In “Shadows in the Glass,” we finally get into Fisk’s backstory. It starts with him grunting and shifting in his sleep. Awww, he’s probably dreaming about chasing down rival gangsters and decapitating them! Adorable.
Then he gets up and starts his day with an edition of Cooking With Fisk—today’s recipe is Anatoly’s Head Stew!
Ingredients: Stew stuff. Rival’s severed head.
Then he takes us on a tour of his apartment including his cartoon-character, all-the-same-outfit wardrobe closet and dining area.
A pop of color never hurt anyone, bud.
If Stick thought Matt’s apartment was soft, he really wouldn’t approve of Fisk’s. Wilson selects his favorite cufflinks from a drawer despite the fact that I thought he just wore the one pair, so I’m not sure why he as so many. Then he sees a vision of a bloody child—a child covered in blood, to be clear—and we’re left to wonder what the heck is up with that as focus switches back over to the good guys.
Matt wakes up with his apartment in disarray from all the fighting.
Not so soft now. Happy, Stick?
Foggy and Karen discuss their covert operations together in the law office and are almost immediately caught by Matt, who has, of course, heard everything they’ve said. Foggy and Karen explain themselves, and now everyone’s secrets are finally in the open and they can all work together! …Except Matt doesn’t tell them he’s Daredevil, which I guess I understand, but I’m pretty sure that I’d at least tell my funny best friend if I were a superhero. Then we’d probably high five about it, so I’m pretty confused as to why Matt hasn’t even told Foggy at least about his powers if not his activities.
“I thought we were friends.”
ANYWAY. Matt is super mad at them because they’re going to get hurt or whatever equally valid concern they might express about him if he were honest with them, but he agrees to help with the distinction that they need to stop sneaking around and doing dangerous things. That’s his thing, you guys.
Fisk talks to Nobu about Black Sky’s death and actually seems scared of him. Nobu drops some hints that not everyone is entirely happy with Fisk and some threats, and Wesley is not pleased that someone talked to his BFF like that.
“Oh no he didn’t.”
And now we finally get a Fisk flashback! A Fiskback!
“Don’t ever say ‘Fiskback’ again.”
Fisk’s dad is a jerky domineering type who is trying to win himself a spot on the city council to improve his family’s financial situation, but he got money from a loan shark to do it, so that is going nowhere good. Oh, and that blood-covered child was young Fisk, by the way, in case the loan shark wasn’t enough of a hint that this won’t end well.
Wesley gets jealous of Fisk’s chatty time with Vanessa and tells him that their crooked cop buddy, Detective Blake, who they had shot a few episodes back is awake in the hospital and might not be pleased that they put a bullet in him—maybe displeased enough to give them up. So, Fisk decides to bully the guy’s partner and long-time friend into finishing him off by hitting his already thin moral fiber with a giant stack of cash.
He shows up at the hospital—where Blake is heavily guarded, because the cops think Daredevil shot him and might come back to finish the job—and gains entrance to the room after hiding his killing implements in Blake’s favorite food.
“I brought his favorite! Murder Sandwich!”
Daredevil drops in through the window—seriously, the ONE THING all the cops are there to prevent. They are like the stormtroopers of guarding things—and is too late to save Blake but not too late to get the information he wants out of them.
Meanwhile, Leland is complaining to Fisk about how badly things are going and Daredevil finding him while he gets measured by a tailor.
“I want my full wardrobe of matching cartoon character suits delivered ASAP, got it?”
In another flashback, things also aren’t going so well for child Fisk, as he’s been roughed up a bit by some other kid. Fisk’s dad takes him out to teach the other kid a lesson—mostly because that kid called Fisk’s dad a loser, not because he hurt his son. You know, upstanding, take-the-high-road father stuff. He knocks the older, larger kid on the ground and then shares that wonderful father-son moment where you teach the next generation how to properly kick someone when they’re down.
Little Willy Fisk with the assist!
Starting to see a behavioral pattern here…
And then it’s Cooking With Fisk Episode 2! Today, Cream of Death Sandwich Soup. Madame Gao shows up for a visit, and she enjoys chef Fisk’s choice of tea pairing to go with their villainy, but she’s not happy with Fisk himself. She tells him to get his shit together or he’ll be cut off from the other minions, despite how Netflix botched her subtitles.
Suuuuuure that’s what she said, Netflix.
Fisk is… displeased, which he handles with all the emotional awareness and self control that his father taught him.
Tea time ragequit.
He’s even too displeased to make up with Wesley—after Madame Gao made him leave the room—who is heartbroken, I imagine. But he puts his own feelings aside and gets Vanessa to calm Fisk down, because he understands that he’s been replaced. Wilson’s resistant, but Vanessa reminds him that he said he’d be honest with her, so he decides to really test whether that’s what she wants.
In another flashback, Fisk’s dad has to go talk to the loan shark because he didn’t win the city council election and needs to settle up on the finances. He’s beating his wife for expressing the outlandish opinion that maybe none of this was a great idea while little Wilson is forced to sit and stare at a wall—a wall that looks remarkably like Vanessa’s painting that now adorns the wall of his bedroom, so there that is.
And then… he murders his father with a hammer to the skull, and his mom somehow doesn’t seem that broken up about it.
Wonder why that is. /sarcasm
Then they saw his dad’s body into pieces they can conveniently get rid off one-by-one over the course of a week, which he’s just telling Vanessa in the present, and she doesn’t even seem shocked. What has gone on in her life that she’s cool with this? Can we get a Vanessa flashback already?
And comedically ominous lightning breaks the tension.
Elsewhere, Matt has caught up to Ben Urich in costume as Daredevil so he can share what he knows with the rest of the team without telling them what he’s been up to. He’s hoping that they can use the information he gets through more proper channels to bring Fisk down so that he won’t have to let pretty much literally every character on the show be right about what he’ll have to do to stop Fisk.
Murder. Everyone thinks he’ll have to murder him in case you missed that.
Fisk is having more dream time on his sleepover with Vanessa. The next day, she checks out his apartment and cartoon character wardrobe and makes him wear one of those other sets of cufflinks as they get ready for the day. At the same time, Ben Urich is writing up an opinion piece with the information that Matt gave him in order to force Fisk out of hiding, but he’s a step ahead of them and holds a press conference to position himself as the good guy and tell everyone who he is.
No one looks particularly happy about it aside from Fisk, but Matt takes it pretty well.
Minus points for not opting for the full table flip, though. Seriously, are you and Fisk related?
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