WARNING – This article contains spoilers from Daredevil season 2. Read at your own risk.
If there is one thing we’ve learned from the second season of Daredevil, it’s that the man without fear doesn’t ever get a break, and we can always expect to be surprised.
At the end of the first season, we saw Daredevil (Charlie Cox) defeat the man who had been plaguing Hell’s Kitchen all season, Wilson Fisk (Wilson D’Onofrio). I mean, there were other villains too, but the Kingpin was perhaps the hardest to take down. One of the final scenes from season 1 showed Fisk behind bars, and it was a very satisfying sight.
But this year, instead of an entire season, it only takes 3 episodes before we see The Punisher apprehended. This seemed rather anticlimactic, but season 2 is a non-stop adrenaline rush. In fact, the series had so much content to promote for the second season that it had to release the first trailer in 2 parts.
But at the end of episode 8, we see The Punisher behind bars. As the prison guards lead him down a long hallway and we see someone turning off all the security cameras, it doesn’t look good for Frank Castle. Then he comes face to face with someone we didn’t expect to see: Wilson Fisk.
What?
The return of the Kingpin in the second season was a very well kept secret. In case any observant viewers might notice the actor’s name in the opening credits, they waited until the end credits to list D’Onofrio as a special guest star. How clever.
All the promos for Daredevil season 2 prepared us for new villains. The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and the mysterious group of assassins, The Hand, were promoted as Daredevil’s new adversaries. Matt Murdock also gained a new (unwanted) ally this season when Elektra (Elodie Yung) sauntered back into his life. Nothing in the months and weeks leading up to Dardevil season 2 indicated that we would see any more of Wilson Fisk. It makes sense that we would see him again at some point, but we were cleverly misled to think Daredevil would have his hands full with a psychotic ex-girlfriend, a sociopath war hero, and a mysterious league of ninjas.
It is a lot to fit into only 13 episodes, but it’s one heck of a ride. And in addition to all the craziness Matt Murdock/Daredevil has to deal with, there are several references to the other Defenders such as a Jessica Jones name-drop by Marci Stahl (Amy Rutberg) and Claire Temple’s (Rosario Dawson) reference to working with Luke Cage.