You’d think that’d be the season’s lowest point, but no: Lantom’s death becomes a catalyst for what comes after, but Fisk isn’t done. Indeed, the show’s real devil continues to manipulate his way to freedom and power, corrupting who he can and destroying who he can’t. And despite the best efforts of Matt, Karen and Foggy Nelson (Matt’s best friend and sometime legal partner), it looks for all the world like Fisk is going to win. It carries a whiff of the very first Good Friday, in a way—when Jesus’ followers saw the Man who they believed would change everything hanging from a cross, dead.
But in death comes new life, and in sacrifice we find new hope. It’s been the show’s steady drumbeat throughout the season, and indeed, another act of sacrifice (this one by Agent Nadeem) saves the story.
As the show barrels to its conclusion, it returns to where it began: A struggle over Matt’s soul. And in his climactic showdown with Fisk, we see that Fisk wants, above all, to corrupt and take that soul for himself. He knows that destroying Matt’s body isn’t enough. In the end, Fisk wants Daredevil to end him, because he knows it’ll be the end of Daredevil.
Fisk, bloodied, kneeling, holding his arms outstretched in a near-mockery of Christ, offers his life to an enraged Matt.
“No prison can keep me,” he says. “You know that. Come on! Kill me!”
“No!” Matt says. “You don’t get to destroy who I am!”
Perhaps we knew how the show would end. After all, a Daredevil who kills is no Daredevil at all, and it makes for a satisfying (if bloody) conclusion. But the season’s uber-spiritual coda, for me, is even more resonant.
Matt talks with Sister Maggie in the church basement, recalling his last conversation with Father Lantom. “His last words were ‘forgive us,’” Matt says (which echoed some of Jesus’ last words on the cross).
He talks about how when he was just a child, newly blinded and bitter toward God, how Lantom came alongside him.
“He told me God’s plan is like a beautiful tapestry, and the tragedy of being human is that we only get to see it from the back,” he tells Maggie. “With all the ragged threads and muddy colors. We only get a hint of the true beauty that would be revealed if we could see the whole pattern on the other side. As God does.
“I realized that if my life had turned out any differently that I never would’ve become Daredevil,” he adds. “And even though there are people who’ve died on my watch, people who shouldn’t have, there are countless others who have lived. Maybe it is all part of God’s plan.”
This season of Daredevil begins with a black baptism. It ends with confession, and redemption. For all of the blood shed here, Daredevil carries a message of salvation. And that’s one of the reasons why it remains one of the most powerful shows on television.
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