The Netflix Daredevil superhero crime drama shows have been a great instigator for gritty Marvel TV-level showcases, with a good amount of violence and lawyer drama mixed in to keep the intrigue going; the titular character is a blind lawyer who is good at his job(s). It also was one of the only shows that got a Disney+ transfer in the way of a sequel, dubbed Daredevil: Born Again. The first season had mixed reviews worldwide, but at least parts of it weren’t scathed badly and still kept its dark Netflix roots.

Season 2 fixed all that, with all eight of its new episodes just focused on doing what it does best like Wolverine: dish out street vigilante pain and looking good at it.

Law And Disorder

Picking off from Season 1, lawyer-slash-title-masked-crimefighter Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and associate Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) are now continuing on the vigilantism, finding holes in Wilson Fisk/Kingpin’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) mayor regime and bringing him to justice. After all, he did create the Anti-Vigilantism task force and has them arresting innocents without due process. As New York is slowly heating up, we also have a scandal involving a newly-blown up tanker allegedly smuggling weapons through the city’s sanctioned freeport, which is clearly orchestrated by the mayor and his team.

This also brings in Kingpin’s overseeing liaison Mr. Charles (Matthew “Shaggy” Lillard), a jovial and chipper “mob enforcer” of sorts who clearly has more ties in the underworld than he lets on. Elsewhere, we have Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) who recently got out of jail and is keeping our lawyer heroes guessing whether he’s friend or foe.

That’s pretty much all I can divulge without spoiling anything, and you should really tune into this season as it delivers a lot. Escalating tensions, the duo Murdock and Page’s attempts at outsmarting mayor Fisk, seeing Fisk’s side of the story as he deals with possibly unloyal troops, and a ton of narrative-changing bits that leads to an epic payoff and conclusion.

The smartest thing the showrunners have done for Daredevil Born Again in season 2 is just resigning to the fact that viewers just want to see more Matt Murdock and Karen Page. That, and also admitting that the last Born Again season’s best episodes were the first and last two. So they just double down on that, simply put. The results are a nonstop barrage of intrigue, action, and revelations, with some turnarounds and twists that make sense given how everything in Hell’s Kitchen and the whole of New York unfolds under the current regime.

As usual, Cox and Woll’s performances and chemistry are off the charts, playing off each other really well and making you invested on whether they’ll make it out unscathed. D’Onofrio’s Fisk also hits it out of the ballpark as expected, but also plays off well with supporting casts Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Fisk, Margarita Levieva as scarred psychologist Heather Glenn, and Arty Froushan as aide Buck Cashman.

Special mention should go to Bethel’s Bullseye as there are a good number of episodes that portray him in a different light, and whether he really deserves mercy given his hand at murdering Murdock and Page’s best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) in the first season. Speaking of which, there is an episode later in the season featuring him in a flashback, and frankly Henson’s work and acting shows why we miss him so much. It also ties in well with the theme of that episode which works really well to the show’s overarching message: mercy, redemption, and the price of peace.

Amidst all the action scenes, gritty superheroics, and violence lies a heartfelt plot where two men do what it takes to bring peace to the city they’re in, with one side neither budging until everything goes to heck. Don’t act shocked that the best episodes of the season are the final two, with one of the biggest battles between the show’s main characters are appropriately in the courtroom. That’s not to say that the rest of the show is mediocre, far from it. Everything leading up to the last two episodes just kept me invested more and more due to a lot of developments that matter, particularly in Episode 5.

Know Fear

Learning from the previous season’s tonal missteps, Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again ups the ante and doubles down on the bleak-yet-kinda-optimistic tone, street-level violence, and grim setting of the overall series. In contrast, this is a more focused season where nothing lets up and with little down time. Even with a few cameos or two from the Marvel “Netflix” universe (like Kristen Ritter’s Jessica Jones/Alias, which works in the show’s favour), it still relies fully on Season 1’s overarching plot and brings it to a satisfying conclusion. And yet it still leaves a bit of room open for Season 3 with some loose ends that need tying up.

But really, Daredevil: Born Again’s second season is just damn good television, mixing in a right amount of grittiness, moral dilemmas, choices and consequences, street vigilante violence, and levity. If you felt burnt by Season 1’s middling filler episodes that go nowhere, Season 2 will remedy that and then some.

Final Score: 90/100

Early screeners provided by distributor.