Luke Owen reviews the eighth episode of Daredevil…
We’ve seen Matt as a child and we’ve seen how and why he became the Man Without Fear, but now it’s time for us to see just why Wilson Fisk is the way he is. It’s time to visit Fisk’s childhood.
There is an argument (a rather solid one at that) which says you should never learn too much about the motivation of your psychotic killer as he may start to become sympathetic. This argument is perfectly demonstrated when you compare John Carpenter’s Halloween to the Rob Zombie remake. In one version Michael Myers is a faceless killer that can’t be stopped, and in the other he’s a crybaby who is only bad because everyone around his was the worst of humanity. In the case of Wilson Fisk, we’re getting a more complex version of the character this time around who is being ruled by his emotions and love of Vanessa – so it actually makes sense to dive into his background and find out how he became The Kingpin.
Turns it out it’s the rather clichéd story of a boy being tormented by his alcoholic and abusive father and he did what he had to in order to protect him mother. Seen it all before? Of course. This isn’t exactly Daredevil at it’s most creative, but it somehow works for everything that ties into Fisk’s character. He doesn’t want to be thought of like his father, but he wants the same things he did. Both men wanted to change Hell’s Kitchen for the better, and both have very short fuses. Whatever Fisk thinks of his father (and we have heard how little he thinks of him), the two are not too dissimilar. It also raises the age old question of nature vs. nurture as we see Fisk is a good enough kid, but the violence he turns too in the wake of his father’s upbringing has made him the monster he is today.
And… the actions he takes against his father… pretty harrowing stuff. Shot beautifully and perfectly performed. Tremendous stuff.
This is all really set up as a backdrop to further move along the storyline between Fisk and Vanessa. In the opening moments of the episode, we see Fisk’s daily morning routine, closing with how he sees himself in the mirror (a scared little boy covered in blood). But by the end of the episode, with Vanessa fully integrating herself into his lifestyle, he has grown into a proper man. A man who is ready to take charge and no longer live in the shadow of his father (or his corpse for that matter). All of which leads to the most shocking moment of the episode, but we’ll come on to that shortly.
In other news, the corrupt cop Hoffman is forced by Kingpin to kill his partner Blake, who is near death in the hospital. It’s one of those contained storylines that seems pretty simple and clichéd, but works so well in the context of the series. And on the other side of town, Daredevil reveals himself to Ben Urich and the two team up to share information on Fisk, attempting to prove that he’s not the bad guy the media are painting him out to be. We also get our first appearance of Melvin Potter, who Daredevil fans will know as villain-turned-friend The Gladiator. With the amount of characters already set up in this series and a lack of ‘monster of the week’ writing, it’s unlikely we’ll see Melvin in full Gladiator mode.
But “Shadows in the Glass” is really the story of Wilson Fisk. We see his empire slowly fall around him with Leland Owlsly kicking off at his actions and Madam Gau essentially telling him off in a motherly fashion for his behaviour, but it all comes back around for him in the end. We also see more of the actually beautiful friendship between Fisk and Wesley and we even get an answer as to why Fisk wanted to buy the Rabbit in a Snowstorm paining seen back at the end of episode three. It’s a Fisk-heavy episode, but it was the story we needed at this point of the series.
So Fisk has now put himself into the public eye and is back on top again. He plans for a better tomorrow here in Hell’s Kitchen – and everyone is buying into it. It’s not going well for the Man Without Fear and his cohorts at the moment…
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
