Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Finale Recreates Marvel & Netflix's Best Fight Scene (With A Twist)

This article contains spoilers for "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 2, Episode 8, "The Southern Cross." 

After some initial reluctance from Marvel bigwigs, the one-take hallway fight in "Daredevil" Season 1, Episode 2, "Cut Man," became one of the show's most praised scenes — so much so, it inspired a once-per-season tradition of a one-take action scene. The staging and set pieces got more ambitious, but each one showed Daredevil (Charlie Cox) beating on a stream of enemies to show his brutality and his stubborn ability to get back up after being knocked down. 

In "Daredevil" Season 2, Episode 3, "New York's Finest," Daredevil marches down a stairwell corridor, beating on the Dogs of Hell biker gang. "Daredevil" Season 3, Episode 4, "Blindsided," got even more ambitious, with an over 10-minute single-take of Matt Murdock fighting his way through a prison riot that is widely considered some of the best Marvel action ever.

"Daredevil: Born Again" opened by continuing this tradition in the very first episode, while Season 2 had a briefer one-take in Episode 3, "The Scales & the Sword," when Matt freed one of Mayor Wilson Fisk's (Vincent D'Onofrio) prison camps. But the Season 2 finale flips the tradition on its head. 

After five seasons of action scenes where Daredevil fights numerous enemies in confined spaces, the Kingpin gets the chance to do so in this finale. A mob of New Yorkers rise up and charge the New York State Supreme Court Building where Fisk has barricaded himself. Rather than cowering, Fisk charges out to meet the mob, charging through and bashing several heads in. 

This one is not edited like a oner, though, and for good reason: The scene crosscuts between Fisk brutalizing the mob and scenes of Daredevil and Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) fighting through Fisk's private army of corrupt cops.

Wilson Fisk charging through the mob especially resembles the "Daredevil" Season 3 fight; he's not just in a single hallway or stairwell filled with enemies, the entire building is swarming with people who want a piece of him. As cool as the action scene is in concept, though, it does undermine some of the episode's narrative.

"Daredevil: Born Again" Season 2 ends with Fisk resigning as NYC mayor, taking a plea deal to avoid prosecution as long as he leaves New York City. Matt Murdock, ever the martyr, publicly reveals his secret identity as Daredevil to expose Fisk's crimes and accepts a prison sentence himself. This, too, puts the nemeses in reversals of fortune; the last shot of Matt sitting in a prison cell this episode echoes the "Daredevil" Season 1 finale, when Fisk sat alone and locked up.

Except, it's hard to accept Fisk getting off that easily when he murdered several crowd members with plenty of witnesses. The first person Fisk punches gets sent flying and slams headfirst into the wall on the other side of the hallway; there's even a close-up of his dead eyes looking into the camera. By the time he makes it to the building's lobby, Fisk's white suit is covered with blood. The Kingpin of Crime showed his true face with greater publicity than ever before, and got off with his lightest sentence yet. The "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 2 finale and its politically-charged depiction of a riot has gotten dinged for having a reach that exceeded its grasp, and Fisk's fate is one reason why.

"Daredevil: Born Again" is streaming on Disney+.