Daredevil Born Again: The Northern Star review S2 E1
The Northern Star starts off Daredevil Born Again’s second season with an explosive series of developments leading to a wild cliffhanger.
New York is under martial law thanks to Mayor Wilson Fisk’s Street Safe Initiative. This effort is heavily enforced by Kingpin’s merciless Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Some of the rough edges of this cruel task force’s rounding up of dissidents has been polished by BB’s social media feed declaring New York is back and better than ever. The citizens interviewed are down with Fisk doing whatever it takes to keep New York City safe.
Daredevil doesn’t buy into the marketing sham. To fit into his more clandestine activities, Daredevil has a new paintjob on his outfit — it’s mostly all black save for the DD, which remains red. He’s watching another ship, The Northern Star, arrive at the free port Fisk established to allow for easy illegal shipments to and out of New York.
Using his wire to get onboard The Northern Star, Daredevil finds several weapon caches — after taking down a few of the ship’s guards. Daredevil doesn’t need to place a tracker. All he needs is a watch from one of the guards. Once he synchs up its tick, he’s got it locked in on his radar. Per his orders, The Northern Star’s captain sounds the distress call and sinks the ship. This was a terrific sequence with Daredevil fighting to hold on before slipping down into the water. No worries, Daredevil makes it to shore.
The next morning, Matt awakens to the sound of Karen training. While she’s not trying to become a vigilante, Karen has no desire to be a liability any longer. They both want to know who’s getting the weapons that were in The Northern Star, but they know someone who can track that info down. Matt tells Karen to give her a call. That sure sounds like a certain detective that’s already been revealed to be part of this season at some point… Just in case it wasn’t clear after the end of Born Again Season 1, Matt and Karen are back together as a couple.
Fisk arrives to the site of The Northern Star sticking up in the middle of the river with Daniel, Sheila and Buck in tow. He wants the story out that this was a terrorist attach orchestrated by the devil of Hell’s Kitchen. That’s still such a bada$$ nickname for Daredevil.
The list of people who knew what was on The Northern Star was Buck, Fisk, the captain and the first mate so Buck gets tasked with tracking them down. Someone in the distance was watching this conversation play out. Buck does track down the captain and coldly executes him while acknowledging he didn’t do anything wrong.
This Northern Star incident has also caught the attention of a Mr. Charles (Matthew Lillard), who hops on a plane to DC to find out what happened. He’s got enough stroke to crash a meeting with the Attorney General by having New Avengers’ organizer Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine call to halt the AG’s plans to hold Fisk accountable for The Northern Star fiasco. The weapons were for the boys in Langley and Charles wants to make sure his employers get the weapons they purchased.
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Matt has other plans for the guns. He envisions exposing that Fisk is running guns and hopes that will be enough to hold Fisk accountable. Speaking of holding, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton) aka The Swordsman has been in Fisk’s secret detention site for months.
Now he’s going through a facade of a clinical evaluation conducted by Dr. Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), who’s also Matt’s ex-girlfriend. Heather defends the Safer Streets Act, which feels eerily topical and ironic since shock troops “enforcing the law” in the real world wasn’t a thing when Born Again Season 1 was released.
Heather is not in a great head space as she’s having visions of Muse, the psychopath who tried to kill her last season. Maybe that’s why she goes along with Fisk’s bought and paid for DA Hochberg (John Benjamin Hickey), who wants her take on Duquesne to make him appear more unsavory to the judges.
To counter the Fisk propaganda BB Report, another series of videos with someone wearing a caricature Fisk mask and suit to hide their identity mocks his policies and shows the truth of what the Safer Streets Act is really all about. For Matt and Karen, the act means they have to stay in the shadows in disguises. Karen’s red wig is a much better one than Matt’s (checks notes) complex change-up of wearing a hoodie.
Their status could also implicate those closest to them. Karen warns BB (Genneya Walton) not to get in too deep with Fisk, so she doesn’t end up dead like her uncle. Matt can’t return to his attorney firm with his partner, Kirsten (Nikki M. James), since Fisk knows he’s Daredevil. Kirsten is tirelessly working against the SSA though she’s not having much success. At least Matt can meet in secret with former police officer Cherry (Clark Johnson).
The head of the AVTF, Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), sends some of his crew to take care of Cherry. Further complicating things, he’s on the verge of a heart attack. Good thing Daredevil swings in for the save. Daredevil is a savage fighter who uses his skill in tossing his baton, ninja-like fighting skills and intensity to beat down the AVTF but gets distracted hearing Jerry’s heartbeat get worse.
That’s all the opening the task force needs to dogpile him and actually manage to unmask him. That is a significant moment for Northern Star as it shows Daredevil is not some unbeatable hero — regular guys can beat him with a slight assist creating doubt that Daredevil will win every fight throughout the rest of the season.
In this instance, it doesn’t matter as the task force crew quickly gets killed. Daredevil isn’t sure what happened until a knife gets thrown in front of him with a message “You’re welcome.” Bullseye just saved Daredevil’s life. Matt clearly doesn’t want to dance with that devil.
The Northern Star immediately signals that Born Again Season 2 isn’t going to let down viewers who have been eagerly awaiting this second installment.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: Disney
After watching The Northern Star, check out the Daredevil Born Again Premium Collection trade paperback on Amazon.
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