Daredevil: Born Again season 2 has killed off a fan favourite character, whose absence will surely put Matt Murdock and his allies in even greater danger moving forward.
The fifth episode of the batch, titled The Grand Design, picked up in the wake of last week’s catastrophic ending, when Wilson Fisk‘s beloved wife, Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), suffered major head trauma from one of Bullseye’s projectiles.
Bleeding out on the mat at her husband’s ill-judged charity boxing match, it seemed worryingly uncertain that we’d see any more from the character in the second half of the season. Was this her ultimate end?
Well, showrunner Dario Scardapane clearly wasn’t content with such an unceremonious death for a character that has been central to Daredevil’s plot across both its Netflix and Disney+ iterations.
With season 2 episode 5, we get a poignant send-off for Vanessa that reframes her story across this entire Marvel saga, revealing that she was always more cunning and ruthless than we might have initially assumed.
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The episode plays out as an anaesthetised Vanessa relives moments from her past, serving as the framing device for a sequence of flashbacks that return Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and James Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) from their own untimely deaths.
We see Vanessa starting work at the art gallery where she would meet Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), in a scene which reveals her cynical true opinion of the all-white painting dubbed ‘Rabbit in a Snow Storm’ – that she would soon sell to her future husband.
All the way back in the third episode of Netflix’s Daredevil, Vanessa told Fisk: “People always ask me, ‘how can we charge so much for what amounts to gradations of white?’ I tell them it’s not about the artist’s name or the skill required… not even about the art itself. All that matters is: how does it make you feel?”
The new flashback shows a different side to that sales pitch, with Vanessa remarking on the “miserable emptiness” of the painting to her employer, and disparaging the judgement of anyone who’d actually buy it.
This, combined with Born Again‘s portrayal of Vanessa as an efficient crime boss in her own right, leaves us with the distinct impression that she was every bit as cold and calculating as her more infamous partner.
Zurer is deserving of praise for making the role her own, bringing both a steely resolve and enigmatic allure to Vanessa that made her and D’Onofrio’s Kingpin one of the most compelling romances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The actor’s value, in the eyes of fans, was made clear amid backlash to her recasting under the original Daredevil: Born Again creative team, which had plans to make a show largely removed from the Netflix precursor.
Sandrine Holt (of The Expanse and Your Friends and Neighbours) was chosen to take over the role of Vanessa, for reasons which Zurer says she “never understood” (via TVLine).
Partway through filming, the decision was reversed as part of a larger behind-the-scenes shake-up, which brought ex-The Punisher showrunner Scardapane aboard as Born Again’s new boss.
In light of this behind-the-scenes context, The Grand Design almost reads like an apologetic correction, paying tribute to both Vanessa and Zurer ahead of her genuinely moving final moments on the show.
Towards the end of the episode, it looks as if Vanessa will live to continue her reign alongside Fisk, having regained consciousness after her emergency surgery – but signs of brain damage, such as memory loss, quickly start to show.
With little warning, after precious few minutes together, Vanessa flatlines in front of her husband, snatching from him the short-lived relief of her apparent survival. Unsurprisingly, he takes the devastating loss very badly indeed.
The scene evokes another of the MCU’s most tragic deaths, that of Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May in Spider-Man: No Way Home, who was similarly caught unaware of the extent of her injuries before suffering a rapid decline.
The bereavement leaves Fisk unmoored from the only force capable of containing him, as outlined in Vanessa’s frank talks with state governor Marge McCaffrey (Lili Taylor) in the previous episode.
That begs the terrifying question: what might he be capable of now that he has nothing left to lose?
We’ll find out in the weeks ahead as Daredevil: Born Again hurtles towards its season 2 finale – a trailer for the second half promises that “all hell breaks loose”. Watch here:
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Daredevil: Born Again drops new episodes on Wednesdays on Disney+ (UK). Sign-up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month.
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