Daredevil is Television’s Bloodiest, and Best, Show About Faith

Daredevil is Television’s Bloodiest, and Best, Show About Faith November 26, 2018

Vincent D’Onofrio in Daredevil, screenshot courtesy Netflix

Enter Wilson Fisk, alias Kingpin and Daredevil’s arch-enemy.

Fisk, in the capable hands of actor Vincent D’Onofrio, becomes a complex and sometimes even conflicted character, driven in part by the love he has for his main squeeze Vanessa. But mostly he’s just plain ol’ evil—the real devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

That’s not much of an exaggeration. The word Satan literally means “adversary,” and he’s indeed that to Daredevil. Lucifer means “light bringer,” and that’s what Fisk—dressed often in a shimmering suit of white—says he wants to be a light for the people of New York. He’s lying, of course, as the father of lies would. And like a Faustian Mephistopheles, he tempts people with what they need or want or value most—an apple infected with a poisoned worm.

He’d rather corrupt people than kill them: He’d rather claim their very souls. And boy, is he good at it.

Even in prison, Fisk is a maestro at manipulation. He becomes an informant for the FBI, then orchestrates his own shanking, convincing Agent Ray Nadeem that he’d be safer under house arrest. Nadeem thinks that Fisk’s working for him: It’s only midway through the season that Nadeem realizes that he’s been working for Fisk. In fact, half the Bureau’s under his thumb.

But Fisk saves his finest work for poor Agent Poindexter.

Dex has never been exactly stable. But through years of counseling as a child and decades of rigid life control, the agent has made a nice life for himself. But when a band of criminals ambushes Fisk’s convoy to his new “jail” (a sweet penthouse in a building that Fisk himself owns), Fisk watches Dex take down the assailants with deft brutality, and Fisk knows he has someone he can use. He slowly, tragically, rips Dex’s ethical foundations away—the foundations he spent a lifetime building—bringing him back to a state of unfettered, lethal psychosis. Dex becomes Fisk’s lackey in body, mind and spirit. And when Dex puts on Matt Murdock’s Daredevil costume, he becomes what he appears to be: a demon.


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