How the Daredevil: Born Again Finale Sets up Devil’s Reign in Season 2

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Daredevil: Born Again finale, “Straight to Hell.”] The Devil’s reign has just begun. Tuesday’s “Straight to Hell,” the ninth and final episode of Daredevil: Born Again season 1, saw Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) use Bullseye’s (Wilson Bethel) failed assassination attempt to deploy his Anti-Vigilante Task Force during a city-wide blackout. The mayor’s militia of rogue cops failed to kill Daredevil (Charlie Cox) but managed to capture the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), Fisk killed the Police Commissioner in a jaw-dropping (and jaw-snapping) show of force, and Fisk enacted his “Safer Streets” initiative to put New York City under Martial Law. Mayor Fisk officially outlawed vigilantes, effective immediately.

The finale ended with Fisk and his wife Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) caging the rest of the city’s elite in Red Hook Port, which the Fisks turned into a city-state using an 1855 charter that Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) had uncovered before Vanessa ordered his murder. Mayor Fisk has the cops, the courts, and an army. It seems that all hope is lost.

But a man without hope is a man without fear. Daredevil vowed to take back the city with his own army of allies like Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and good cops Cherry (Clark Johnson) and Detective Kim (Ruibo Qian). “This is our city, not his,” Daredevil said. “And we can take it back, together. The weak, the strong, all of us. Resist. Rebel. Rebuild. We’re the city without fear.”

RELATED: Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Finale Recap & Ending Explained

After being elected mayor in the Mayor Fisk storyline spanning the Charles Soule-penned Daredevil #595-#600, Fisk announced the Powers Act in 2021’s Devil’s Reign #1. The six-issue event series by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Marco Checchetto began with Mayor Fisk’s declaration: “Effective immediately, any individual who exhibits a use of powers deemed ‘superhuman’ or commits acts of destructive vigilantism will be charged as a threat.”

Mayor Fisk’s superhero ban was enforced by Thunderbolts Units, specialized officers for handling superhuman threats. In the first wave of arrests, Mayor Fisk’s Thunderbolts — a deputized U.S. Agent (John Walker), the Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich), Electro (Francine Frye), the symbiote supervillain Agony (Gemma Shin), the Shocker (Herman Schultz), and Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius) — went after street-level vigilantes like Moon Knight and Spider-Man, raided the Baxter Building to try and arrest the Fantastic Four, and publicly attacked Captain America, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage.

After the Thunderbolts arrested Reed and Susan Richards of the Fantastic Four along with Spider-Man and Tony Stark, who was mounting a run for mayor to oppose Fisk in the next election, Steve Rogers and his underground group of illegal vigilantes mobilized to oust Fisk from office. It was at this time that Harlem hero Luke Cage announced his mayoral candidacy to defeat Fisk through legitimate means.

Fisk kept Zebediah Killgrave, a.k.a. the mind-controlling Purple Man, inside a “Psycho-Prism” engineered by Doctor Octopus. Setting his sights beyond being Mayor of New York, Fisk rounded up Killgrave’s children to use their persuasion powers to brainwash the electorate into voting him back into office. With the heroes forced underground, there were concerns that Fisk’s law could lead to a federal law — like the Civil War-era Superhuman Registration Act — while Fisk’s Thunderbolts and a legion of anti-crime drones controlled a crime-free but authoritarian New York.

Fisk then used the Purple Man’s powers to remember Daredevil’s secret identity after his memories were altered by the Purple Children. He beat Murdock’s brother to death and sicced his Thunderbolts on the Avengers assembled to protect the Purple Children, then had the Purple Man mind control the city’s citizens as an army of purple-powered people. 

Fisk’s endgame was to abandon his empire and his life of crime with his wife, Typhoid Mary, but Daredevil vowed to stop the Kingpin by any means necessary. But before the Catholic Matt Murdock could kill Kingpin and damn his soul forever, Elektra convinced Daredevil to let Fisk live.

The Thunderbolts Unit arrested the ousted mayor, but this was a ploy by his crime boss son, Byron “Butch” Fisk, who had resisted inheriting the Kingpin’s criminal empire. Fisk’s secret backers who put him in office, the powerful string-pulling siblings the Stromwyns, freed Fisk so he could run for president. But Fisk refused the deal.

“A Fisk bows to no man. You don’t make deals with the Devil when you are the Devil,” Fisk told Butch, granting him his “inheritance”: the crown of Kingpin.

All episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now streaming on Disney+, and season 2 is expected to air in 2026.