Daredevil, Punishment and Pain: An Elegy for Foggy Nelson

[Warning: This article contains Daredevil: Born Again episode 1 spoilers.] “They say you don’t hear the bullet that gets you,” Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) lectured the masked Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) in the “New York’s Finest” episode of Daredevil. Dubbed the Punisher and Daredevil in the media, the warring vigilantes clashed — first physically and then philosophically — on the rooftops above Hell’s Kitchen.

The neighborhood became a simmering powder keg of gang and vigilante violence after the law firm Nelson and Murdock put away Kingpin Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), who was apprehended by Daredevil while trying to flee justice.

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Castle challenged Daredevil’s brand of blind justice, choosing instead to dole out heavy firepower punishment as judge, jury, and executioner. He then imparted another lesson: “You know what I think of you, hero? I think you’re a half-measure. I think you’re a man who can’t finish the job. I think that you’re a coward. You know the one thing that you just can’t see? You know you’re one bad day away from being me.”

Matt’s morality and Murdock’s Catholic guilt over his propensity for violence were called into question by the gun-toting vigilante, who insisted that the Punisher and Daredevil are the same. “Only I do the one thing that you can’t,” Castle said. “You hit ’em, and they get back up. I hit ’em, and they stay down.”

It’s a lesson that would come back to haunt Matt in Daredevil: Born Again. Marvel Studios’ revival of the Netflix series opened with Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) — the expert marksman and assassin also known as Bullseye — gunning for Matt’s best friends, Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), outside their hangout at Josie’s Bar in Hell’s Kitchen.

According to Castle, it was inevitable that Daredevil’s “half-measure” would result in Dex getting back up despite being put away in season 3.

In another instance of foresight, Castle predicted that Daredevil was one bad day away from pulling the trigger — figuratively, if not literally — on becoming a murderer. It was a line that Daredevil almost crossed when a wrathful Matt pushed Dex off a roof as revenge for shooting and killing Foggy. It’s only by the grace of God (and Dex’s Cogmium steel-reinforced skeleton) that Bullseye survived Daredevil violating his no-kill code.

You don’t hear the bullet that gets you, but Matt heard the bullet that got Foggy: BANG! Matt’s heightened senses listened to Foggy’s fading heartbeat as he died in Karen’s arms, and Daredevil died alongside him: Matt hung up his horn-headed cowl, and the law firm Nelson, Murdock & Page was shuttered as tragedy drove Matt and Karen apart.

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Daredevil‘s season 2 premiere — titled “Bang,” named after the single word that Punisher said when he shot Daredevil in the head during their first encounter — is a further twist of the knife in retrospect.

In a tender moment during the otherwise intense season opener, Foggy excused himself from the pool table at Josie’s Bar, leaving a flirtatious Matt and Karen alone. “This place brings out something special in Foggy,” Matt told Karen. “It’s the company. He likes it when it’s the three of us. If it were up to him, we’d be doing this the rest of our lives.”

New episodes of Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again air Tuesday nights on Disney+.