Check out our recap of Daredevil season 2 as we look at the key moments from the entire 13 episode run, Easter eggs, and what you need to know going forward….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Following a breakout freshman season a year ago, Daredevil returned with a more intense, action packed 13 episode run that debuted on March 18.
The first season of Daredevil primarily focused on Matt Murdock’s ascension to become “The Man Without Fear” while rooting out the real power behind the criminal element in Hell’s Kitchen as he brought Wilson Fisk out of the shadows and into the light before eventually putting him in jail.
Now as season 2 of Daredevil picks up, Matt’s life is almost in order.
He’s patrolling the rooftops and alleyways around Hell’s Kitchen on a nightly basis, ridding the city of whatever scum he can mop up while still trying to maintain a somewhat normal life as a lawyer. Nelson & Murdock isn’t exactly thriving when we pick up season two although the struggling law firm certainly has more clients than a year ago.
Unfortunately most of the clients would rather pay in bananas and blueberry cobbler rather than cash money and it’s leaving Matt, Foggy and Karen wondering when they will finally start doing more than just helping people for a smile and a handshake.
But before Nelson and Murdock can ask for a paying client to land on their doorstep, a career criminal named Grotto appears out of nowhere as the lone survivor of a massacre that saw almost every Irish gangster in town gunned down. This former thug is looking for a way out and the only chance he has to survive is to turn state’s evidence and he’s asking Nelson and Murdock to broker his deal.
What Grotto, Matt, and Foggy don’t know at the time — the Irish mobsters weren’t hit by accident and they didn’t get hit by a rival. They got hit by a one man wrecking machine named Frank Castle who we all soon know better by his nickname — The Punisher.
With that said, let’s recap the key moments from start to finish from Daredevil season 2….
One Bad Day Away
Moments after the Irish mob are wiped out by a lone gunman not to mention the cartel, who end up on meat hooks courtesy of the same violent vigilante, Matt Murdock is flummoxed trying to figure out who is joining him in cleaning up the criminal element around Hell’s Kitchen but doing it with lethal force.
He gets his first lead while working on his day job as a lawyer when the only survivor of the Irish mob massacre asks Nelson and Murdock to broker a deal to get him into witness protection. The down side is the Irish thug named Grotto got out alive, but he didn’t get out unharmed. So Karen agrees to rush him to the hospital and even covers for him so the cops won’t pick up on what’s actually happening.
The bad news for Karen and Grotto is the person stalking him isn’t a cop — it’s Frank Castle and he doesn’t leave any witnesses who still need to pay. Frank nearly wipes out both Karen and Grotto while trying to eliminate the final piece of the Irish puzzle but before he can finish the job, Daredevil intervenes. A battle ensues, but Daredevil quickly learns that this vigilante is a force to be reckoned with when he pulls a gun, puts it directly onto his skull and pulls the trigger — BANG.
Of course, Matt doesn’t die but he does get his bell run and his mask cracked. He asks his old buddy Melvin Potter to repair the damage because despite nearly going deaf and barely being able to stand up straight after taking a gunshot to the dome, he still feels it’s necessary to go on the hunt for the gun-toting vigilante.
Meanwhile, Matt’s investigation into the man now being called ‘The Punisher’ leads him to a third faction that he’s targeted outside of the Irish and the cartel — a biker gang known as the Dogs of Hell (savvy Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. watchers will recognize this same club from season one). Foggy actually does some reconnaissance on the Dogs of Hell as well because it turns out he went to grade school with a future member but he finds out that not only is his childhood friend dead, but the biker gang is ready to explode for vengeance.
It only makes matters worse when Foggy has to butt heads with District Attorney Reyes, who wants to be Mayor Reyes one day, and she’s determined to use his client Grotto to stamp out the rest of the crime families in the city. But rather than use him for information, Reyes actually plants him as bait to try and lure the Punisher out of hiding.
The plan works but Frank Castle was ready for them to spring a trap so he retaliates and just in the nick of time, Daredevil shows up to stop him. In the fray, Grotto ends up running away, Punisher and Daredevil end up fighting again and DA Reyes is left with egg on her face after using a material witness as bait and nearly getting him killed. Foggy is furious but more importantly, what happened to Grotto?
We find out that Frank ends up besting Daredevil for the second time before chaining him to a chimney on a roof where he taunts the “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” as nothing more than a half measure as he gives his best Mike Ehrmantraut speech. Long story short — when Daredevil puts a criminal down, they get back up. When the Punisher puts them down, they stay down for good.
He also reveals that he’s plotting an attack against the Dogs of War but not before making Grotto stand for all of his crimes. Frank tracked down Grotto after the sting gone wrong and now he’s trying to make Daredevil the same kind of vigilante — so he tapes a gun to his hand with one bullet in the chamber and a choice. He can either kill the Punisher to stop him or he can kill Grotto, who he has now revealed is a serious scumbag capable of killing old ladies when they discover him trying to commit a crime.
Instead of killing either of them, Daredevil shoots the chain holding him against the chimney. In the melee, Grotto is shot and killed and the Dogs of War, who were just across the street, figure out that the vigilante gunning for them is just next door.
What unfolds in the latter half of the third episode is another epic fight scene as Matt battles the Dogs of War in hallways and stairwells before finally gaining the upper hand. Unfortunately through all the fighting, Daredevil loses sight of Frank Castle, who has managed to escape once again.
One Batch, Two Batch
The next episode focuses on the hunt for Frank Castle as we finally start to learn more about his background.
Karen and Foggy are able to pressure an assistant DA to give up the file Reyes had collected on The Punisher and they find very little to work with outside of an x-ray with a bullet hole straight through the head. Karen does some digging and eventually tracks down the name Frank Castle thanks to the medical file and she discovers his family home.
Inside she sees that Frank was a decorated marine, who received a ton of commendations and honors during his service, while at home he was a father to two kids and a husband to a beautiful wife. But they are all gone now and Karen wants to know what happened to them.
Meanwhile, Frank Castle has finally run out luck because while fleeing from Daredevil and the Dogs of Hell, he ends up at the carousel where he watched his entire family get gunned down one sunny afternoon several years ago. Details about his family’s murder will come later, but in the moment, Frank is distracted and he fails to see the remaining Irish gang now under the leadership of a man named Finn Cooley, who is out for revenge and a shit load of money that was stolen from them by The Punisher.
Finn tortures Frank as a result of the death of his sun during that initial gun battle earlier in the season but also because he took a large amount of money from the Irish mob. Frank refuses to give up the location of the money and he endures a hell of a lot of punishment, but finally Daredevil tracks him down and the two of them are able to fight their way out of the Irish stronghold.
Frank also gets his final vengeance on the Irish when he blows Finn’s head off with a shotgun.
After leaving the latest battle, the Punisher finally drops his guard while sitting bloody and beaten in a graveyard while talking to his new pal, Daredevil. It’s a heart-wrenching scene where Frank goes into detail about his time at war, coming home to his family and a particular book his daughter always wanted him to read to her before bed. In fact the night before his family died, Frank’s daughter asked him to read it to her but he was too tired and promised to do it tomorrow instead.
But tomorrow never came.
If you could make it through this scene without rolling a tear, you might be a robot.
Following that story, the police arrive and Daredevil makes a deal with his old pal Brett Mahoney — the cops will take credit for this arrest because they’ve been taking a mountain of slack lately as vigilantes are doing most of the cleaning on the streets while the police are made to look like a clean up crew. The Punisher is put into custody and Daredevil finally got his man.
Tainted Love
Following a ton of flirtation, Matt and Karen finally get together this season with more than a few passionate kisses shared that’s very sweet and romantic although it’s quite off putting to poor Foggy. Not only does he have to deal with an inner office romance, but he never quite got over Karen after crushing on her for most of last season.
Still, Matt is getting close to Karen while still keeping her at arm’s reach because he’s secretly leading a second life as Daredevil whenever the sun goes down.
Just when it looks like Matt has found a balance between work life, love life and vigilante life, he comes home one night and walks into his apartment where he discovers his ex-girlfriend from college — Elektra Natchios — sitting in the middle of his living room just waiting for him to get home.
A History of Matt and Elektra
This damaged relationship started back in college when Matt was a lowly law student and Elektra was a woman of privilege. Somehow the two of them connect and as much as Matt tries to hide from Elektra, she sees right through his façade. Before long, the two of them are inseparable but Elektra has a dark side and she wants Matt to join her there.
So she manages to track down the mob kingpin, who was ultimately responsible for the death of ‘Battlin’ Jack Murdock — Matt’s father. She delivers him to Matt gift wrapped for revenge.
Matt wails on the guy for a while but Elektra wants him to play executioner and when his Catholic guilt kicks in and he refuses to kill, she leaves him in the lurch and never speaks to him again until she shows up in his apartment late one night asking for help. To make matters worse, Matt soon finds out that Elektra not only sought him out while they were in college but it was actually his mentor Stick that sent her after him.
Elektra was a student of Stick’s as well and she was sent to get Matt back on track after he abandoned his teacher in favor of law school. Needless to say, Matt was not amused.
Talk to The Hand
Elektra enlists Matt’s help for a problem she’s dealing with in town and in exchange she pays him a lot of money. Typically, Matt would turn it down but considering the law firm is barely staying above water right now, he has no choice but to accept the offer.
Matt finds out rather quickly, however, that Elektra isn’t in town for a business deal or to investigate some shady company her money is wrapped up with as she originally tells him when asking for help. In fact, Elektra is in town to investigate an ancient order of ninjas known as The Hand, who are in Hell’s Kitchen searching for a mystical object known as ‘the Black Sky’. They believe the black sky will lead them to prosperity and true power in the world and they’ll stop at nothing to get it.
To make matters worse, Matt finds out that his old pal Nobu is still alive — remember Nobu from season one as the chain swinging ninja who supposedly burned to death after battling Daredevil? Well, he’s still kicking.
On top of it all, Matt is duped again because not only did Elektra lie to him just like she did before but he soon finds out his old pal Stick is the same person pulling the strings on this operation as well. Elektra has been operating under Stick’s orders this entire time and Matt is back to being a pawn in their own private war.
Still, Matt can’t help but be drawn to the woman he once loved and the man he calls a mentor so when Elektra is hurt in battle and nearly killed by poison tainted weapons wielded by the Hand, he stays by her bedside until she recovers. Matt’s already confusing life only gets worse when Karen pays him a visit and finds Elektra resting in his bed — that virtually puts an end to their budding relationship.
Despite all that mistrust, Matt still finds a way back to Elektra in his heart and he asks her to give up Stick and this life long vendetta against the Hand and just be with him. Just when it appears she’s ready to concede, a member of the Hand breaks into Matt’s place and nearly kills him until he finally gets the upper hand. Matt takes the ninja’s mask off to reveal a teenage boy but there will be no questioning him because without blinking, Elektra slits his throat. Matt now knows there’s no changing Elektra — she’s a killer, no matter how much he wants her to give up that part of her life.
The People vs. Frank Castle
Following Castle’s arrest it appears he’s about to get sent to prison and end up on death row, but that doesn’t sit well with Matt, who volunteers to defend him in court under the offices of Nelson and Murdock. Unfortunately, Matt makes the offer but then promptly disappears from the case because he’s moonlighting as a vigilante at night to help Elektra so that leaves Foggy and Karen to mount the defense.
Karen does some investigating into Frank’s former life and finds out that his entire family was murdered at a local park when a drug deal went bad and the Castles were caught in the crossfire.
Despite his nerves, Foggy ends up putting on a brilliant defense for Castle as he paints him as a war hero, who came home to watch his family get butchered in front of his own eyes and now he lives in that torment every minute of every day for the rest of his life. Foggy brings up one of Castle’s superior officers from the Marines, who was forever indebted to him for saving his life during the war.
It looks like Foggy is going to end up with Castle remanded to psychiatric care or with a seriously reduced sentence until it all goes wrong. On one of the few days Matt shows up in court to cross examine Frank on the stand, he freaks out and ends up essentially convicting himself after a huge outburst in the courtroom. The case is blown, Castle is sentenced to prison, Reyes gets her big win while Nelson and Murdock are left with nothing after losing the biggest courtroom battle they’ve ever faced.
Foggy and Karen are both unbelievably confused why Frank would tank his own defense while Matt senses something else is happening. A few moments after his court case if finished, Castle is reprimanded to a local prison facility where he walks into the yard and comes face to face with the man who convinced him to blow the trial — Wilson Fisk.
The Men Responsible
It turns out Wilson Fisk orchestrated Castle’s “conviction” to bring him to jail so he could share some vital information. It seems Fisk’s main opposition to running the entire prison is a man who also just happens to be one of the people responsible for the drug deal gone wrong that ended with Frank’s entire family being massacred.
Castle goes after the man in prison and gets the information he needs — it turns out a major drug syndicate run by a man known only as The Blacksmith orchestrated the whole deal before the shooting began. He’s the one responsible for the death of Frank’s family so of course that now becomes his target.
Unfortunately, Castle trusted the wrong guy and after killing Fisk’s rival, he sends a slew of prisoners after the former Marine in an attempt to finish him off. Castle somehow gets the best of the prisoners and ends up killing them all before the guards put him in solitary. There he has one last encounter with Fisk before “The Kingpin” decides that maybe it’s best if The Punisher gets back to work outside these walls while he serves his time. It seems Fisk’s plan is to allow Castle to clean up all the gangs, mobs and drug lords in Hell’s Kitchen so when he finally returns, he’ll have the entire city for himself.
Following Castle’s escape, Matt finds out that he was placed in the same cell block as Fisk and he finally starts to put two and two together. Matt visits Fisk in prison and attempts to extort the former crime lord by promising to stop Vanessa from ever returning to the United States but this is a threat against the wrong man. Fisk attacks Matt, slamming his head down onto the desk while leaving the lawyer with a rather ominous threat — he’s going to start digging into his life and pulling it apart from the inside out until there’s nothing left. Fisk is about to get medieval on Matt Murdock.
Meanwhile with Castle free in the streets, more people start turning up dead and Matt along with everybody else is concerned that the Punisher really has returned. They finally pay a visit to Reyes to get the full story on the drug deal that ended with Castle losing his entire family and that’s when they get the truth. It turns out the drug deal was supposed to be a bust, but the Blacksmith never showed and when one gun got pulled, everybody’s guns got pulled and before long everybody was dead.
Reyes used her influence to cover up the police involvement — which included an attempt to pull the plug on Castle while he was still alive but he somehow survived. She’s been trying to cover her tracks ever since. Before Reyes could finish her sentence, gunfire blasted through the office and killed her dead. Later that night the same thing happens at Karen’s apartment and it looks like the Punisher is tying up any loose ends to his former life.
Expect it’s not actually Castle — someone is posing as him to kill people and put the blame back on The Punisher.
Karen is the only person who still believes in Frank and as such she ends up rendezvousing with him to help flush out the real people behind his family’s murder. Her investigation pays off when she finally visits Frank’s superior officer, who defended him during the trial. Colonel Ray Schoonover was Frank’s commander in the war and a good friend to him when the defense needed a character witness in court.
What Karen discovers when she pays Schoonover a visit after Frank’s escape is that all of the members of his unit minus Castle ended up working for him after the war. She recognizes a few of the faces from one of the photos in his house as the same men who attempted to kill her and Castle a couple of nights before. Schoonover realizes that his secret is about to be exposed — he is the Blacksmith!
Schoonover attempts to silence Karen once and for all, but Frank shows up and saves the day before killing his former commander and righting the ultimate wrong that ended with his family dead. Castle also finds a cash of weapons hidden in Schoonover’s shed along with a bulletproof vest that he “modifies” with some white spray paint.
The Punisher is reborn.
The Resurrection Machine
Amidst the investigation into the Hand, Matt eventually finds a secret lair where the group has kidnapped a group of children, who they’ve hooked up to some kind of blood drawing machine. Matt helps the kids escape and he takes them the hospital where he puts them under the care of nurse Claire Temple.
Testing done on the children reveals that not only has their blood been drawn, but something is being put back into them as well. The substance remains a mystery but these kids were important because the Hand launch an all out assault on the hospital later that night to retrieve them.
Matt is able to fight them off one by one but the kids rise up from their beds like some kind of “Village of the Damned” routine and instead of rebelling against the people who took them, they go back willingly to serve their masters.
When it’s all said and done, the hospital attempts to cover up the crime and that’s enough for Claire to walk away for good. She can’t be part of a conspiracy and whatever the Hand did to these kids shouldn’t get brushed under the rug.
Meanwhile all this blood magic appears to add up to one thing — it’s the sauce that somehow brought Nobu back to life and can also resurrect members of the Hand who have died as well. The Hand carry around a strange sarcophagus looking machine where the blood concoction flowed not to mention one member of the group who was killed had already been autopsied and sewed back up before dying — again.
It looks like the Hand have the power to combat death and that’s just one more thing to fear about them.
Black the Sky
After her falling out with Matt, Elektra is ready to leave New York and her past for good but at the airport she runs into an assassin attempting to kill her. Elektra gets the upper hand and puts him away but not before learning that he was sent after her by Stick.
Why would Stick attempt to kill his own progeny?
Well it turns out that Elektra is actually the Black Sky! She’s the missing link that the Hand have been searching for and Stick knew that from the moment he brought her under his care. Stick just couldn’t bring himself to kill a child and he thought he could raise her to be a hero instead of a villain. But as Elektra’s murderous impulses continue to grow stronger and stronger, Stick realizes there’s no bringing her back.
When the Hand bow down to Elektra after kidnapping Stick, she pauses for a moment like she might actually believe it all and turn to their side but Matt convinces her otherwise. She teams back up with Matt as they take out the Hand and rescue Stick but Nobu and the others aren’t going to go away so easily and now they have a very specific target in mind.
They want Elektra no matter the cost.
In an attempt to draw Daredevil out into the open thus getting Elektra to follow, the Hand ransack the police department and find a list of all the people the devil of Hell’s Kitchen has saved over the past few months. The Hand kidnap all of them and take the group to an abandoned building downtown where they will lure Daredevil and Elektra for one final battle. Among the people kidnapped is Karen Page, who still has no idea that Daredevil is actually her on again/off again boyfriend Matt Murdock.
Thanks to one of the people who gets kidnapped having an ankle bracelet under house arrest, the cops along with Daredevil and Elektra find where the Hand have the hostages stashed. The two burst into the building and save the people who have been kidnapped but the Hand knew this would happen and they’ve laid a trap on the roof to kill Daredevil and take Elektra to serve as the Black Sky.
Before entering the fray, Matt has a heart to heart with Elektra where he asks her to run away with him. He feels no one understands him the way she does and while she argues that his biggest problem is never allowing anyone to get too close, the two lovers agree that after they eradicate the Hand, they will leave New York and never return.
On the room, Daredevil and Elektra battle the hand and at one point they even get an assist from The Punisher, who has returned to Hell’s Kitchen one last time to pay back his old pal “Red” before leaving for good. Just when it looks like the battle is turning their way, Elektra gets stabbed by Nobu and like her comic book counterpart — she doesn’t make it out alive.
For those curious, Elektra ALWAYS dies in the comic books so this one seemed rather obvious.
Matt finishes off the last of the Hand before they flee and to make sure Nobu doesn’t come back again, Stick returns and decapitates the crafty ninja and leaves his head laying in the street. The Hand have been defeated (for now) but Elektra is dead and Matt is once again alone with nobody in the world.
Epilogue
It’s been a rough road for Matt Murdock after finding a new woman to love only to see the woman he never completely left behind return to his life. And then he watched her die. Add to that his constant absence at the law firm has Foggy ending Nelson and Murdock for good as he accepts a new job offer to work for Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz — yes, the same Jeri Hogarth who appears regularly on Jessica Jones. This brings Daredevil one step closer to his connection with Jessica Jones and teaming up as The Defenders.
We also find that after her funeral, Elektra’s body has gone missing and soon after we find she’s been taken by the Hand and currently occupies the resurrection chamber. It’s clear that Elektra will eventually return.
And after it’s all said and done, Matt invites Karen to the law offices one final time for a meeting. She’s already accepted a new job working for the New York Bulletin after taking up Ben Urich’s old job and Karen is ready to move on with her life away from Nelson and Murdock.
Before she goes, however, Matt has to share one last thing with her.
Matt pulls his mask out of the bag and shows it to a stunned Karen before telling her — “I’m Daredevil”. Fade to black and Daredevil season 2 has come to a close.
EASTER EGGS
— Officer Brett Mahoney (eventually made Detective Brett Mahoney) mentions “Clemons” during a conversation with Foggy Nelson. That’s the same Clemons who investigated Jessica Jones before he was eventually murdered by Kilgrave.
— District Attorney Reyes also briefly appeared in Jessica Jones before she was killed towards the latter half of the season in Daredevil.
— Melvin Potter re-appears this season a couple of times as Matt’s tailor as he fixes his helmet and suit. We also get a glimpse into his possible alter ego — The Gladiator — a buzz saw wielding anti-hero from the comic books. Whether Potter will actually become him during the show is unknown but there’s plenty of hints laying around his work space
— Speaking of Melvin — during the final episodes he presents Matt with a present that he designed just for him — a billy club! The famous weapon used throughout Daredevil’s history has finally made its way into the show and he uses that with serious precision as he takes out the Hand in the season finale.
— Assistant District Attorney Blake Tower is a prominent character during Daredevil season 2 and he’s also well known in Luke Cage and Iron Fist storylines so it’s possible he’ll be a connecting piece to the final two series coming from Marvel on Netflix.
— When Wilson Fisk threatens to tear Matt’s life apart, that’s a reference to a famous comic book story arc titled “Born Again” and the Kingpin does exactly that. Given the showdown between the two characters, it’s possible that could be a major plot for Daredevil season 3.
That’s all for this season of Daredevil folks hope you enjoyed!!
