Season one of Daredevil: Born Again rolls on, as the third episode, “The Hollow of His Hand,” continues the story of Hector Ayala, the White Tiger. Tensions also rise up between the new Mayor of New York City, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, and his First Lady.
Revelations (and Random Questions) From Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, Episode 3, “The Hollow of His Hand”
Matt Murdock and Hector Ayala Have a Lot in Common
The episode starts with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) visiting Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes) in jail, where he reminisces about his youth in Puerto Rico. Matt promises Hector that he’ll see his family and his childhood home again one day. After the credits, we cut to Red Hook Port at night, where a pair of highjackers murder two truck drivers. After a few more BB Report interviews where New Yorkers talk about life in a crime-ridden city, we see Mayor Wilson Fisk and First Lady Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) having a somewhat awkward breakfast at the Mayor’s mansion.
Mayor and First Lady Fisk Have a Very Awkward Breakfast
Vanessa tries to make small talk about art auctions, when they learn about the Red Hook Port highjacking. Vanessa reminds Wilson that without him as the city’s Kingpin, the criminal families are at each other’s throats. He dismisses their “petty blood feuds” as no longer being his concern. But right after he makes this statement, the camera focuses on his knuckles. And they appear quite bruised and bloody. We can’t help but wonder just what Fisk is doing to get hurt like that. Especially if he now has control over his violent inner demons. We highly doubt he does.
Things Get Very Tense at Hector Ayala’s Trial
Matt Murdock runs into the cop he beat up in the previous episode, Officer Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), in the courthouse restroom. And he looks pretty banged up after Matt’s beatdown at the end of the last episode. This scene shows he didn’t sustain any serious injuries, unless one counts wounded pride after a blind man whooped his ass. Powell threatens Matt with telling the judge he’s interfering with a police investigation. Matt quickly clarifies something to him, saying it’s really a police shakedown. Matt reminds the crooked cop that he could easily serve a long sentence in jail for witness tampering.
Cherry (Clark Johnson) goes to the safehouse where the man Hector Ayala saved, Nicky Torres, is hiding. He gives him enough drugs to get him through the next few hours, so he can testify that Hector Ayala saved him. In court, Officer Powell testifies that Hector Ayala just attacked them unprovoked and completely lies on the witness stand. Matt does his best to calm Hector down when hearing all his BS. Matt asks Powell if he knew a Nicky Torres, whom he knows was his confidential informant that he was roughing up that night. With his enhanced hearing, Matt hears a cop sitting with the jury say “Torres cannot testify.” This only confirms to Matt that the cops plan to kill Nicky before he can take the stand.
Thanks to a little bait and switch with the vehicles with Cherry’s help to evade the cops who are looking for him, Nicky Torres is delivered to the courthouse to testify. But when he sees all the police officers in the gallery, he knows if he testifies they’ll almost certainly kill him. So he lies on the witness stand and says he was home that night. Just like that, It seems like Matt and Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) have lost the case.
Confrontation at Red Hook Point
Somewhere at Red Hook Point, Wilson Fisk’s right-hand man Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan) meets with the representatives from the crime families. He says that Luka, one of the heads of the mafia organizations, owes $1.8 million to another crime lord named Viktor. They don’t like taking orders from one of Fisk’s lackeys, as they see him. But as puts it to the angry Viktor, “I don’t work for the Mayor. I work for the Man.” Does he mean “The Man” as in Fisk, regardless of his current title, or “The Man,” meaning the government? Meanwhile, Wilson and Vanessa are in therapy with Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva). Before she starts the session, Vanessa suggests to her husband that his throwing a wrench into his criminal operations (that she ran) is revenge for her affair with a man named Adam. We still don’t know who this guy is.
Matt Murdock Reveals Hector’s Secret Identity as White Tiger to the Jury
The next day in court, Hector Ayala gives his truthful testimony about what happened the night he saved Nicky Torres. We see his wife and niece sitting in the courtroom, lending support. That’s when Matt pulls the rug out from under Hector, and reveals to the court that Hector Ayala spends his nights as the vigilante the White Tiger. The judge immediately calls both the defense and the prosecution to his chambers, and he’s furious with Matt for revealing Ayala’s vigilante identity after he’d already convinced him not to let the prosecution use it against him. Matt of course does this, as he’s run out of options.
While visiting Hector in his cell, he tells Matt that being the White Tiger chose him, not the other way around. (How did it choose him? And where did he get those mystical amulets? We’d sure like to know.) Matt certainly relates to Hector here. Matt brings in several people who White Tiger saved to testify, hoping that can sway the jury. He also includes police reports praising the White Tiger for his heroic actions. The prosecution tries to sway the jury with the “good people can do bad things argument.” He then gives grisly descriptions of what it was like for the cop who died getting hit by a train. He hopes those gnarly mental images can make Hector look like a cold-blooded murderer.
The White Tiger Gets Sympathy from the Jury
Luckily, the jury acquitted Hector Ayala on all counts, finding him not guilty. The cops in the courthouse look none too happy as Ayala goes free. All they want is revenge on the “cop killer,” and could not care less that it was an accident. Mayor Fisk watches the TV news report about Ayala’s verdict angrily in his office. Right away, all of his anti-vigilante fury starts bubbling up to the surface. That night, Matt and Heather have a celebratory dinner, where he finally mentions Foggy Nelson to her. She sees this as Matt making an emotional breakthrough, and says of Foggy, “May the Lord hold him in the hollow of his hand.” Hey, now our episode title makes sense.
R.I.P. Hector Ayala. And Is the Punisher Back Already?
In his office, An infuriated Fisk calls BB Urich to his office, giving a statement to the press about his outrage over a vigilante like White Tiger getting away with murder. After everything that happened with Daredevil, and getting shot in the eye by Echo, Fisk is single-minded about his hatred of vigilantes in New York City. This is intercut with Hector putting on the White Tiger costume, and going out to save civilians. But as soon as he does, someone shoots him in the head in the street, killing him. We then see that the person who executed Hector is wearing a Punisher symbol on his chest. Is this how the Punisher returns to the MCU? We doubt it. In the previous episode of Daredevil: Born Again, we saw crooked cops with Punisher tattoos. We’d bet it’s one of them.
And that is our recap of the third episode of Daredevil: Born Again season one. More revelations and questions will surely continue for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’s long-awaited return next week.