Episode 9 of Daredevil: Born Again, titled Straight to Hell, closes out the season with a dark, feverish crescendo—less a grand finale than a sustained scream. It is both overwhelming and brutally effective, bringing every thread together with operatic intensity and a political edge that feels uncomfortably close to reality. As a capstone to this bleak, brilliant reinvention of the Daredevil mythos, it's not so much a victory lap as a warning shot.
We begin eighteen months ago. The Fisks' long game is revealed in full: Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), no longer a passive player, offers Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel) the one thing he truly wants—his old life. The price? Franklin Nelson, whose digging in Red Hook threatens to expose Vanessa's criminal enterprise. The death that shattered everything wasn’t a chaotic tragedy. It was calculated, intimate, and ordered over tea.
Back in the present, Dex escapes the chaos of the ball. Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is rushed to hospital, barely clinging to life. The lights in New York City go out. Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), now fully enthroned in his self-declared moral order, orders Buck Cashman to finish what Dex started. But Matt, ever the survivor, escapes the hospital and returns to his apartment—where Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) is waiting.
Their reunion isn’t tender. It’s necessary. And violent. The two men, both broken in their own ways, fight off AVTF officers, including Cole North, who is revealed as the one who murdered Ayala. It's a sick twist, but a fitting one—the very institution built to enforce order is riddled with rot. And Daredevil and the Punisher, avatars of rage and justice, have no choice but to stand together.
The welcome return of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) proves, as ever, that she is the soul of the piece. It was she who asked Castle to protect Matt after learning of Dex’s escape. Her reunion with them is brief, but essential. She leads Matt to Nelson's last case file. Inside, they find the real endgame: the Fisks are attempting to turn Red Hook into a city-state. A sovereign zone of control. It’s Kingpin gone full dictator.
Meanwhile, Castle leads an assault on Red Hook, but is outnumbered and brought down. Fisk, consolidating power like a mob Caesar, murders his own campaign director Gallo after she tries to betray him. He declares martial law, outlaws vigilantism, and imprisons everyone who might challenge him—Duquesne, Castle, the remnants of the resistance.
Fisk is no longer hiding. He is the state.
And yet, even here, resistance flickers. Murdock doesn’t storm the gates. He recruits. Cherry. Detective Kim. Other honest cops who haven’t been bought, bent, or broken. It’s a final note of stubborn hope in a season that has largely abandoned such things. There is no Avengers portal in the sky. There is no cavalry. There is only the street, and those who are still willing to bleed for it.
Then there’s Glenn (Margarita Levieva). Offered the role of Mental Health Commissioner, she accepts. Whether this is survival, strategy, or complicity is left dangling—a decision that stings, because it feels real. Power doesn’t corrupt all at once. Sometimes it just offers you a nicer office.
The action in Straight to Hell is brutal and grounded. The cinematography has never been more claustrophobic. Shadows swallow whole rooms. Red Hook feels like another country. And the editing plays like a pressure cooker, scenes slicing into one another without air. There's no respite. No time to grieve. Only motion. Only fight.
The politics of Born Again are laid bare in this finale. It has always been about systems: who builds them, who breaks them, and who gets crushed in between. Fisk isn’t a monster because he kills. He’s a monster because he convinces the world he’s saving it while doing so. The true horror of Born Again is that it understands how people in power erase resistance not with tanks, but with paperwork.
The mid-credits scene delivers the inevitable: Castle, bleeding and grinning, tricks a guard and begins his escape. It’s not over. It never is.
Straight to Hell doesn’t offer catharsis. It offers clarity. This isn’t the end of a hero’s journey. It’s the start of a war.
And in Hell’s Kitchen, that might be the only way it ever ends.
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