that good that he's looked into Daredevil and on the fly, during the fight with him, felt like that helmet seemed strong enough to take a bullet? It's possible. It's also possible that in a heated fight where Frank's pissed off and on the ropes, he just pulls and fires quick because he has to.

Claire losing her apartment

• So we learn in the Jessica Jones season 1 finale that Claire got kicked out of her apartment for the events that happened in Daredevil season 1. She tells Jessica, “You’re not taking him to my place. Been there, done that, lost my lease.” But why? All Claire did in her apartment was give Matt first aid. Matt knocked Semyon out with a fire extinguisher, tortured him, and threw him off the roof, but the only person who knew any of that and/or could connect any blood or Russian coma patients to Claire was Santino, who doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would talk. And Santino was attacked too, but again, what’s to tie that to Claire in the landlord’s eyes? (Claire was violently attacked and Matt broke a chair but both of those things happened in Claire’s friend’s apartment.) Feels weird because if the housing situation in Hell’s Kitchen is such that Jessica Jones could break her door once a week and Matt can have regular ninja fights without his neighbors or the landlord kicking up a fuss, I don’t buy that Claire gets kicked out for maybe being tangentially connected via gossip to a bunch of crimes no one reported.

Karen's wardrobe

• How does Karen have such a big wardrobe for someone on her salary? She couldn't be making that much at any of the jobs she's worked in New York.
  • Karen’s wardrobe is admittedly unrealistic. But that’s true of most other TV characters, even ones whose salaries couldn't possibly cover them. Matt’s suits are probably quite expensive and he has a lot of them. Though to the show's credit, Karen does occasionally repeat clothes (in season 3 episode 5 and the start of episode 6, she's wearing the same blue-green patterned blouse she wore in season 2 episode 8, for instance). The thing about Karen’s wardrobe is that it's used to augment her story. In the first two seasons, her bright patterned dresses seem at times almost like armor to mask the troubled soul inside. As time goes on and her job changes, she comes out of that shell more, and she dresses in more utilitarian stuff (jeans, hooded sweatshirts, etc.). As Season 3 costume designer Elizabeth Vastola has talked about, that change to a “grittier” wardrobe is also used to underscore Karen’s similarities with Matt, even if some of the clothes were probably out of Karen’s budget.
  • Karen also would’ve prioritized her wardrobe when she moved to New York. Because of how expensive rent is in New York City, she would've had to eat less often so she could afford professional clothes, which makes sense if she saw the clothes as armor, or even as just a necessary part of fitting in with the New York vibe. It's important to have nice suits, blouses, and shoes for work. And as someone who moved from a smaller, rural state^note Vermont has the smallest capital city of any US state, and is the second least populated state behind only Wyoming to a larger, wealthier state, having a nice wardrobe would be important for fitting in. For those reasons and more, it would make sense for Karen to funnel whatever money she wasn't already spending on food, rent, utilities, and subway fare towards her professional wardrobe instead of spending it at restaurants, movie theaters, etc.

Fisk's leverage over Melvin

• So we know Fisk threatens Betsy Beatty to get Melvin to tailor suits for him in season 1, and to build the Daredevil suit for Dex in season 3. What exactly was this leverage, threatening to kill her or something else? Because while it wouldn't be unusual for Fisk to threaten Betsy's life, since that's how he gets others like Farnum and Hattley to do his dirty work, it wouldn't be smart for Fisk, because if anything happens to Betsy, there's nothing to stop Melvin from going to the police with what he knows about Fisk.
  • Fisk's leverage doesn't always take the form of threatening peoples' lives, as evidenced in season 3 by the fact that his leverage over Foggy was the threat of sending his family to prison for fraud. It's more likely that Fisk is threatening Betsy's career and her freedom. Betsy isn't just Melvin's girlfriend, she's also his parole officer. Parole officers are strictly prohibited from having sexual or strong intimate relationships with the parolees under their charge, because of the great potential for abuse and the power imbalance that exists, not to mention it's a potential parole violation for the parolee. In that regard, Betsy is more useful alive than dead. Fisk knows Melvin loves her, and can use the threat of sending evidence to her superiors showing her engaging in misconduct to keep him in line.

“You think I don’t know what you really do?”

• On Fisk's second dinner date with Vanessa, she said something like “you think I don’t know what you really do?”, when Fisk noted the .22 caliber pistol in her purse. If Fisk kept his name so hushed amongst even his closest associates, how did she know what he did? She wasn’t presumably a part of the deep criminal underworld.
  • It doesn't mean she knew who Fisk was. But given the sort of pieces Vanessa shows at her art gallery, it's easy to imagine she's known patrons who were like Fisk in personality: super-wealthy, bossing other people around like they own everything, etc.
  • Vanessa has dealt with a lot of shady people in the past. She made some assumptions based on how Fisk asked about 'what he really does'. What he 'really does' is organized crime. She doesn't need a deeper understanding than that to bring some protection. Also, what happened when Anatoly crashed their first date certainly gave a lot away. Notice how the moment Anatoly shoves his way past Wesley to enter the restaurant's seating area, almost everyone at all the other tables begins to get up and appears to be reaching for a weapon: everyone at the restaurant was one of Fisk's bodyguards.