Though it’s been sold in part as an adaptation of Marvel Comics Devil’s Reign, showrunner Dario Scardapane‘s inspiration for the narrative structure of Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again came from a slightly more surprising source. With career criminal Wilson Fisk–Mayor Kingpin–having driven Daredevil, Karen Page and New York City’s other vigilantes underground, the synopsis for Season 2 paints Daredevil as “public enemy number one” and promises that Murdock will “fight back from the shadows.” Resist. Rebel. Rebuild. In promoting the new season, Scardapane has revealed that he envisioned the new episodes as “resistance story”, heavily inspired by French film noir, specifically the 1969 Jean-Pierre Melville masterpiece, Army of Shadows.
To tell a resistance tale with fidelity to the genre, Season 2 will need to put the Big Apple in a pressure cooker, examine the corruption inherent to absolute power, challenge the ideology of the resistance and force Murdock to not only make Daredevil a symbol or resistance but also force him, at some point, to bear the weight of sacrifice. Episode 1, “The Northern Star”, sets the stage for the escalation of the revolution teased in the Season 1 finale, immediately crossing the point of no return as the presence of Daredevil forces the scuttling of The Northern Star (keep that wording in mind for the finale).
Resistance is the through line of Season 2. There is opposition to the idea that Fisk won at the end of Season 1. This season is the pushback against his administration. This is the story of Daredevil becoming a symbol for the Resistance. The idea of Daredevil ascending to almost symbolic status was always part of the conversation.
-Dario Scardapane
In choosing to frame the new season as a resistance story, Scardapane turned a superhero story into an exploration of the volatile space between oppression and freedom, a deep dive into the psychology of power and the cost of change. Fortunately, sitting at center of it, is the Man without Fear. Smartly, the first episode establishes that Matt, Karen et al face a steep uphill climb to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of New York. In this regard, the BB Report continues to serve as a monitor of the pulse of the populace and as the new season kicks off, it ain’t too fuckin’ good as far as Daredevil is concerned. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is already an enemy of the state and Fisk attempts to leverage the scuttling of the Northern Star–a ship he’s using to smuggle weapons–to further his personal (V for) vendetta.
Though New Yorkers don’t see it quite yet, not Nelson, Murdock and Page are leading the charge against a state-sponsored occupation. Propaganda-littered streets, a secret police and abuses of office drive the resistance further underground while the Kingpin sits in his cold monolith of power, revealing a fundamentally broken system that, ironically, only the blind man and his closest allies can see. It’s a scenario so twisted that not even the representative of a higher authority can crack the shell, as Kingpin’s it’s-all-connected connections allow him to remain above the law even as Matthew Lillard‘s Mr. Charles power plays the Fat Man.
Brilliantly, just as it looks as though Matt’s efforts to resist will be extraordinarily short-lived, Scardapane reintroduces the classic Daredevil agent of chaos in the closing moments of the episode. Given Bullseye’s talents and tolerance, his intervention can practically be counted upon to disrupt both the regime and the resistance, especially given the reality that he has no skin in the ideological game being played by Fisk and Murdock. Bullseye’s intervention portends a rapid, disorder-driven deterioration not only of the structure of Matt and Karen’s revolution but also of Kingpin’s very ordered sense of things. Vive la Résistance!
Source: The Hindu
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