Ron Does Stuff

It’s the season finale! I don’t think I need to say a lot so let’s just get into it!

At the end of the last episode, I got the surprise of my life when it turned out that Bullseye wasn’t targeting Vanessa but Fisk. And then Matt jumped to take the bullet for Fisk, which just shocked me even more.

We don’t immediately get the aftermath of Matt’s shooting at the start of the episode. Instead, we’re taken back a year ago, when Vanessa did the legwork to get him released. Of course, the release had conditions attached — the death of a thief named Benjamin Cafaro and Benjamin’s lawyer, Foggy. Bullseye looks like he’s in a psychiatric hospital and I think I really should make time to watch the third season of Daredevil.

After the opening credits, we’re taken back to the present and it looks like Matt survived the shooting! And immediately crushes his current girlfriend’s heart by calling out for Karen first. Damn. He then wants his law firm partner to look into the case Foggy was working on and this really does spell the end of his relationship with his current girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Vanessa and Fisk’s relationship is stronger than ever. Fisk recognizes the business knowhow it required for Vanessa to move millions through Red Hook and now that he’s the mayor, they can move billions. And once again I know this was made before the possibility of a Trump presidency, but it still looks pretty applicable to the current American government.

And Fisk is definitely using the attempt on his life to bring about fascism to New York City, letting his thugs run riot and plotting to use Matt’s ~possible~ death as a way to further entrench his authoritarian rule. His political advisor can’t deny it anymore and the chief of police knows it too. He tells her that she’s going to “go up the ladder” and maybe take it all the way to the Supreme Court and it’s crazy how Trump just ignored a Supreme Court order in the real world. Truth is really stranger and more terrifying than fiction.

Elsewhere in New York, Fisk’s right-hand man is in the hospital where Matt is confined and is all set to kill him. There’s a blackout that he seems to have expected, but what he didn’t expect is Matt knowing he’s coming and escaping from the hospital.

The blackout affects the entirety of Manhattan — I think? I’m not an American — so Matt comes home to a dark house but he already knows that Frank is in it. Hey, Frank, how you doin’?

But Frank isn’t there for no reason — he’s apparently gotten a phone call and he made a promise to the caller that he would get Matt out of New York City alive. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that Karen was the one who made that call. Whoever it was, the person made the right call because Fisk’s militia is on the way up to Matt’s house to kill him. What they didn’t count on is that the actual Punisher would be in the house with Matt, and I love that in this universe Punisher has so much contempt for his “fanboys”. And if that contempt wasn’t clear enough, he puts multiple bullets through one of them.

Daredevil and the Punisher make easy work of the corrupt cops, but they get into an expected argument of how far do they go in the name of justice. If you need to be told who’s taking what side, then you have even less knowledge of comic books than I do. The argument is cut short by a grenade thrown into Matt’s home but they’re able to escape…with Karen even arriving with a car to get them out of there.

The three of them are in Frank’s hideaway and are they going to turn this into a love triangle? Either way, Matt tells Karen that Vanessa put the hit on Foggy and the two of them head off to find the paperwork that will probably implicate her and maybe even Fisk. But before they leave, there’s this tension-filled moment between Frank and Karen and as much as I hate emotionally-stunted men in real life I do love it in my fiction.

Back at City Hall — I think it’s City Hall — Daniel threatens the City Council. It doesn’t help the City Council that they’re corrupt as well, because Fisk holds that above their heads so they can’t do anything now but do his bidding. And Daniel is maybe going to play a bigger role in the show in the next season.

Outside City Hall, there’s chaos in the streets and BB Urich is covering it. The cops are also using Fisk’s kill all masked vigilantes to indiscriminately kill people, even teenagers, and boy does that sound like the Philippines during the Duterte regime.

Over at a storage unit with Foggy’s legal documents, Matt and Karen talk about the potential Matt-Karen-Frank love triangle. I mean, Karen’s not a whore like me but why not both? Why not both?

Anyways, they find the motion Foggy filed and I don’t fully understand the legalities of it but apparently Red Hook is a free port, which makes it exempt from the jurisdiction of the city and the country and exempt from customs and tax. She can launder money legally, according to Matt. I don’t think Red Hook actually exists in New York so I’m guessing this is kinda like Madripoor then?

While Matt and Karen decide to find out what it is the Fisks are hiding in Red Hook, Frank is way ahead of them and is already killing people at the port. I don’t know what Frank’s plan was but he eventually gets outnumbered and is apprehended by the police in Red Hook. And Frank isn’t the only one having a bad night because it looks like Fisk’s political advisor ratted out the chief of police to him.

The police goons don’t kill Frank because they want him to join them. They’re fans! They think that it’s cool to be outside of the law like the Punisher is. Frank thinks they’re clowns, righfully so, so they start beating up on him again. And over at…Red Hook, I assume, Fisk crushes? dislocates? the police commissioner’s jaw. Jesus Christ.

Matt and Karen arrive at Red Hook but Karen rightfully convinces Matt that he can’t take on the entirety of Fisk’s thugs all by himself. They need to regroup and Matt says they’re going to need an army, which I am taking as a tease that there is going to be a team-up coming in the second season. Are we going to see a Defenders reunion?

While Matt and Karen regroup, Fisk’s declares martial law and boy does this echo what’s happened here in my country. A period of lawlessness used as justification for martial law? That’s the Marcos playbook.

So where are we at the end of this season? The Fisks have consolidated their power, but Matt isn’t giving up. I love the speech that he gives about the people being the city and that they are the ones that hold the power. Just like Josh Johnson points out in his excellent comedy specials, the thing we can do to fight these people in power, the thing we can do to survive, is to build community.

Now that it’s all said and done, I don’t think this first season was as impactful as the first season of the Netflix Daredevil, but I do like the overall story told and how it all came together in this final episode. I’m definitely going to watch the second season!

We also get a post-credits scene where Frank — he’s still alive but kept imprisoned along with some of the city’s elite — easily fools one of the police guarding him. I guess a Punisher series is going to happen next!