“The Ones We Leave Behind” begins with Karen tossing the gun she used to kill Wesley into the river, because she does not f*** around. She goes home, takes a drink of “forget I just murdered a dude” potion,
Available at liquor stores everywhere.
and goes to sleep to have some messed up dreams about Fisk getting his revenge for Wesley’s death. And seriously, she has no idea just how accurate those dreams really are. Those two were tight.
Unable to sleep, she heads to the office, where Foggy scares the bejeezus out of her by accident.
“Btw I finally took the hint. Marci and I are very happy together. You seem jumpy.”
He apologizes that his argument with Matt is affecting their friendship, because it’s not like he could just suck it up and choose to put an end to that or anything. But he is going to get back to helping with Fisk, because he’s not cool with people just running around killing other people. And he wonders what Karen’s been up to that night.
“Oh nothing. Not running around killing other people, that’s for sure.”
Then Matt shows up, and things continue to be incredibly awkward.
“How’s… uh… how’s all your fighting and stuff? Cool. Cool.”
And Karen continues to deal with her guilt and failing friendships.
Fisk is starting to get edgy because he can’t get in touch with his BFF, but Vanessa wakes up and snaps him out of it. He lets her in on his plan to send here somewhere safe, and she will have none of it.
“Heh. You make decisions for me? That’s adorable.”
They share a tender moment bonding over how their enemies will suffer, and then Fisk finds out what happened to Wesley, and the shit hits the fan. He beats the crap out of the guy who covered for Wesley’s absence and then asks Leland to find out who’s responsible and leave him alone to mourn.
“Never let go, Wesley.”
He looks at Wesley’s phone and discovers that his last call was to his own mom, so that’s probably bad news for our friends.
Daredevil tracks down Ben to get some information on his next move, which is cutting off the money coming into Fisk’s operation through Madame Gao’s heroine business. At the same time, Foggy goes to meet Marci to help him look into Fisk, since he’s a client of the law firm she works at, and Karen goes to tell Ben that Fisk knows they found his mom.
Karen pushes Ben to move with a story on the information they have before it’s too late, and Ben takes a swipe at “Internet blogs” where “the facts are what you make up.” Damn, maybe they did get Aaron Sorkin to help with this show.
It turns out Marci does still have a soul, and she indicates to Foggy that things do seem a little fishy around Fisk and some of her other clients.
“Now that you mention it, they DO give off a murdery vibe.”
The next day, Matt goes in street clothes to track Madame Gao’s heroine dealers back to their hideout, which he of course must do with a bunch of gratuitous rooftop parkour!
Meanwhile, Fisk moves his mom to a location where those mean heroes can’t find her and tries unsuccessfully to get more information out of her about who might have killed Wesley. Elsewhere, Matt and Foggy are passing messages through Karen like they’re in a 90s sitcom.
“If you guys draw a line down the middle of the office, I quit. For real.”
Ben, taking Karen’s advice, tries to push the Fisk news story on his editor as-is with its limited sources, but he boss isn’t having it and fires him after ben accuses him of working for Fisk.
That night, Daredevil makes a proper visit to Madame Gao’s heroine operation, which is handled mostly by blind people for reasons unknown.
“Why would you…?”
She sees him and yells out to get them all to mob him, which is probably the most effective method of shutting him down anyone has tried so far.
“I probably could’ve planned this better.”
After a brief cut to Fisk getting some information, probably leading him to our heroes, we’re back to Gao’s warehouse, and then… wait. What? Somehow, Daredevil got out of that crowd and found Madame Gao up on the second floor to confront her. I know Netflix doesn’t have commercials, but that doesn’t mean they can get away with magically resolving their post-commercial-break-style cliffhangers off-screen. Get it together, you guys.
Gao lays a beatdown on Daredevil and then takes off, leaving him to save everyone from the fire her thugs accidentally started and nearly get arrested again.
“Your dirty cop buddies tried this once. You seem OK though, so you might consider arresting them instead.”
Gao finds Leland and tells him that she’s taking off and heading back home, which she alludes is some kind of mystical place, so I’m guessing she’ll be back in season 2 along with whatever mystical things Stick was talking about way back when.
“Seriously with this foreshadowing shit?”
Ben goes to tell his wife that he got fired, and she convinces him that he doesn’t need that paper and should keep doing what he was doing, because it’s who he is—but not without a few more digs at Internet news. Geez, guys. Sorry about sucking so much.
Ben calls Karen to tell her the good news, and then Matt stops by the office to have feelings with Karen. He’s upset that he’s pushing people away just like Stick told him he’d have to and pretty disturbed by the things he’s seen as Daredevil. He can’t handle going through it alone anymore though he still doesn’t tell Karen who he really is, and Karen comforts him with a hug that had better just be a friend hug, writers.
Ben heads home, and… is this the first time we’ve seen Ben’s home? After Fisk seems to have gotten information about who talked to his mom? Ohhhh boy. This can’t be good. Ben sits down at his desk to write, and oh, yeah, there we go.
“Surprise! Happy firing day!”
Fisk starts talking to Ben and joins the Shit on the Internet Party, and then he asks Ben if he was alone when he met Fisk’s mom. Ben does the smart thing and doesn’t give Karen up, but Fisk still knows he didn’t kill Wesley. But that doesn’t keep him from taking it out on poor Ben and setting us up for the finale.
:(
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