Two new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiered on Disney+ last night and the contrast between the two of them most tellingly shows the difference between the show as it was originally filmed and the show as it was retooled. Episode five feels like it fits with the bulk of Marvel Disney+ content while episode six feels much closer in tone to the Daredevil Netflix series. You can as plainly see the reason for the retooling as episode six is far and away the superior of the two. But I found episode five's echos of Disney+'s previous Marvel content to be unexpectedly depressing. I imagined what could have been if that streaming universe had been of higher quality.
The big surprise of episode five was the appearance of Kamala Khan's father, Yusuf (Mohan Kapur), at his job as an assistant bank manager to whom Matt Murdoch applies for a loan. I hated the way he was written in this episode, basically as a bumbling, Nigel Bruce Dr. Watson type, who, lest anyone not recognise him, dropped one explicit reference after another to his superheroine daughter. I remember I actually liked the first few episodes of Ms. Marvel and I wished I could've been happy to see this connexion between the two shows. There's another reason, too, I was disappointed to be disappointed. Since watching Ms. Marvel, I had a thirteen year old student at one of the schools I work at in Japan who was from Pakistan and she told me how much she liked Ms. Marvel. Sure, I would argue against the idea that people need to see people of their own nationality on screen in order to appreciate a story but, on the other hand, I thought it was nice for this girl, who's so culturally isolated going to a Japanese school, to be able to enjoy a glitzy Marvel series depicting a culture not so unlike her own, and maybe a girl with whom she could closely identify. I feel like Disney/Marvel really let her down.
And, of course, the episode is a ghost of pre-Trump America, when mainstream content was, if awkwardly and ham-fistedly, giving us content promoting cultural and sexual diversity. I never felt so sorry that it didn't go according to plan. I found myself longing for a world in which The Marvels had been a good movie.
But, yes, episode six of Daredevil: Born Again was a lot better. It had good action scenes and good character moments for both Matt and Wilson. Wilson assembling his anti-vigilante squad was another moment that eerily resembled the reality of the new Trump administration, as did Wilson's meeting with the old, moneyed elites (with a nice cameo by the Swordsman).
Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.
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