As we near the halfway point of Daredevil: Born Again season one, Matt Murdock deals with the fallout of the White Tiger case, while the marriage therapy of Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) gets a little more awkward. Here’s what went down in episode four of Born Again, titled “Sic Semper Systema,” which is Latin for “thus always to the system.”
Revelations From Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, Episode 4, “Sic Semper Systema”
The Aftermath of White Tiger’s Murder
The episode starts with various pieces of Hector Ayala’s personal belongings put into evidence after his death, including his mystical White Tiger amulets. Matt Murdock is at the morgue questioning how they killed Hector, and he’s informed that the projectile that killed him was not recovered, and no casings were found. It’s then that Hector’s teenage niece, Angela (Camila Rodriguez), walks into the morgue demanding to see her uncle’s body, while fighting back angry tears. Angela tells Matt her suspicion that the police killed her uncle, and Matt (unconvincingly) tries to tell her he’s just not sure. “You have to believe someone will find his killer.” But it’s unclear if Matt is trying to convince Angela or himself. He knows as well as anyone that the cops were almost certainly involved.
BB Urich Takes Advantage of Drunk Daniel’s Loose Lips
Meanwhile, we see the serial killer/graffiti artist we know from the comics as Muse takes a body (dead or alive still? We’re not sure) to his lair in the subway tracks. At the same time, at a hipster bar in Manhattan, BB Urich (Genneya Walton) is drinking with her friends, including Wilson Fisk’s young acolyte, Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini). Drunk off his ass, Daniel lets slip to BB that Fisk is going to meet with a new group of tech recyclers. If he hired them, it would break the city’s union contracts. BB is a savvy reporter like her late uncle Ben and realizes this is information she’s going to put in her blog.
Across the street, the police apprehend a man named Leroy Bradford (Charlie Hudson III) for stealing snacks from a local convenience store, while the cops who arrest him literally eat the evidence themselves. It’s not as if they paid for them, but all of this just illustrates how there are two systems of justice at play here. Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) calls Matt and tells him to meet the arrested man in detention. He’s someone with a long rap sheet of small, petty crimes, the kind of hard luck case that she knows Matt can’t resist.
Things Get Tense at Fisk Family Therapy
At another therapy session, Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) sits down with Wilson and Vanessa Fisk. They are sitting a little closer together on the couch this time, so maybe things are getting better between the two? She finally gets them to talk about Vanessa’s affair with a man named Adam when Wilson was away. As she talks about this mysterious Adam guy, Fisk becomes increasingly agitated. It only gets worse when Vanessa talks about Adam’s “amazing hands” lustily, and we learn he was an artist. It’s evident she’s talking about him this way to make her husband insanely jealous….and it’s clearly working. Does Vanessa have a death wish?
Vanessa tells Heather that the appeal of Adam was that “he wasn’t part of my husband’s world.” And it’s pretty clear to Heather just what Vanessa means by that. Wilson admits he confronted Adam, and they had “a dialogue.” When Heather asks “Where’s Adam now?,” the couple says “I don’t know” at the same time. It’s pretty clear at least one of them knows where he is, and just isn’t saying. Since Wilson Fisk was famously a mob boss before becoming Mayor, Heather is appropriately spooked. Before the session ends, Heather speaks to Vanessa alone, and asks if she feels safe in her marriage. “My husband is capable of many things. Harming me is not one of them.” Does Vanessa believe that though? We had doubts.
Someone in the MCU Remembers Skrulls Exist
Matt meets with Leroy Bradford in jail who laughs that his lawyer is “the blind dude.” Matt goes over the charges with him, which is petty larceny for stealing five boxes of snacks from a bodega. Leroy says he didn’t do it, but Matt reminds him that all the security cameras caught him doing it. In a rare moment acknowledging the wider MCU, Leroy asks if it could have been a Skrull. This directly refers to the shapeshifting aliens from Captain Marvel and Secret Invasion. Matt quickly shoots that theory down. From an MCU standpoint, this is the first acknowledgment of the Skrull panic that even Brave New World didn’t mention once.
Matt tells Bradford that it’s his rap sheet that’s his biggest enemy, and he needs to take a plea deal. Bradford refuses anything from Matt that doesn’t include probation. Matt doesn’t get him probation, but he gets Bradford down to 10 days by flirting with a lovely woman who works at the station. Once again, Matt Murdock’s sexy charms work in his favor.
Matt Confronts the Crooked Cop He Blames for Hector Ayala’s Death
Matt encounters Officer Powell in the precinct, and flat-out accuses him (or one of his cop buddies) of murdering Hector Ayala. Powell says he had nothing to do with Hector’s death, and Matt can tell by his heartbeat that he’s actually telling the truth. Powell tries to threaten Matt due to his beating the crap out of him, saying that the Bar Association wouldn’t take kindly to a lawyer beating cops within an inch of their lives. A little bit of Daredevil comes out of Matt at this moment when he says that next time, he’d better bring more guys so it’ll be a fair fight. It’s clear Matt is dying to put the suit on again and inflict some pain on the deserving.
At the run-down and dilapidated Red Hook port, Fisk tells his staff that he’s going to create a new development project on the site. He’s ready to make a big public announcement. He even has a little scale model of what it’s going to look like. He’s quickly reminded by his political advisor Sheila (Zabryna Guevara) that he can’t just announce things into existence. There’s simply too much red tape to go through when it comes to city government. This is clearly the part of being Mayor that Fisk absolutely hates. He just wants to will things into existence by the power of his personality. And that’s just not how things get done in the non-criminal world.
Back at the jail, Leroy isn’t happy with his 10-day sentence. Matt loses his patience, saying probation just wasn’t ever on the table with his criminal record. Leroy gives a painful explanation about how the system has failed him his whole life, and just wanted something like a pleasant dessert for once. ”They’re willing to spend five times more to lock me up than they’re willing to spend to feed me.” Matt knows he’s right.
Fisk Listens to School Kids Sing ’80s Songs, Subsequently Has a Rage Fit
Mayor Fisk has to go to a local middle school, where students greet him with a rendition of “We Built This City.” Fisk clearly would rather die than sit there and hear these precious children and their off-key tunes, and leaves before song #2. It’s pretty hilarious. Some warbling kids are the least of what he deserves. (We’d like to imagine they did another Starship song. Maybe “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now?”) It’s then that Daniel realizes he screwed up big time. Looking at his phone, he sees that BB Urich took the information about Fisk’s plans and ran a story on it calling him a Union Buster, using the information he drunkenly told her. He knows he’s in very deep shit.
Fisk then fully explodes in his office in front of his staff, threatening them all to find out who leaked the information to BB Urich. Daniel steps up in front of everyone and admits it was him. Fisk clears the room, but asks Daniel to stay. Expecting to be fired (or worse), Daniel profusely apologizes to Fisk, and basically grovels in front of him. Fisk is impressed with his honesty and refuses to fire him. “In the fullness of time, you’ll be a better man. But do something like this again, and it’ll be the last thing that you ever do.” Sheila is speechless, because she knows Fisk 100% means what he says. It feels like this is the moment where it truly dawns on her that she’s working for a criminal overlord for whom murder is always an option. It’s not an act.
Matt Murdocks Does a Little Detective Work, and a Punisher Reunion
At night, Matt goes to the scene of the crime, right where someone murdered Hector Ayala. He figures out that the casing went down a storm drain, and recovers it. He then visits a remote location in the city that looks like a bunker, and it turns out it’s the home of none other than Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher. A grizzled Frank attacks Matt, not realizing who he is at first. Castle is popping pills, in rough shape since last we saw him at the end of Punisher season two.
Matt tells him the bullet casing has his Punisher logo on it. Franks knows it’s one of his “fanboys,” most of whom he knows are cops. Matt accuses Frank’s murderous ways of inspiring the wrong people while Frank accuses him of being weak. The two have words before Frank plays the Foggy card. He screams at Matt that he should have killed Bullseye for what he did to his best friend. But instead, he quit and let “the system” handle it. The same system allows Bullseye to still live while Foggy is in the ground. Matt snaps and strikes Frank, but through tears he knows Frank’s right on some level.
Matt Starts Getting His Daredevil Mojo Again
At their mansion, Fisk realizes that earlier at their session, Heather Glenn asked Vanessa if she felt safe with him. Vanessa says she does. “But should I?” Even she knows that the man she loves is just one bad day from hurting her too, no matter what he says. She tells him ”I’m not the same woman I was when you left.” She’s right, as when Wilson was M.I.A., Vanessa took over his criminal empire, and ran it better than he did. All of this only makes his wife even more intriguing to him. Matt and Heather have a romantic night, after which Matt sneaks into his special “Mattcave,” where he has his weapons and his Daredevil masks. He tries out his billy clubs again, seeing if he’s still got it. Turns out, it’s just like riding a bike.
Wilson Fisk Has Dinner with a Guest
Across town, Fisk goes into a dingy basement/bunker where he sits down to eat what looks like a five-star meal. In that very same basement, inside a dank prison cell, is Adam, the man who had an affair with his wife. We don’t know how long he’s been there, but judging from Adam’s looks, it could have been weeks or months. Adam begs for his freedom, but instead Wilson just eats his dinner while listening to the man scream. It seems no matter how hard he tries to do good, Wilson Fisk is a monster through and through. He’s kept his promise to Vanessa to not kill Adam, but he never said anything about not tormenting him. We can guess that’s what caused his bruised and bloody knuckles these last few episodes.
Finally, we find that Muse has brought another victim, a male, to his murder lair. He’s alive and tied to a table, shades of Dexter, while the masked killer begins draining his blood. If anything is going to bring the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen out of retirement, it’ll likely be a serial killer in New York City. But we can’t imagine that Mayor Fisk will take kindly to a serial killer running loose in “his” city either.
And that is our recap of the fourth episode of Daredevil: Born Again. More revelations will surely arise for Matt Murdock’s long-awaited return next week.