It’s been one intense debut season for Daredevil: Born Again, not only with all the drama but also with the action. I’ll be honest: The fight scenes are my favorite parts of superhero series. Compared to what we got in the past, especially prior to the influence of fighters like Bruce Lee, today’s fight scenes are some of the best on television. They’re more advanced, full of technique and intelligence, and they tell a story.
In the case of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), his story is that of an orphan turned vigilante and Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and his fighting style reflects that. A mixture of multiple disciplines, his once-clean techniques have disappeared. In their place fueling the action are emotion and rage stemming from being forced to inflict damage upon someone, as opposed to redirecting the force of what they’re dishing out. That is directly on show in the Disney Plus series.
Daredevil: Born Again season 1 boasted outstanding fight scenes guided by the violent natures of our vigilante’s severe emotional traumas, as well as those of The Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). They allowed us to experience a slow burn of violence that eventually boils over into—no pun intended—blind fury by the finale, and that's where we'll start. Let’s unravel that slow burn with this ranking of all nine episodes of season 1 by the best fight scenes!
1. Episode 9: "Straight to Hell"
The season 1 finale features Murdock and The Kingpin at their breaking points, and that’s prevalent in the way they fight: full of rage. That makes this episode the very best when it comes to fight sequences.
At 19:50, it’s Daredevil and The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) versus the corrupt cops of Wilson Fisk's Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Daredevil crashes through the sky light and serves out the first volley, taking down three dirty cops. During this fight, he throws a knife and pins a cop to the wall. Think about the force that took. Moreover, Punisher pushes him to kill, and he considers it.
At 34:30, The Punisher comes from the shadows and slits the throat of a cop. He kills many more in their effort to take him hostage, which is a pretty gnarly, brutal scene altogether.
At 40:40, Fisk summons the police commissioner, who will not bend to The Kingpin’s new reign of tyranny. So, he must go. Fisk dispatches him, first with a sharp elbow to the sternum, catching him off guard, then with a double punch to the base of the neck, on either side, to bring him to his knees. He grabs the commissioner’s head between his hands and squeezes in a devastatingly cruel, eventually crushing his skull and twisting it in half. What's fueling him? Rage, and not the blind kind.
2. Episode 1: “Heaven’s Half Hour”
Episode 1 establishes the foundation for Daredevil’s intense anger and shows how it fuels his vigilante engagement.
At 8:40, Daredevil is led into a trap and, as a result, Froggy (Elden Hensen) dies. He fights with pure, unadulterated vengeance and allows us to witness the fury that lives inside of him as he mercilessly beats Froggy’s killer and screams with every motion, not from pain but from summoning the strength needed for the most devastating blow he can muster.
With the gunman on the edge of the roof beaten and bloodied, Matt attempts to kill the man out of anger and emotional turmoil. This moment breaks him and forces him to go back to being a lawyer, who ignores his internal vigilante. From here on out, the rest of the episode establishes our plotlines between Murdock the lawyer and Fisk the Mayor.
3. Episode 7: “Art for Art’s Sake”
In Episode 7, Daredevil has his first interaction with the serial killer Muse (Hunter Doohan), who is trying to kill Murdock’s girlfriend, Dr. Heather Glenn. This fight not only sees Daredevil bring a different level of emotional intensity to his protective efforts, but it also showcases the aggression and dissociation locked inside of Muse.
At 24:40, Muse attacks Heather. He aggressively ties her up and changes into his killing persona, which resembles the mask Rorschach wore in the in The Watchman movie, without the moving shapes to denote stages of emotion. After she headbutts him, he slams her to the floor and begins to strangle her. He is completely lost now, out of his ritual, emotion in full control. Daredevil crashes through the window and stuns Muse with a baton throw to the dome, and an epic fight ensues. He pounds the face of his adversary to a bloody pulp then throws him across the room before Heather kills the villain with her gun.
4. Episode 6: “Excessive Force”
Episode 6 establishes a major plot point in Daredevil being “born again.” Murdock receives phone call about a missing girl he knows. After hanging up on 911, he suits up for the first time in the series.
At 35:14, Murdock locates Muse’s den and, under the cover of the subway train, with full force, blasts the killer in the face. Hand-to-hand combat is set into motion, leading to a moment of rebirth for Daredevil, who beats the ever-loving snot out of Muse. While this happening, Fisk is tormenting his own captive, who quickly finds out The Kingpin is still very much the same ruthless force of nature he was in the original series.
During these fights, we travel back and forth between the two visually, connecting the martial strategies of Daredevil with Kingpin as they display their violent talents. Mad props to the post-production team for their creative editing skills here, which fuel the intensity we feel as we watch this play out. It’s quite impressive. D’Onofrio and Cox each bring intense violence out into the open like a symphony of fists pounding out a beautiful, destructive melody.
5. Episode 2: “Optics”
It’s all about optics in episode 2, as a Good Samaritan and Daredevil know and use to their advantage, which, as we see, sometimes leads to disadvantages post-fight.
At 2:58, a Good Samaritan, Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes), encounters two men who are physically intimidating and beating an unarmed civilian. Our good Samaritan (who we later find out is the vigilante White Tiger) intervenes but gets caught up in hand-to-hand combat. The Samaritan has skills and when one assailant dies, the other identifies himself as NYPD and arrests the White Tiger for murder.
At 40:43, Murdock uses his extraordinary sense of hearing to find the address of a witness to the subway incident, as he now represents Hector. Luckily, he arrives before the cops do, but they soon show up and attempt to intimidate him, beating him furiously. He begs for them not to kill him, not because he is scared but because he knows if they pass the point of no return, he'll be forced to defend himself with impunity, and he does.
This isn’t martial art, it is survival. You can see that in his eyes. With the cops unconscious, Murdock composes himself, only to be angered by the fact that he was forced to lay waste to another human being by releasing a deep, guttural, primal scream.
6. Episode 5: “With Interest”
Episode 5 reminds us that Daredevil sometimes has interest in his fights, and this is where strategy comes in over emotion. There are fights he’s forced into, then there are fights he stakes an interest in. Those kinds of fights require redirection, and that’s what Daredevil prefers.
As Murdock is leaving a bank, five hooded gunmen enter with all the pomp and circumstance you’d expect from a cinematic bank robbery. This is his kind of fight: protection, not death. So, he defends as a lawyer, not as a superhero.
At 21:06, he creates a situation to disarm an assailant and takes down one gunman in the stairwell with ninja-like precision—awesome, for a blind dude. He gains the surprise advantage over the gunman attempting to get into the vault and knocks him unconscious.
At 32:15, S.W.A.T. enters as Murdock and the bank manager bring up a precious stone the gunmen were there to steal. While the police detain the robbers, Murdock disarms another gunman and bounces his head off a concrete pillar, leaving him for the police.
At 34:10, Murdock follows one of the gunmen out of the bank, who left disguised as a police officer. Murdock places the hood from one of the robbers over his head and viscously attacks. The bank robber is clearly a street thug, and it shows during the confrontation. Since he’s no Daredevil, he winds up with a face full of broken glass and a concussion. Murdock runs and jumps into the air, coming down on the thug’s knees, breaking the fibula, tibia, and more than likely dislocating the hip. Scene fades to black as Murdock stomps the guy’s face into the side of the bridge under which they’re fighting.
See the difference in his fighting evolution from these perspectives, up to this point?
7. Episode 8: “Isle of Joy”
Episode 8 should’ve been title “The Joy of Irony.” The big event in this episode is Mayor Fisk’s fundraising event, which he uses as an opportunity to conduct business that will set him up as Kingpin for real, not just in title. Sometimes there are fights where you don’t engage at all.
At 41:50, Foggy’s killer, an ex-cop named Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), escapes from prison and makes his way to a catwalk above the dance floor to get a clear shot at The Kingpin. As he chambers the bullet and cycles the bolt on the rifle, Murdock hears this and instinctively moves in front of Fisk, saving his life in a completely ironic twist. I’ll leave the rest for the viewer because he does have good reason.
8. Episode 4: “Sic Semper Systema”
Thus Always to the System: That’s what Sic Semper Systema means. Episode 4 includes a scene that is paramount in the evolution of Murdock’s growth back into the Daredevil persona he established in the original series.
At 36:06, Murdock investigates evidence linking The Punisher to the case he’s working. At this point, Punisher has vanished in the storyline, but several rogue police officers have dubbed themselves The Punisher and carry out their brand of justice in the streets. When Murdock hears a heartbeat all too familiar, he follows it right to The Punisher, who has been waiting on him to figure out he’s being followed to get his attention.
Although no physical violence ensues, Bernthal’s Punisher is a man who has come to terms with the act of killing in the name of justice without remorse. He fully embraces that side of himself, and this interaction is him goading the devil to come out and stop denying his true nature: to protect the innocent using his unique physical gifts.
9. Episode 3: “Hollow of His Hand”
This episode is mainly about White Tiger's trial. There are no real fight scenes to speak of, as the entirety of the episode takes place inside the courthouse. There are no spoilers here: You have to watch the trial to fully understand the psychology of the anti-hero and his frustration with the system, specifically how justice is open to interpretation just as the law is, which means it is only as good as the person or people wielding that “justice.”
Because there are no fight scenes, episode 3 is last, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. It’s super important in understanding the mentality of Murdock when he finally gives in to Daredevil and puts the mask back on.
Every hero—even the anti-hero—has a moral compass from which they do not diverge, based on the specific trauma set they carry. Here is where Daredevil: Born Again takes the viewer through a different perspective of what this traumatic process actually means through fighting.
Matt Murdock’s journey from orphan to Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is the foundation upon which Daredevil takes a stand to fight evil and protect the innocent. This “stand for justice” is all too familiar in the hero’s journey and is not a new story line. What we always do not understand as an audience is what happens when the “hero” believes that something horrific happened because of what they deem, in retrospect, to be unguided or misplaced fury. As such, justice is unwittingly turned into vengeance and even tragedy.
For Matt Murdock, hanging up his mask and focusing on practicing law with Froggy is what saved him from this cyclic fate of vengeance. When Froggy dies, Matt is so traumatized, that he’s forced to turn to violence, even when he doesn’t want to.
Daredevil: Born Again season 1 establishes a new path for the vigilante, and we can’t wait to see where this rage and vengeance take him as a fighter, a defender, and a protector.