Daredevil: Born Again Proves It's Not The Kingpin Who Rules New York City

Spoilers for "Daredevil: Born Again" follow.

On "Daredevil: Born Again," Wilson Fisk has traded in the Kingpin's criminal empire for Gracie Mansion. He protests that as mayor he's trying to change himself, and New York City, for the better but you'd be a fool to not be suspicious of him.

Just like "Born Again" is about Matt trying not to be Daredevil (and failing since the episode of 2), it's also about Fisk facing new challenges in the field of politics. The rub is that, despite his new legitimacy (running a city of 8 million people), Fisk has less power now as mayor than he did as the Kingpin.

As a public servant, he's accountable to voters, other lawmakers, and rules in place that he's supposed to follow. As Fisk's aide Sheila Rivera (Zabryna Guevara) explained to him, he can't just unilaterally decide to renovate the Red Hook Pier, he has to go through the city council and bureaucrats first. Now in episode 6, he's met the challenge that any politician promising change brushes up against: big money.

Fisk has little patience for the politicking part of being mayor, from shaking hands with labor leaders to sitting and smiling at schoolchildren's (terrible) singing. But at the beginning of episode 6 he's attending a fundraiser catered to New York's elite. 

As his wife Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) says, the fundraiser isn't really because Fisk needs the money for campaigning. The donors want him to take their money as proof he'll play ball and kiss their rings.

The rich faces Fisk talks to, including Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), find his reform efforts amusing and warn him if he steps out of their line, he'll lose his office. Mayor Fisk may have devoted supporters like Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini), but voters' voices always get drowned by the people who have money, influence, and the friendship or loyalty of other powerful people.

No-one gets elected to high office on their own. Think of this quote from "Mad Men," delivered by Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) — "New York City is a marvelous machine filled ... [with] gears and springs, like a fine watch wound tight." The current political order didn't just snap into being, it has been built through the conflict of jockeying interest groups. Reform will always mean alienating someone who benefits from the way things are.

Those who support politicians, whether with votes, volunteering, or donations always do so with an unspoken quid pro quo. In the neo-Gilded Age we're living in, it's obscenely rich individuals who hold almost all levers of political power. Americans often make the mistake of ascribing individual will or corruption to politicians, when it's more useful to think of them as a class: capitalists' middle managers. Politicians benefit from the current system as much as their benefactors do, so why would they legislate against it? That's more abstract, and harder to accept, than individual bad actors taking briefcases full of money and lobbyists' voting wishlists, but it is how it really works.

But Fisk has no patience for any of that. He came up in the criminal world, working outside the system he's now running. Whenever someone challenged him, he'd slam their head with a car door until it was mush. He's still thinking like a Kingpin, so he won't kowtow to the kings of New York.

"Born Again" is mostly taking after two "Daredevil" comic runs: Charles Soule's 2015-2018 run, and Chip Zdarsky's subsequent 2019-2023 run. Both of these are where the "Mayor Fisk" story comes from, but it's not only the premise of the Kingpin becoming NYC mayor that the show is adapting.

The way "Daredevil: Born Again" has been mirroring Matt and Fisk (sometimes "Heat" style) recalls how Zdarsky did so, too. That run, and now "Born Again," are both about the two nemeses trying to leave behind their old selves: Matt quitting being Daredevil and Fisk quitting being the Kingpin. As I once wrote over at IGN, the dichotomy of Daredevil and Kingpin both making futile attempts to escape those identities is the heart of Zdarsky's "Daredevil" story (he collectively calls it "To Heaven Through Hell").

In Zdarsky's "Daredevil," Fisk's main scheme as mayor wasn't revitalizing a port, it was pushing through marijuana legalization. He'd bought up plenty of farmland for growing marijuana plants, so making the substance legal would net him an ever-growing (and legit-ish) fortune. Mayor Fisk taking something that used to be illegal, and legitimizing it, represents his whole political career in a nutshell.

But then, in "Daredevil" #12, Fisk scores an invite to the home of billionaire siblings Quinn and Una Stromwyn. He'll need their support and money for his mayoralty to be a success. At their house, the Stromwyns and their friends barely humor Fisk. He wants to be one of New York's elite, but those elites won't let him be more than the Kingpin. When one of the Stromwyn's friends is alone with Fisk, he impulsively beats the man to death. Fisk then has to hide the body in a bathroom and call in his right hand Wesley for a quick clean up — exactly what a criminal would do.

This event put Fisk totally under the Stromwyns' thumb. In "Born Again," though, Fisk looks like he's got more of a fight in him. Using the threat of the masked serial killer Muse, Fisk assembles an anti-vigilante task force of dirty, Punisher-worshipping cops who report directly to him. He rallies his new troops by telling them they've been unfairly attacked, just like he has.

Wilson Fisk's gain, though, is very likely to be New York's loss — even for the city's most comfortable. Money makes the world go round, but bullets shred it as easy as they do any other paper.

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