Despite only running for nine episodes, it feels like Disney+ has packed a lot into its blood-soaked freshman season of Daredevil: Born Again. While it’s very much a continuation of Netflix’s Daredevil, the legal-superhero hybrid lives up to its ‘born again’ moniker as the Man Without Fear finally cements himself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. From its shock opening that saw the beloved Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) meet his maker, through to episode 8’s dramatic cliffhanger where Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) took a bullet for Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), there’s been a lot to unpack in such a short time.
Although Born Again originally pitched Hunter Doohan’s Muse as the big bad, it’s come as no real surprise that the crux of the story has been the slow devolution of Fisk into his Kingpin persona. Of course, Big Willy isn’t the only villain on the prowl, with Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye getting his time to shine after being elevated to fan-favorite status in Daredevil season 3. However, there’s someone else lurking in the shadows, and it looks like the theories were on the money that we should’ve been keeping a closer eye on Ayelet Zurer’s Vanessa Fisk.
Daredevil: Born Again finally reveals the hit on Foggy
Daredevil: Born Again wasted no time in letting the bodies pile up, with the show’s bullet-riddled opening seeing Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter rack up 11 counts of murder in the first degree and a lifetime sentence without the chance of parole. The eighth episode of the season, “Isle of Joy”, picked up Bulleseye’s arc, and while you’d expect Dex to spend the rest of his days rotting behind bars, he was handed a ‘death’ sentence when Mayor Fisk had him transferred to gen pop at Ryker’s Island. This led to theories that Kingpin was trying to tie up loose ends after he'd ordered Bullseye to take out Foggy, but apparently, we were looking at the wrong Fisk.
As Murdock struggles to put everything together and visits the shuttered Josie’s Bar to clear his head, the unmasked Daredevil enjoys a glass of his favorite O'Melveny's tipple. It's here he realizes that Foggy was celebrating the night of his death, showing confidence that his client, ‘Dumb Benny’ Carfaro, was going to walk despite being caught on camera stealing cases of wine. The implication is that Benny was going to talk, and with it, Foggy was going to have the information to bring down a much bigger fish… or should that be Fisk? Daredevil doesn't need his finely-tuned senses, as he muses: “He knew he was gonna win and somebody silenced him.”
Putting two and two together, Murdock deduces that Bullseye didn’t take out Foggy as some twisted mission of vengeance due to his dealings with DD in Daredevil season 3, but because he was ordered to by some puppet master. It would be easy to point the blame at Kingpin, but with Murdock overhearing Arty Froushan’s Buck Cashman warning Fisk that Poindexter has escaped prison, and a spooked Vanessa warning her husband that she needs to tell him something, the penny finally drops for the Man Without Fear. Matt confronts Vanessa at Kingpin’s ball and says, “I know it was you. I just don’t know why,” but before he can get his answer, Bullseye steps into the frame to try and take out Kingpin.
Expanding on what it felt like learning she was behind Foggy's demise, and teasing that ‘inevitable’ consequences are to come, Zurer told Screen Rant: “I have to say that, when I read about it, I had to put it aside, and I sort of suppressed the fact that Vanessa is involved in this, and I didn't deal with him until the absolute end. Because I just couldn't take it. It's like such a miserable, sad moment to see him gone, and then to have that tie to her somehow." Still, the star seems open to the many theories that Foggy isn’t quite gone yet. As Henson is confirmed to appear in season 2, there’s plenty of buzz that one of those classic comic book twists is on the way.
Foggy’s death in the comics
Vanessa being behind the hit on Foggy is slightly different to the comics, which saw Murdock’s BFF shuffle off this mortal coil during 2006’s “The Devil in Cell-Block D” run. Here, Matt enjoyed a visit from Foggy after he was sent to Ryker's when his secret identity was exposed in the papers. During Daredevil #82, Foggy is stabbed to death when a corrupt guard locks him in a cell with some violent inmates, with the final panel implying it was Kingpin’s doing. Similar to how Daredevil listened to Fisk to try and determine whether he was the killer in Born Again, the comic book DD eventually deduced it wasn’t Kingpin’s doing.
With Foggy ‘dead’ for the next six issues, Dardevil #88 was titled “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” and revealed how his death had been staged to put him in witness protection. Even later, things took another twist when it was suggested that the whole thing was a complicated plot enacted by Vanessa Fisk to get revenge on both Daredevil and Kingpin after she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Even without the terminal illness part of the story, it seems likely that Born Again is putting its one twist on this arc, with Vanessa potentially getting a taste for the high life and wanting her husband out of the picture so she can remain at the top of his criminal empire.
We’re not sure how Wilson will react to finding out that the cause of his current troubles and a potential assassination attempt is the fault of his wife. Although it looked like he was originally trying to wash the blood off his hands and genuinely make New York a better place at the start of his mayoral campaign, the old Kingpin has slowly bubbled from the surface as vigilantes like Daredevil, Muse, and White Tiger have run amok. The question is: If Vanessa was the one who ordered the hit on Foggy, could she also be the one who had a Punisher-inspired killer pull the trigger on poor White Tiger? With Murdock sure to survive his injuries as we head into the finale, an unlikely alliance between Daredevil and Kingpin might see them take down the Red Queen that is Vanessa Fisk.