Spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Grand Design.”
Daredevil: Born Again slows down this week, but not in a bad way. Episode 5, “The Grand Design,” is the kind of breather chapter that some people will probably call slow, even though it is doing some very important work. After last week’s chaos, this episode shifts the focus back to character, grief, and the emotional fallout that is going to shape the rest of the season. It may not move the plot forward in major ways beyond one major development, but it gives the season something just as valuable: weight.
The episode picks up after the attack at Fogwell’s Gym, with Vanessa Fisk rushed into surgery while Wilson Fisk tries to keep control of the situation. At the same time, the Anti-Vigilante Task Force is hunting both Daredevil and Bullseye, which forces Matt into an uneasy and frankly shocking position. Instead of leaving Poindexter behind, Matt drags him through the city in search of safety, eventually taking him to a church before bringing him to Karen. Intercut with all of that are flashbacks that bring Foggy Nelson back into the story and also give us more of Fisk and Vanessa’s past, along with a brief but meaningful return from James Wesley. It is an episode built around memory, and that idea runs through every major scene.
For me, the best scene in the episode is easily Matt and Poindexter in the church. That moment gets to the heart of what makes Matt Murdock such a compelling character. Everything in him should want to leave Bullseye behind. This is the man who killed Foggy. This is the man who has caused nothing but pain. And yet Matt has to face the truth that Foggy would have wanted mercy. Foggy would have wanted Matt to save him. That realization hurts, and that is exactly why the scene works. It is not about Bullseye earning forgiveness. It is about Matt refusing to lose himself to grief and rage.
That is also why the flashbacks work for me. I get why some viewers might think they slow the episode down, but I thought they added a lot. They are not there just to bring back familiar faces and get a nostalgic reaction. They are there to show how both Matt and Fisk are being shaped by the people they loved most. Foggy’s presence gives Matt a moral compass even after death. Vanessa’s role in Fisk’s life reminds us that, for all his cruelty, there was one person who could still ground him. By the end of the episode, both men feel like they are standing on the edge of becoming something more dangerous.
Seeing Foggy again was genuinely nice, and James Wesley’s brief return was a smart touch too. Wesley is not in the episode long, but his presence immediately pulls the show closer to the spirit of the Netflix version. One of the smartest stylistic choices in the episode is the shift in aspect ratio between the flashbacks and the present day. It is subtle enough that not everyone will clock it right away, but it helps separate the timelines, and it adds to that feeling that the past is haunting the present. It is the kind of choice that good directors make when they trust the audience.
I also think the episode handled Vanessa and Fisk really well. After the ending of the last episode, there was a lot of uncertainty over whether Vanessa would survive. At first, it almost feels like the show might pull back from the edge and let her recover. Then there is that eerie turn where she seems present, but something feels off. By the time the machines start signaling that something is very wrong, the whole scene lands with a lot more force than I expected. The episode plays Vanessa’s final moments as a real point of no return, and I appreciated that. In a lot of MCU stories, a character like Vanessa would probably make it through. Here, the loss matters. Death matters. And that choice makes Fisk much more interesting going forward.
That leads to the biggest takeaway from the episode: this feels like the moment Kingpin becomes untethered. Vanessa was the one person who gave him some form of grounding. Without her, he is no longer just dangerous. He is unstable in a new way. The show has been building toward that, and Vincent D’Onofrio sells every second of it.
Bullseye continues to work best here as a broken wildcard. He is not redeemed, and the episode is smart enough not to pretend otherwise. He may be useful to people who want Fisk gone, but there is a real question hanging over all of that: What kind of city are you left with if Bullseye becomes your answer? Matt understands that there is a difference between stopping Fisk and giving up the moral high ground completely. That tension gives the episode a lot of its bite.
This is not a huge plot episode, but it is a very necessary one. Outside of Vanessa’s apparent death, most of what happens here is about checking in on where everyone is emotionally and mentally. That matters. The last episode hit hard because it was fast and explosive. This one works because it lets the damage settle in. You need episodes like this if you want the bigger ones to land the way they should.
I’d give this one an 8 out of 10. It is well shot, emotionally grounded, and confident enough to pause the action and let the characters breathe. Some people are going to want more forward momentum, and I get that, but I think this episode earns its slower pace. More importantly, it feels like the point where the season takes a breath before everything gets worse.
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