Crime
Dope Thief
Dope Thief comes with all the drugs, language and violence that you probably expect in a such an aptly named show.
Matt Murdock has changed. Or so he says.
After a psychop killed one of his best friends, Matt dropped his pointed cowl, set aside his billy club and stopped being Daredevil.
“A line was crossed,” he tells someone. “I felt like I lost the privilege. And despite the good that I was doing, I was causing damage.”
Matt still fights the good fight, of course—just not quite as literally. As a lawyer, he defends those he believes to be innocent. He does his own little part to battle New York City corruption. And he still promises to keep an eye on Wilson Fisk … the city’s newly elected mayor.
And Fisk? He, too, has changed. Or so he says.
He’s no longer that brutally cruel criminal mastermind known as Kingpin. “A rich man, by his very nature, is self-serving,” he says. “A mayor serves his city.” And he has promised the voters, and himself, that he’ll serve them the best that he can. He’s done earning blood money. He’s through killing his enemies. And his longtime enmity with Daredevil? Perhaps the two can finally bury the hatchet—somewhere else besides each other’s heads.
“I’m not that man anymore,” Fisk swears to Matt.
But change is hard. Especially if part of you doesn’t really want to change.
The new title sequence for Daredevil: Born Again features a series of crumbling statues, which fits: It’s not long before cracks in the facades of these “changed” men begin to show.
Fisk may want to improve New York. His voters would certainly like to believe so, and they’re all too willing to push aside his blood-red past and put their faith in his no-nonsense, can-do spirit.
But that past has generated its share of skeptics, too—Matt Murdock among them. “Why can I not shake the feeling that you’re trying to game the system?” he tells Fisk. And when those skeptics stand in the way of Fisk’s idea of progress, it’s easy to slip into some bad habits: a threat here, a bribe there, and a little blood just might grease the wheels of progress. Fisk has always been able to get his way, after all. And he’s never been one to worry much about bruised egos … or broken bones.
Matt has his own issues. He’d love to follow the rule of law—which, as a lawyer, he’s determined to make work for his clients. But sometimes those rules can be twisted. The law can be bent. Sometimes, the bad guys wear badges, and the good guys have nowhere to turn—except to an outside-the-law vigilante like Daredevil.
Matt and Fisk believe they’re polar opposites of each other. But they share more than they’d care to admit. And what they share, in Born Again, grows a bit more: Heather Glenn is Matt’s new girlfriend—and Wilson Fisk’s marriage counselor.
Small world.
Around the time that the Avengers were tangling with the AI monstrosity Ultron and Ant-Man was fighting Yellowjacket on a toy train, a different sort of Marvel superhero started stalking the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen—and the boulevards of Netflix.
Netflix’s Daredevil was grim, gritty and rated TV-MA—the equivalent of an R-rating in the world of movies. Blood was spattered. Curse words were hurled. Was the show good? Aesthetically, yes, and it brought in a welcome element of faith. (Matt Murdock’s Catholicism is a critical part of his character, and a bulwark of his no-kill ethos.) But the three-season story arc was brutal, too, and hardly the stuff that families could watch together.
Netflix closed out the series in 2018, turning the rights over to Disney—the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s corporate overlord. And while Daredevil (played engagingly by Charlie Cox) has showed up in some MCU properties since, Daredevil: Born Again marks his return as a true front-line superhero.
And the show is a return to form—for good and ill.
Born Again feels more like Matt Reeves’ The Batman than the MCU’s Avengers: There are no multiversal or extraterrestrial threats—just a lot of crime, corruption and Kingpin to deal with. The show is aimed at adults who like multilayered storytelling and complex characters.
But it is, of course, more “adult” in other ways, too.
Bad language, including f- and s-words, is strong and pervasive. Despite Matt’s Catholicism (which, in the early episodes, at least, seems a bit downplayed by Disney), the character has no inhibitions about diving into bed with someone else if the opportunity strikes.
And speaking of striking … wow, is this show violent.
Daredevil may not kill. But sometimes he seems to skate by that scruple on a technicality. He’ll break bones, crush skulls and shed an incredible amount of blood in bringing his foes his own painful form of “justice.” And while Wilson Fisk is playing nice in the early going of this series, you just know that’s not going to last. The people who die here might feel like they got off easy.
Matt Murdock may think he’s changed. Wilson Fisk may think he’s changed. But Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again? It feels much the same as its Netflix predecessor—if not a bit bloodier. And for families who trust Disney to give them family friendly fare, that’s hardly a welcome return.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
Matt and his besties, Foggy and Karen, go out to a bar to hang out with friends for a bit. But the evening is marred when psychopath Dex Poindexter—known to Marvel fans as Bullseye—attacks the establishment and kills several people, including one of Matt’s friends.
A year later, we learn that Matt has set aside his Daredevil persona, apparently for good. “I’m not him anymore, and I won’t let myself be,” he says. But when Wilson Fisk returns from a lengthy absence and decides to run for mayor, Matt meets with his former nemesis—warning him that he doesn’t trust Fisk’s “new man” schtick.
“I was raised to believe in grace,” Matt says. “That we can be touched by the divine and transformed into a better person. So if you say to me that you’re a new man, I say fine. But you should know I was also raised to believe in retribution. So if you step out of line, I will be there.”
That statement is one of a handful of references to faith we see in the opening episode. A bartender offers a toast: “May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you’re dead,” she says. We hear the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds song “Into My Arms,” which includes some spiritual allusions. (“I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” we hear, “But I know, darling, that you do.”)
Bullseye guns down at least three people in quick succession, splashing a bystander in their blood. Other people die during his attack, as well. One victim bleeds out, slowly, and we hear the heartbeat slow to a halt. Daredevil’s own armored suit is peppered with blades during the fight. Each combatant brutalizes the other, and one pushes another from a rooftop—the victim landing on the sidewalk with a thud. (He, however, survives.)
Matt goes on a date, which ends with a kiss. Wilson Fisk expresses his undying love for his wife, Vanessa—though he also knows that she had an affair when he was gone. People drink liberally. We hear the f-word three times, the s-word four and “h—” a half-dozen. Also on tap: six misuses of God’s name (five of which include “d–n”) and two abuses of Jesus’ name.
In the opening scene, two men assault another guy on an empty subway platform. A bystander flies in to protect the victim, leading to a massive fight. One of the original assailants is accidentally shoved into a passing subway train, killing him instantly (and spattering blood). His pal pulls a gun and a badge: The good Samaritan discovers that he interrupted a shakedown perpetrated by a couple of crooked cops—and accidentally killed one. Enter Matt Murdock, who swears to defend the accused killer to the best of his ability, even if it means putting himself in harm’s way.
In another bloody fight, someone’s arm is broken. (We see the bones protrude beneath the man’s clothes. Two people get knocked out (or worse), and all three are left seriously bloodied. Matt’s new client, Hector Ayala, tells Matt that he’s being regularly beaten by both inmates and guards while locked away. Wilson Fisk appears to threaten one of his employees by showing him a picture of his secret, apparently illegitimate, son: Whether Fisk is threatening to reveal the son’s identity or kill him is not entirely clear.
Matt and his new girlfriend, Heather, flirt and talk obliquely about going to bed together. They drink wine, and Heather talks about “double-fisting Mai Tais.” Matt stands in front of a church and listens to a priest say, “Behold Him to takes away the sins of the world.” Fisk and his wife go to marriage counseling. “I’m here because I don’t want to lose my wife,” he tells the counselor.
Characters say the f-word twice and the s-word six times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch” and “crap.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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