[77/100] In some ways, *Daredevil*’s third season is a victim of its own success. When you spend twelve episodes spinning web after web of moral and narrative complexity, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to weave it all into a digestible conclusion in a lone, final installment. And when you spend twelve episodes establishing in no uncertain terms that your villain is a mastermind protected by wall after impenetrable wall of power and influence, it’s just as difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a satisfying scheme through which our heroes are nonetheless able to best him.
Whatever sympathies those challenges provoke, “A New Napkin” is a disappointing conclusion to *Daredevil*’s best season. The series went from being an outsized but gritty and quasi-grounded look at crime and personal choices to being a standard issue action movie. Its finale takes all the admirable complexity and genuine adversity at trying to take down the corrupt and powerful and makes it feel overly simplified and straightforward. Most of all, it plays as though the writers pressed the “Happy Ending” button, without truly paying off all they’d set up, or earning their conclusion.
But let’s jump into what I liked about the finale. First and foremost, I appreciate how they frame Daredevil’s aversion to taking a life. It is more than just a Buffy Summers-spoofing “Because it’s wrong” mentality holding him back. As Foggy puts it, his code is more about holding onto his own soul, believing that anyone can be redeemed so that he himself doesn’t slip into darkness. Sanctity of life arguments don’t hold much sway when Kingpin is slaughtering innocent people with impunity. But in a season about Matt trying to keep a hold on himself, making his choice more about stitching together his broken psyche than about pure ethics is a canny choice.
Second, although it’s a little rushed, Daredevil’s plan to get to Fisk by using Bullseye as his wrecking ball and following in the disturbed agent’s wake is genuinely clever. Poindexter already seemed on edge and has a history of lashing out at people, so setting him off isn’t the greatest challenge in the world. And if anyone knows Fisk’s security at the hotel, it’s him. So Natt taking advantage of that, and effectively using Dex as a battering ram he can use to clear a path to Kingpin is sharp.
Third, at a high level, I like the idea of Daredevil using Fisk’s feelings for Vanessa against him. Whether a person can change and whether they should forge bonds with others have been big themes this season. Turning the tables on Fisk, threatening his loved ones the way he’s threatened the loved ones of so many others, now that he’s found a true love, is a poetic way to try to corral him. Fisk professes that he did change when he met Vanessa, and the irony that the attachments that give Matt strength also make his enemy vulnerable is potent. It’s an idea that works more thematically than practically, but in *Daredevil*’s operatic morality play mode, there’s a cleverness to it.
The problem is that everything here feels too perfect and too easy. Given all the ways that Fisk has managed to wriggle out of the traps and plans our heroes have set, it’s reasonable to ask, “What makes things different this time?”
It is noble that, before he dies, Ray records his confession and story and means to see it smuggled it to his allies. Honestly, my favorite part of the scheme to bring down Fisk may be Seema’s part in it. She isn’t a vigilante, or an FBI agent, or an investigator, but she still has the courage to walk into the lion’s den and get the confession her husband died for to the right people. She is a badass for that, and it ties into the themes of it taking ordinary people making brave choices to undercut someone like Fisk, not just superheroes.
But it is, frankly, hard to imagine how that video can take down Fisk in a way Ray’s actual testimony can't. Sure, calling it a dying declaration might(!!!) get you around the evidentiary rules against hearsay. But according to the FBI, this is the testimony of a mentally unbalanced individual who murdered his fellow agent, a narrative being echoed in the press. Why couldn't one of Fisk’s high-priced lawyers get it thrown out? Why can't he pull the same strings within the justice system that got his last conviction overturned on appeal? Why can't he intimidate another grand jury like he did literally one episode before. We had Ray’s live testimony twenty-four hours ago, and it wasn’t enough. Why would this be?
Likewise, Karen’s grand journalistic triumph is to get Ray’s video to Mitchell and the Bulletin, who are able to broadcast it far and wide. But again, Fisk has been able to play the press like a fiddle thus far. What stops him and his cut outs from framing this all as the unhinged delusions of a murderous madman? We get the fig leaf that Hattley turned state’s evidence as well, so maybe there’s some corroboration from a senior person at the FBI, but it’s a pretty thin gruel.
Last but not least, Foggy’s great triumph is in getting the DA to throw the book at Fisk under the state law. There is, again, a fig leaf of Hightower declaring that the state legal system has learned Fisk’s tricks and won’t be fooled by them. But why should we believe that? If Fisk can corrupt the system at one level, what’s to stop him from doing it again at another?
The bottom line is simple. Time after time, our heroes have gone after Fisk through myriad noble/arduous methods, and he’s been able to beat them soundly each time. Nothing they’re doing here is particularly new or different, so it’s hard to imagine why these things magically work this time when they didn’t before.
The answer, I guess, is that Kingpin now has something to lose given his connection to Vanessa. But he managed to protect her before. Why can't he do it again? It feels like this lasts for a month until Fisk finds some new security arrangement for he and Vanessa and then we’re back to square one. I guess Daredevil proved he can get to them even when they’re hunkered down, so that's something at least. But the man who was always ten steps ahead is suddenly just cool and willing to surrender when Daredevil threatens his wife, and that's it. It’s the kind of thing that works better symbolically than it does pragmatically, and contrasts with how the show has built up and presented Fisk to this point.
Even then, the finale also feels comparativel broad and four-color in comparison to what the show accomplished to this point. Again, Matt tweaking Dex and cluing him into Julie’s death is a sharp move on Matt’s part. But the way he’s able to just dangle Fisk’s head henchman over the side of a building and get all the info he needs feels way too easy.
Then, while I suppose it’s inevitable that an action-heavy show on Netflix would have to end in fisticuffs, a big throwdown feels like a silly resolution to the broader, more psychological and systemic issues that have been the currency of season 3. I’ll give the show credit, there’s at least some intrigue given the contrasting motivations of the four-way skirmish.
Daredevil wants to subdue Fisk and Vanessa, but keep Poindexter from killing either of them. Poindexter would gladly slay all three of his opponents. Kingpin is torn between trying to kill Dex and Daredevil while putting a greater priority on protecting Vanessa. And Vanessa wants to get to safety but can't bear to watch these brutes murder her husband. There are at least complications for the big rumble.
But in practice, the fight comes off pretty cheesy. The fight choreography isn’t particularly good or convincing relative to the other big combat scenes in the season to date, coming off more like a pro-wrestling match than a knockdown, drag out war. And more than anything, it plays like the show is reducing a series of complex problems down to “Can I just punch it harder?” The whole situation is contrived, as is the timing of the cops’ arrival and Daredevil’s ability to be exonerated and get away. It’s all a massive departure from the attempts at elevated realism that have been the show’s stock and trade until now.
And from there, the writers just smash the easy button to give everyone a happily ever after. Boom, Matt has reconciled with his mom. Boom, the Nelson family money troubles/fraud prosecution risk is gone. Boom, Karen’s life is back on track. Boom, the DA is confident he can put away Fisk forever. Boom, Matt, Foggy, and Karen are poised to become “Nelson, Murdock, and Page.” All of it is too easy, too tidy, and rests too much on the hope that the goodwill of seeing everyone reunited and happy will paper over the onslaught of narrative shortcuts it took to get there.
Season 3 is still *Daredevil*’s finest batch of episodes in my book. The show truly challenged our heroes in a way we haven't seen before, and made Kingpin more formidable and complicated than he’s ever been before. Ray, Poindexter, and Sister Maggie all became strong additions to the cast and the story. And standout artistic achievements like the greatest longtake fight in the Defenders-verse to date, the stylized rendition of Dex’s past, and the heart-rending vision of Karen’s history all elevated the season into something special. But this high point of a season ends with a big thud, one unworthy of all the good work it took to get here.
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