Daredevil Season 2, Episode 13 Recap And Review: “A Cold Day In Hell’s Kitchen”

At the end of things, we have a bus load of hostages, deaths of major characters, births of major characters, and the sort of all-in moments that define heroes. It’s the end of one chapter in Daredevil’s life and the beginning of another. FULL SPOILERS follow directly below.

Not-So-Short Summary: Daredevil Episode 13 “A Cold Day in Hell’s Kitchen” opens up with the Hand talking about a plan that will reach fruition before the end of the episode. Daredevil cleans up Stick who he has in his apartment, bound to a chair. After that he heads up to the roof to talk with Elektra. They know the Hand will be coming. They decide to go on the offence instead.

Foggy has a meeting with Hogarth (Who you may remember from Jessica Jones). He impresses her and she makes an offer for him to join her firm. Daredevil brings Elektra to Melvin so she can get her own pair of designer duds. He hooks Daredevil up with a new weapon. The Punisher stops home before going to the Colonel’s cabin where he begins to gear up as well.

Karen begins staring at her computer but nothing will come out. Foggy calls Matt and lets him know that the Hand got to the police. Daredevil shows up and finds out that the Hand has files on every Daredevil has ever saved. The Hand uses this information to round them all up in attempt to lure Daredevil into a trap.

On the bus Karen convinces a man on house arrest to turn his anklet on to alert the police to their location. Daredevil tries to listen for them, and Elektra talks him through, showing him how to attain a higher level of focus. The hostages are taken to a building full of ninjas in hopes that Elektra and Daredevil will arrive. Daredevil and Elektra find the location where they bring the hostages. It seems like a suicide run with 20 innocents inside. Elektra tries to explain how things will get much worse if he dies and she’s captured trying to save them, but he goes in anyway.

The police show up on the scene only to have some of their men easily picked off by ninja. Daredevil heads in, just in time to stop the Hand from sawing off the leg of the man they kidnapped who was on house arrest. Elektra heads in to assist Daredevil and they free the hostages while getting themselves trapped in the building. Daredevil has Karen lead the hostages out while he and Elektra find a location where they can take a breather. They hear the coming ninja, obviously too many for them to take on. In the moment of silence before the fight Daredevil asks Elektra to disappear with him, willing to let go of every aspect of his life (except Daredevil) to go on the run with her.

With that, they head to the rooftop to take on the ninja, charging them almost recklessly. Nobu stops that fight, stepping forward to take Daredevil once and for all. Meanwhile Elektra starts working her way through the varied ninja there on the roof like a martial arts killing machine. Elektra begins assisting Daredevil with Nobu who goes to assassinate Murdock, before Elektra runs in the way both saving his life and killing the Black Sky the hand were after so badly. With her dead Nobu goes to leave, commanding his ninja to finish Matt. The Punisher drops the ninja from a building away, leaving Matt to finish his fight with Nobu which seems to end with Nobu being thrown off the top of a building.

Karen sees The Punisher assisting Daredevil which seems to restore her faith in him, before he says “See you around, Red.” Nobu gets up, despite being thrown off the top of the building as if he were a set up for the next season, only to be chopped down and literally decapitated by Stick. Stick and The Punisher mourn Electra at her gravesite before they head home. Foggy and Karen then meet at Josies to talk about the recent madness. He confirms that he’ll still be there for Karen despite the fact that they’re no longer working together.

Foggy then pays the tab he and Matt had been running there for years, metaphorically cutting ties with the past and moving on. Frank blows up his familial home, marching forth with his painted bullet proof jacket and his weapons of war. Back at the newspaper, Karen talks with her editor Mitchell Ellison, who pushes her to finish her story which ultimately becomes a study of what it means to be a hero. Matt then finally comes forth and reveals his identity to Karen, as the Hand unearth Elektra’s body, putting it in their mystical “resurrection” pit.

Miscellaneous Musings and Thoughts: While I love the mysticism of the hand being played up, the idea that no one can or will stay dead is a dangerous one designed to eat tension and transform a brutal, grounded show into a cartoon. I hope they pump the breaks on that. As the final episode it does a much better job of giving us a vision of a future than ending the story. The writers were having such a good time piling on the ugly that when it came time to clean things up, there weren’t nearly enough brooms around. This is a series where Act 1 and 2 were amazing and Act 3 was simply ok.

Otherwise? It has been amazing! The confrontation between Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock almost promises us something as ugly and dangerous as Frank Miller’s work on the comics is in the near future. Besides that,Charlie Cox petitioning for Bullseye to enter this universe, almost chills me to the bone.

Overall Daredevil Season 2 was an ugly rampaging beast that told one good smaller story while allowing the secondary characters a chance to shine while simultaneously seeding a series of stories for other characters in the same universe. It’s a sign that the Netflix Marvel Universe both knows what they want to be and is secure in their approach. There are some flaws present, but they are easily eaten up by the story, the spectacle, the characters. I’m looking forward to Season 3. Season 2 has surprised me, and raised a bar I thought was too high for this season to reach