Matt vs. Stick – Stick, episode 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAKbtL1HyII
You know I mentioned about that whole invincibility thing with MCU heroes? Well, up until this point, Matt doesn’t lose a fight. He’s roughed up pretty badly, yeah, but he isn’t the loser. Kind of strips away the whole ‘he isn’t invincible’ thing, right? That’s until this episode when he comes across his most difficult rival so far.
If they aren’t already, origin stories are well on their way to becoming a trope in film and TV adaptations of superhero comics. The thing is, you don’t need to know the motivations behind a character’s decision from the off, it is fine if it unfolds over a period of time; correlating with what he is going on in the present day. Similar to The CW’s Arrow, Daredevil gets that. When you first meet someone, you don’t immediately know everything about them and their whole life story. Why should a character’s past be told in a linear narrative? You watch the show or the film to get to know them more, not to be told that this, that and the other happened to them when they were younger.
The arrival of Matt’s former mentor, Stick, throws him into a completely different headspace, which we hadn’t seen before. The non-linear unravelling of Matt’s history makes scenes like this so much more brutal and emotional. Old wounds are reopened as a complicated relationship resurfaces, and Matt becomes the most vulnerable he has ever been. Basically, it’s personal.
Stick is crucial to the way that Matt turned out. You can sense that before the flashback where he first meets him as a child. Their encounter in the present day, after so many years of not seeing each other, is tense and awkward, and, even without them referring to anything that happened, you know it wasn’t pretty.
When they get into a fight after Stick admits to killing Black Sky, a little kid who was being used as a weapon by Nobu, the head of Hell’s Kitchen’s Yakuza, all the gloves are off. Matt is fighting his problems out of costume, not the Man in the Mask’s. It was like he was waiting for an excuse to release all of his pent up anger and frustration and feelings of abandonment.
Originally published April 25, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
