Just putting this at the top since they’re stealing our articles, but “Mania Entertain Scoop” are a bunch of hack thieves. Since they copy our work verbatim using web scraping, hopefully, this makes its way to the top of their page. Anyway, here’s the review.

Daredevil: Born Again’s third episode shifts the attention from the violence that ended last week’s episode in favour of a courtroom drama. While it is an effective and compelling drama, it also rushes to the finish line.

Most of this week’s episode focuses on Matt’s defense of Hector in court. They had a pretty solid case, until Nicky Torres, their key witness, elected to change his statement on the stand. My guess is he saw all those police officers in the courtroom and freaked out, knowing that his testimony would be a death sentence. With his defense crumbling, Matt reveals that Hector is, in fact, White Tiger. It’s a bold move and pretty surprising for Matt to reveal another vigilante’s identity without notifying him in advance. Matt was clearly empathetic towards Hector as they’re both mask-wearing vigilantes, and the parallels between the two have resulted in a bit of soul-searching for Matt, but it also feels like a massive breach of trust, so much so that the Judge even calls Matt out for his hypocrisy based on last week’s chambers discussion about Hector’s true identity.

But the gamble paid off, and the image of Hector being a crime-fighting hero who puts his own life at risk to save others didn’t track with the charges against him, and thus, he was found innocent. Not a bad day for Matt and Hector, right? Only Hector, while in his White Tiger disguise, is promptly assassinated by someone wearing a Punisher skull outfit. Now, I very much do not think Frank Castle is personally responsible for this death, nor do I think anyone is trying to frame him. We know the officers look up to Castle, probably to the point of cult-like behaviour, and have modelled their lifestyle and moral compass after the Punisher. But I’m not too convinced Castle will be a fan of such a group, especially when the narrative will likely be “Punisher kills local hero”. But it still hurts to see Hector killed so ruthlessly after being redeemed in the eyes of the law, and it shows that the writing did a good job making us care for him with so little screen time. You do have to wonder if Fisk is involved with the conspiracy, considering his monologue about the rule of law happened at the same time of the assassination that said.

I do wish that the trial with Hector had lasted a bit longer, though. It was only one episode, and it did feel like it was speedrunning to the verdict. I guess that’s a byproduct of the shorter episode count relative to the Netflix run of the show, but it’s still noticeable. I would’ve preferred to see the trial last at least two episodes, which would have given Matt more time to investigate outside of the courtroom.

Episode three of Daredevil: Born Again was a solid drama, and I think will really catapult Matt back into the world of darkness as he seeks the source of the conspiracy against Hector and Nicky. While rushed, the results were still engaging, and I’m still eager to see where this story goes.