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<\/a>The third season of Netflix\u2019s Daredevil<\/em> begins with a black baptism.<\/p>\n Its first few seconds give us a broiling mass of fire and water, the aftermath of last year\u2019s Defenders finale. In that finale Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil, helped once again to save New York (with a little help from his friends), but everyone thought he died in the process. He and villain\/hero\/girlfriend Electra were buried underneath a mountain of rubble, and surely both were dead and gone.<\/p>\n Not so fast: Matt falls through the hellish soup, and is finally flushed out of the wreckage, practically but not-quite dead. Not yet.<\/p>\n It sets the table for season three beautifully. Beating people to a bloody pulp is secondary this time \u2018round: This time, it\u2019s all about the soul.<\/p>\n Granted, Netflix\u2019s Daredevil<\/em> has always been one of television\u2019s most spiritual programs. It goes with the character. Daredevil has long been Catholic in the Marvel universe, and the whole Netflix series opened with Matt giving confession to Father Lantom, one of his closest confidantes and spiritual advisors. Writes Slate\u2019s <\/em>Charles Moss<\/a>: \u201cMurdock\u2019s real superpower, and also his biggest foe, is his Catholicism.\u201d<\/p>\n And boy, is that true in season three: In fact, he spends more time fighting his faith here than Wilson Fisk.<\/p>\n We know that Matt\u2019s spirituality is going to be severely tested from the outset (in an episode titled, by the way, \u201cResurrection\u201d). That dark baptism of fire and water.<\/p>\n Baptism\u2019s the most important rite in Christianity. In some traditions (like the Catholic one that Matt is a part of), it\u2019s usually done when adherents are still babies, where some holy water is poured on the infant\u2019s head. In others\u2014like the one I was baptized in\u2014it\u2019s a bit more dramatic. You step into a body of water, be it a river or a swimming pool or a specially built baptismal, and you\u2019re fully submerged. Either way, baptism is chock full of symbolism: When we\u2019re submerged, we symbolically \u201cdie\u201d to our old life and old ways, and when we pop out of the water, we\u2019re \u201cborn again,\u201d in the lingo of my Baptist forebears.<\/p>\n Matt\u2019s opening-episode baptism takes a bleaker turn, though. As he falls through the water to the camera, he takes on a Christ-like pose (altogether fitting for his sacrificial act in the Defenders), but he\u2019s upside-down<\/em>, and anyone who has watched a supernatural horror flick lately knows that\u2019s never a good sign. The water is filled with explosions and lava-like remnants of building\u2014looking more like a flaming lake from Revelations than the river Jordan.<\/p>\n He pops out of that miasma alive, and he indeed comes out a different man\u2014but a lesser one, not greater. The blind superhero complains that his superhuman ability to hear and sense things is gone now: For the first time in a long time, he feels truly blind.<\/p>\n I find it really interesting that, in the first couple of episodes, he says that he feels as though he\u2019s \u201cunder water.\u201d It\u2019s as if he never popped out of the baptism\u2019s metaphorical death into new life. Part of him is dead.<\/p>\n But Matt\u2019s experience did change him. He did die, in a way\u2014to good old Matt Murdock. He pushes away from his friends, turns his back on the faith that supported him for so many years. When he talks to Sister Maggie Grace, the no-nonsense nun who helped raise him as an orphan, Matt compares himself to Job, God\u2019s long-suffering, mistreated servant. But he\u2019s different than Job, because he\u2019s ready to curse God.<\/p>\n \u201cI gave my seat and blood and skin without complaint,\u201d he tells Sister Maggie, \u201cbecause I too believed I was God\u2019s soldier. Well, not anymore. I am what I do in the dark now. I bleed only for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s critical: When Matt fought for God, he swore to never take a life\u2014a critical tenant for who he was and why he was a hero. This season, he\u2019s ready to set that aside. [Caution: several spoilers for the show to follow<\/em>.]\n<\/p> <\/p>\n Enter Wilson Fisk, alias Kingpin and Daredevil\u2019s arch-enemy.<\/p>\n Fisk, in the capable hands of actor Vincent D\u2019Onofrio, becomes a complex and sometimes even conflicted character, driven in part by the love he has for his main squeeze Vanessa. But mostly he\u2019s just plain ol\u2019 evil\u2014the real<\/em> devil of Hell\u2019s Kitchen.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not much of an exaggeration. The word Satan literally means \u201cadversary,\u201d and he\u2019s indeed that to Daredevil. Lucifer means \u201clight bringer,\u201d and that\u2019s what Fisk\u2014dressed often in a shimmering suit of white\u2014says he wants to be a light for the people of New York. He\u2019s 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\u2014an apple infected with a poisoned worm.<\/p>\n He\u2019d rather corrupt people than kill them: He\u2019d rather claim their very souls. And boy, is he good at it.<\/p>\n 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\u2019d be safer under house arrest. Nadeem thinks that Fisk\u2019s working for him: It\u2019s only midway through the season that Nadeem realizes that he\u2019s been working for Fisk. In fact, half the Bureau\u2019s under his thumb.<\/p>\n But Fisk saves his finest work for poor Agent Poindexter.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s convoy to his new \u201cjail\u201d (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\u2019s ethical foundations away\u2014the foundations he spent a lifetime building\u2014bringing him back to a state of unfettered, lethal psychosis. Dex becomes Fisk\u2019s lackey in body, mind and spirit. And when Dex puts on Matt Murdock\u2019s Daredevil costume, he becomes what he appears to be: a demon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps the most resonantly spiritual conversation in this incredibly spiritual season takes place in \u201cKaren,\u201d in a church. Karen Paige, intrepid journalist and Matt\u2019s on-again, off-again girlfriend, is dealing with demons of her own: Wilson Fisk wants her dead, and Dex is determined to be the guy to do it. She suffers from long-festering guilt, too, of how her brother died.<\/p>\n As she waits in the basement of a Catholic church, trusting that it will help her find some sanctuary from Fisk somewhere, she has a conversation with Father Lantom, Matt\u2019s longtime friend. Lantom, too, is hurting: Matt now blames Lantom for his whole stormy, tortured childhood, which became his tortured adulthood. The priest uses his own personal pain as a teaching moment for Karen\u2014an illustration of being able to pick up, move on and have hope even in the worst of moments.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a choice of evils,\u201d he says. \u201cHe blames me for the ones I chose, for how his life turned out. I can\u2019t argue with him. I just have to find a way to live with that.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen wipes away a tear. \u201cYeah, but how do you live with that? Knowing that you hurt someone like that?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever it is that you\u2019ve done, or haven\u2019t done, it can still be redeemed,\u201d Lantom tells her.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, that\u2019s nice, but I\u2019m not that sure that I believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEverything will be OK in the end. If it\u2019s not OK, it\u2019s not the end,\u201d Lantom says. \u201cJohn Lennon said that. Who are we to argue with a Beatle?\u201d<\/p>\n Before the episode ends, Dex\u2014dressed as Daredevil\u2014walks into the Church to kill Karen. Father Lantom stands before the faithful, offering a homily in a sanctuary bathed in red. And as Dex unleashes what he assumes will be a killing blow to Karen, Lantom steps in front of Karen, saving her. Sacrificing himself for her. It may be the most critical moment of the season, even though Daredevil isn\u2019t involved at all.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>