Episode seven of Daredevil: Born Again, Art For Art’s Sake, delivers the kind of narrative detonation that the series has been quietly building toward since its slow-burn reintroduction. What begins as a recovery episode after the horrors of Excessive Force swiftly pivots into something darker, messier, and emotionally more fraught. If the previous episode was about thresholds crossed, this one is about consequences. It’s the blood-stained canvas left behind once the artist’s brush has moved on.
We open with Angela Ayala in hospital, bruised but defiant. Her report to the police identifies Daredevil as her rescuer and points them to Muse’s lair. The sequence is grounded in realism, but there’s a surreal weight pressing in from all sides—Angela’s certainty, the institution’s discomfort, the lingering fear that Muse might strike again. There’s no sense of closure. Just the heavy silence of what wasn’t finished.
Detective Angie Kim brings the news of Daredevil’s return directly to Fisk, and the man’s reaction is, in a word, seismic. For all his composure, Fisk is a creature of control. Daredevil represents the one element in his empire he cannot predict, cannot pacify. The fact that Muse is painting the streets red is bad enough. That Daredevil is now interfering again? That’s blasphemy.
And so, the episode takes its next turn. Muse isn’t just a madman with a vision—he’s a patient, methodical predator. His identity as Bastian Cooper is revealed not through police work, but through a therapy session with Heather Glenn. What follows is among the series' most chilling scenes: Bastian, in his calm, polite voice, thanks Glenn for helping him embrace who he really is. He is not angry. He is not afraid. He is utterly certain. That moment when Heather realises who she’s speaking to is exquisite in its tension—not played for shock, but for dread. Muse doesn’t need to scream to be terrifying. He just needs to exist.
It gets worse. Bastian knocks her unconscious. A statement. A signature. A warning. In one motion, he collapses the safety she thought she had as a therapist and as a person.
What follows is a race against time, as both the AVTF and Murdock independently trace Muse’s new fixation: Heather Glenn herself. They find her likeness immortalised in the artist’s lair—paintings, drawings, outlines of a woman already halfway into myth. It’s as if he’s trying to preserve her before he destroys her.
Murdock gets there first. As Daredevil, he doesn’t burst in like a saviour. He arrives quietly, focused. His presence doesn’t reassure. It confirms that something is truly wrong. The confrontation with Muse is brief but electric—a blur of panic, movement, desperation. But it’s not Murdock who ends it.
It’s Glenn.
In a shocking moment of power reclaimed, she pulls the trigger. Muse falls, fatally shot. Glenn collapses.
And this is where the show truly shines. It doesn’t linger on the violence, but on the aftermath. Murdock stabilises her just before the AVTF arrives. And yet, despite the truth, the optics are what matter. Fisk seizes the moment. The AVTF are publicly credited with taking down Muse. They are heroes. Daredevil is a ghost, again erased by those in power.
It would be exhausting if it weren’t so deliberate. Blake, now acting as Fisk’s fixer, corners BB, a young journalist who posted a blog noting Daredevil’s involvement. He threatens her into silence. This, more than the staged press conference, is where the rot really shows. Facts are malleable. Truth is negotiable. The message is clear: Fisk writes history now.
Meanwhile, Murdock visits Glenn in hospital. She is alive, but shaken. And she knows. She remembers hearing Daredevil say her name. It’s not a full reveal, but it’s an intimate unravelling. For Matt, this is a new kind of exposure—not physical, but emotional. His mask isn’t just slipping; it’s being recognised.
But the episode isn’t done.
In a parallel thread, Luca, bruised from his earlier failure and terrified of Viktor’s wrath, turns to Vanessa. It’s a desperate move, but also a calculated one. Vanessa, still cloaked in elegance and poise, listens. And then, she seemingly sends him to kill Fisk.
It’s a brilliant fake-out. Luca walks straight into a trap, and it’s Buck Cashman who ends him. The scene is brutal but impersonal, like swatting a fly. Vanessa watches it all from the sidelines. No emotion. No regret. She didn’t just anticipate this betrayal. She orchestrated it.
By episode’s end, the power dynamics have shifted again. Muse is dead. Glenn is broken but not destroyed. Daredevil is back, but invisible. Fisk is winning in the open, while Vanessa is manoeuvring in the shadows. The city is a theatre, and everyone’s playing their part.
What Art For Art’s Sake does so brilliantly is refuse easy answers. Muse doesn’t get a redemption arc. Glenn doesn’t get to heal in private. Murdock doesn’t get the credit. And Fisk doesn’t get challenged. Instead, we get something harder, messier, more honest: a system where power protects itself and truth dies screaming into a pillow.
And yet, there is hope.
It’s in the way Glenn shoots to survive. In the way BB wrote the truth before being silenced. In the way Murdock keeps showing up, even when no one knows. These aren’t grand victories. They’re human ones. Quiet, defiant, necessary.
We are now past the halfway point, and the series has stopped playing nice. What began as a simmer is now a boil. The violence is sharper. The lies are bigger. The heartbreak is heavier. And the story? It's never been better.
With this episode, Daredevil: Born Again has transcended its origin. It’s not just a return. It’s a reckoning.
And I can’t look away.
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