[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Daredevil: Born Again episode 9, “Straight to Hell.”] New York City has gone to hell. Throughout the nine-episode first season of Daredevil: Born Again, Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) has vowed to purge the city of vigilantes like Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), going so far as to establish an official Anti-Vigilante Task Force. But after Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter, a.k.a. Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), escaped prison and nearly assassinated the former Kingpin of Crime at the inaugural ball benefiting queenpin Vanessa Fisk’s (Ayelet Zurer) Red Hook Port project, Mayor Fisk gave his gang of rogue cops carte blanche to hunt down the city’s vigilantes — using lethal force.
That includes the masked Daredevil’s alter-ego, blind lawyer Matt Murdock, who took the bullet intended for the mayor before he could get answers about why Fisk’s wife hired an assassin to kill Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) in the season opener.
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Why did Vanessa Fisk have Foggy Nelson killed?
The finale began with a flashback to Vanessa and Poindexter one year earlier, just before the “Heaven’s Half Hour” season premiere. During her husband’s absence (after Hawkeye and Echo), Vanessa told Poindexter that Fisk was acquitted because of the FBI corruption scandal involving Agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali), referencing the events of Daredevil season 3.
Offering the heavily medicated Poindexter a conditional release pending appeal, Vanessa had him freed from prison in exchange for a favor: kill the thief Benjamin Cafaro and his lawyer, Foggy Nelson, whose case would shine unwanted light on her criminal business dealings.
Just before he was shot and killed by Bullseye, Foggy took a phone call from his client, “Dumb Benny” Cafaro, who was caught on camera stealing 20 cases of expensive wine from a bonded warehouse at New York’s Red Hook Port.
Matt learned that Vanessa ordered the hit to silence Foggy, who prematurely celebrated an early win with a shot of O’Melveny’s the night he died outside Josie’s Bar in Hell’s Kitchen.
The Red Hook Port Project
All season long, Vanessa and the Five Families of organized crime have funneled millions through the Red Hook Port, which is exempt from taxes, tolls, or other payments. But as mayor, Fisk made it a priority to clean up Red Hook using taxpayer dollars under the guise of transforming the pier into a destination, all so the Fisks could move billions through Red Hook.
With the help of his ex-law partner Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Matt learned Foggy was going to file a motion to dismiss Cafaro’s case just before Vanessa had him killed. It turned out that Foggy was going to argue that, due to the unique nature of the Red Hook Port location, no crime was committed in the State of New York — or the United States of America — meaning the courts would have no jurisdiction to prosecute Cafaro for grand larceny.
Matt and Karen uncovered a charter from 1855 declaring Red Hook a Freeport, which is exempt from taxation, customs duties, and tariffs. The charter would make the Red Hook Port project untouchable, allowing the Fisks to legally launder money or deal in gambling, smuggling, and other crimes with impunity.
Blackout
Following Bullseye’s attempt on his life, Mayor Fisk shut off power to the city so his Anti-Vigilante Task Force could hunt down Poindexter and the city’s vigilantes without warrants or due process. Ordering the bridges and tunnels closed, Mayor Fisk sealed off the city as his engineered crisis plunged New York into darkness.
Fisk then sent right-hand man Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan) to kill Matt as he recovered from his bullet wound at Metro General, but Matt slipped out in the dark and returned to his apartment to find an unexpected ally: Frank Castle (Bernthal).
Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Gallo (Michael Gaston) planned to circumvent Mayor Fisk’s power by going up the ladder to the Governor and the State Supreme Court, but Fisk’s chief advisor, Sheila (Zabryna Guevara), sold him out to the mayor, who then used his bare hands to crush Gallo’s head into pulp.
Welcome Back, Frank
Karen called in a favor, asking her friend Frank to get Matt out of the city alive.
Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force launched their assault on Matt’s apartment under the cover of darkness, and Frank relished punishing the “fanboys” wearing the Punisher’s skull symbol. Suited up as Daredevil, Matt tried to combat the Punisher’s methods with non-lethal force, only for Frank to violently execute the rogue cops.
Frank found a shell casing with the Punisher skull matching the bullet that killed Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes), a.k.a. the vigilante White Tiger. When it was discovered that the bullet was fired by Sgt. Cole North (Jeremy Isiah Earl), Frank urged “Red” to kill North. Daredevil refused to violate his no-kill rule, so Frank went to shoot North, only to get into a scuffle with Daredevil.
Before Frank could pull the trigger on North, a grenade forced Daredevil and Punisher to leap out a window just before Matt’s apartment exploded. Reunited with Karen, Matt and Frank then went their separate ways.
The City Without Fear
As riots, fires, looting, and lawlessness broke out during the blackout, Frank tracked down the Anti-Vigilante Task Force at Red Hook and went to war. The one-man killing machine took out a small army of rogue cops before being shot, beaten, and subdued by the ATVF, including Officer Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley).
Powell told Frank it would be “an honor” for the task force to serve with the Punisher, who told the fanboys: “I ain’t gonna serve with you. I wouldn’t f—in’ piss on you if you were on fire, you got that?”
A wounded Daredevil arrived at Red Hook with Karen, who told him: “You go in there, you will die, or you will kill.” Mayor Fisk has the cops, the courts, and an army, so Karen was able to convince Daredevil to beat him another way. “I’m gonna take this city back,” he told her. “We need an army.”
In the light of day, Mayor Fisk enacted the “Safer Streets” initiative, put New York under Martial Law, and declared all vigilante activity to be illegal, effective immediately. At Josie’s Bar in Hell’s Kitchen, an unmasked Matt told Karen that he lost himself to the darkness by losing Foggy and trying to kill Bullseye. “Foggy believed in you. Whatever you want to call yourself, whatever’s behind the mask, behind your eyes,” Karen told Matt, “that’s wrath, that’s mercy, that’s the dark and the light. He knew all of it. All of it. He knew you. And I do, too.”
Meanwhile, the Fisks have taken the city’s elite prisoner alongside the Swordsman Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton) and Frank Castle, who are kept in cages at the Red Hook Port. The Fisks then toast as they sit down for dinner in front of the blood-splattered Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting.
Back at Josie’s, the Man Without Fear has begun to build his army: retired cop Cherry (Clark Johnson) and Det. Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian) among them.
“I can’t see my city. But I can feel it,” Daredevil said in a season-ending montage over shots of Buck, Sheila, Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini), B.B. Urich (Genneya Walton), Angela Del Toro (Camila Rodriguez), Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), Poindexter, still on the loose, Karen, and a caged Frank. “The system isn’t working. It’s rotten. Corrupt. But this is our city. Not his. And we can take it back, together. The weak. The strong. All of us. Resist. Rebel. Rebuild. Because we’re the city without fear. ”
Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again returns for season 2 in 2026 on Disney+.
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