Here are the relationships that mostly don’t involve Matt (Charlie Cox) except this first one, analyzed for your enjoyment.
Matt, Foggy, Karen, and others
This can be sorted into two types of interactions: with allies and with foes.
Their clients are generally considered allies, although on occasion they run into a belligerent one. Their first major client, aside from Karen herself (Deborah Ann Woll) and the mess that Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) got them into, is Elena Cardenas (Judith Delgado), a kindly older woman trying to fight the bureaucrats trying to remove her from her home so they can build condos on the land, and how they deal with Elena’s situation is pretty emblematic of how they handle clients in general. We see them listening to her and promising to do what they can; Foggy (Elden Henson) and Karen actually go bother Foggy’s ex Marci (Amy Rutberg) at the swank law firm she works for since they represent Elena’s opponents. Foggy and Karen also go to Elena’s apartment to help her out. Unfortunately, Elena is one of the show’s many casualties, and her loss is one of the trio’s motivations for continuing to fight the good fight.
Frank (Jon Bernthal), in particular, is a client that becomes very belligerent at times. We discussed Matt and Frank’s relationship in the last post, and we’ll be getting into Karen and Frank later in this one, but as a client, they generally try to treat Frank the same as their other clients – at least at first. His case is one of the things that causes Matt and Foggy’s initial (friend) breakup, mostly because they approach it very differently and Foggy, who didn’t really want to take the case in the first place, ends up doing almost all of the courtroom work while Matt flakes out for Daredevil-related reasons. Karen is consistently the one insisting on compassion, but both of the guys are wary of Frank in different ways, and it means that their defense of him is sometimes a little insincere.
Sometimes when they’re dealing with cops and politicians, it’s good, but other times… not so much. There are cops (Mahoney [Royce Johnson] comes to mind) that generally get along with them, or at least tolerate them and serve as allies, but a lot of the other cops consistently get in their way. This is sometimes because they’re being bought out by whichever criminal force, and the criminals are obviously antagonistic toward our justice-seeking legal team. They also have bad relationships with two consecutive DAs, the first because she’s bonkers and trying to frame them however she can so she can get reelected and the second because, again, he’s somewhat hindered by Fisk. And those criminals, particularly the ones led by Fisk? Well, they try at the very beginning to buy out our trio, but when that fails they immediately play dirty.
Foggy and Karen
Foggy and Karen are the two “normals” in this show – they’re the ones who Matt most consistently lies to about his superhero identity, and they’re the ones who have to work extra hard to get the answers they need. This results in kind of a subconscious allyship between them, because they both (in different ways) feel slightly out of place and desperate to prove themselves. Some of the best moments come from them just hanging out together, like when they’re strolling drunkenly to Foggy’s apartment and they giggle about having “drank the eel.”
Foggy is still a lot more practical than Karen, though (case in point: vigilante Karen AUs exist, but I’ve never seen a vigilante Foggy AU). Foggy is, like we said last time, the neurotypical who’s been tasked with wrangling these two insanely passionate autistic people; while I wouldn’t be surprised if he did have some anxiety going on, he’s pretty obviously the one who thinks about things in the most “normal” ways. He’s the most concerned with legality and also capitalism, which sometimes puts him at odds with both Matt and Karen. In her case, this manifests largely in tension over their approval or disapproval of vigilantes and the idea Karen gets in her head about how Foggy will judge her for her own darker history. This means they do lie to each other sometimes, too, but they’re generally a lot more forthcoming, and thank God.
Foggy and Marci
These two are initially presented as exes who are mostly amicable, although Marci is described as “the meat grinder in the pencil skirt.” She and Foggy go way back, and with that comes a certain degree of familiarity – she greets him as “Foggy Bear” and, although she’s hesitant to put her job on the line for him, later helps him out. They get back together near the end of season 1, first as a casual hookup and then as a more serious relationship. They have an oddly sweet dynamic: Foggy is clearly used to her barbed remarks and gives as good as he gets, and she seems to soften around him, particularly by season 3. Marci doesn’t really put up with Foggy’s mild passive-aggressiveness, either, which is good for him. You can really imagine Foggy quoting John Mulaney: “My wife is a bitch, and I like her so much!”
Karen and Wesley
She shoots him seven times and I know she feels bad about it, but she really shouldn’t. He deserved to be shot.
Karen and Frank
This is a complicated one. A lot of people ship them, and this led to Karen appearing intermittently on the Punisher spinoff (these are the only parts of Punisher that we watched, because sorry, Frank, we just don’t care at all). They’re not treated romantically by canon, but they’re not not romantic, either. Their connection is in a lot of ways similar to the Karen/Matt connection: Karen sees in Frank another intense person who is dead set on justice. Sometimes she equates herself with him (feeling guilty about what happened with her brother, more on that in a second, or about Wesley) and this makes her both more sympathetic and more upset; sometimes she doesn’t agree with his murder choices. Frank, for his many flaws, does go out of his way to protect Karen when he can, even following her into dangerous situations, and she tries to do the same (though not in violent ways). They seem like they’re always at an impasse, though; Frank won’t budge on his decision to continue to murder people, even when Karen tries to get him to maybe not do that as much, even if just for his own safety. There’s no mediator in their relationship (unlike with the Matt/Karen/Foggy trio).
Karen and family
There’s an entire episode in season three dedicated to finally explaining Karen’s tortured past. I don’t think they’d actually settled on what her backstory was in season one, because they make a lot of vague allusions to how she’d seem like an untrustworthy witness and nobody would believe her because of the skeletons in her closet; they also try to make it seem like she’s maybe done some actual violent crime. What we finally learn is this: her mom died of cancer, so she put off going to college to help her dad run his shitty diner. She was unsatisfied and unhappy doing this, and her dad really didn’t appreciate her hard work, so she was dating a guy that was basically Jesse from Breaking Bad (low-level drug dealer who mostly was just kind of shiftless) and lowkey helping him with his (drug-dealing) job. Sometimes she also used the drugs. One night her brother (Jack DiFalco) re-enrolled her in college without asking her, and she freaked out; at the allegedly celebratory family dinner, she and her father (Lee Tergesen) got in a huge argument which led to her storming out and going to get high with her boyfriend. Then her brother showed up there, yelling about how the boyfriend was ruining her life or whatever; there was a violent confrontation that led to her brother lit the boyfriend’s trailer on fire, at which point Karen decided to drive her brother’s car to get them the fuck out of there before something even crazier happened. Unfortunately, they got in a car accident and her brother died. Because she was high when it happened, her father got the cops to cover it up so she didn’t get in trouble, then he basically disowned her. I feel compelled to explain all of this to point out that Karen’s dark past was really not that dark at all, and if the cops officially covered it up I’m not even sure how everyone would have gotten the idea that she was unreliable (for being… high? Like, don’t drive when high, but someone needed to stop that situation from escalating into literal murder so, best of bad choices) or evil. Surprise, Karen Page did nothing wrong, and her dad sucks.
Fisk and Wesley
I once forgot Wesley’s name and called him “the glasses one who kisses Fisk’s ass.” Having remembered his name, and rewatched the series, I stand by this assessment.
Fisk and Vanessa
Hot take: Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) are one of the MCU’s most striking power couples. This doesn’t mean they’re good people, because they’re really not (or, well, Fisk is definitely not, while Vanessa is ambiguous up until the end), but they’re just iconique. Fisk first happens upon Vanessa while browsing an art gallery she happens to own; he has a conversation with her about one of the pieces and immediately purchases it, then returns to the gallery a few days later to speak to her again. They begin a courtship of sorts, which is interrupted at several turns by, well, Fisk being a criminal overlord, but in the middle of all of this they fall very deeply in love and even after Vanessa finds out who he really is, she shows no signs of being bothered by it at all. Fisk says multiple times to multiple characters that before Vanessa, he basically didn’t believe love was possible for him; Vanessa seems to open up to him in ways that she doesn’t with others. Even when he is in prison, he takes great care to ensure her safety, and in season three they are finally able to be married, albeit for literally an hour or so before Daredevil’s final confrontation with Fisk and his subsequent arrest. It’s genuinely very sweet to see how much they care for each other and how they make each other feel loved.
Fisk and his family
In short: his dad (Domenick Lombardozzi) was an abusive piece of shit who thought he was better than everyone else. One time the dad was beating the mom (Angela Reed) and Fisk, then a child, got so mad that he then beat his dad to death. His mom covered it up and disposed of the body, and this was valid but it still would have hurt Fisk’s public image when he was trying to be a sociopolitical philanthropist or whatever. He was overprotective of his mother (played by Phyllis Somerville as an older woman) and kept her in a nice retirement home for a while, which was good of him.
Fisk and Gao
These two are sort of frenemies, which is a silly word to use for two such powerful characters, but it’s true. They start the series working together as heads of separate crime networks, and they each have a certain degree of respect for the other. Gao (Wai Ching Ho) doesn’t speak English with him at first, which is a truly amazing flex, but you get the sense that they’re operating on basically the same level. However, later she points out that his involvement with Vanessa has made him weak and “sloppy” and threatens to cut him out of the deal entirely. He also later found out that she was responsible for the attempt on his mother’s life, at which point their business relationship ended, obviously. It’s sort of a pity, because they were the two most fun villains of the show to watch, especially when they interacted.
Fisk and Bullseye
The TV show is superior to the movie in almost every way, with the exception of the portrayal of Bullseye (here played by Wilson Bethel). Bullseye in the Daredevil movie is a hilarious cartoon villain who acts like a nutcase; Bullseye, aka Ben Poindexter, in the TV show is just uncomfortable. The relationship between Fisk and Dex (as he’s called) is first Dex hating Fisk because he is a criminal and Dex is a lawman because he needs structure, but then Fisk manipulates Dex into being a criminal himself. The last shot of the series, which was obviously shot before they were cancelled, is Dex on an operating table as doctors do super high-tech spine surgery on him and then there’s a bullseye in his eye. That alone was more interesting than the rest of Dex’s screen time, including the stuff with Fisk, and that’s saying a lot because Fisk is usually so interesting.
Elektra and Stick
We talked about Matt’s time as a child soldier last week, but now let’s talk about Elektra’s (Elodie Yung). Elektra was maybe known to him as the Black Sky, which was a vague mystical thing/super fighting person (?) that the Hand wanted, but Stick (Scott Glenn) didn’t tell her this and instead tried to train her as a child soldier to fight the Hand. Then, also possibly because she was attached to him (or possibly because she was too good at being a child soldier?), he adopted her to some rich Greek diplomats. She was very upset about this, but apparently not upset enough to let him talk her into trying to seduce Matt when they were both college-aged. Except this backfired, because she did seduce Matt, and they fell in love, and we made the aforementioned feral cat noises, and then a bunch of other stuff happened and Elektra realized that Stick was full of shit. She didn’t kill him the first time she had a chance, mostly because Matt would have been sad, but then when she was the Black Sky in Defenders she did kill him and honestly, she was right and she should have done it. Stick sucks and he ruined Elektra’s and Matt’s lives. Period.
Elektra and Alexandra
Making a child soldier, part 2. Except Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver) was the one who, as part of the Hand, made Elektra the Black Sky. Elektra was an adult at this point, but the process of resurrection made her amnesiac at first, so she was kind of a child in an adult body, and Alexandra fed into this by treating her like a daughter-child. But also, there was a weird horny dubcon element to their dynamic and I genuinely couldn’t tell if Alexandra wanted to fuck her as well as use her as an attack dog (which, y’know, interesting/potentially loaded dynamics there with a white woman and a WOC, but also, these two actresses together, wow the chemistry). Elektra also kills Alexandra eventually, and again, she was right and she should have done it.
Frank and the world
In short: Frank is angry at the world, and the world is angry back. The press and police see Frank as a convenient monster to pit people against, because he is a serial killer, but Frank is serial killing criminals, so it’s not as bad or something. People who actually care about Frank probably have more to say about this, but it’s most interesting to us as a reflection of the world vs. Daredevil because a lot of the sentiments are the same (and they get unfairly grouped together sometimes, despite their differing philosophies.)
Ray and his family
Agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) is a good guy who was put (intentionally, by Fisk) in a bad spot. He was considered high-risk in the FBI (his employer) because had financial troubles because his sister-in-law had medical troubles because her insurance got cut, but then he got the promotion by getting something out of Fisk and it turned out that Fisk made sure his sister-in-law wouldn’t have insurance to put him in a high-risk spot after all. (Frolic.mp3.) Anyway, all of that happened because Ray was very devoted to his family, and while we didn’t see much of them except for scenes where they were concerned about him, his giving a shit about them was a pretty foundational part of his character.
Ray and Bullseye
Or rather, Ray and Dex. Both worked for the FBI, but eventually Ray figured out what was up with Dex and started helping Daredevil fight him. But then Dex figured that out and it was just a big messy triple-cross situation where Ray, a hotshot sharpshooter person, basically just fucked over Ray, a decent guy trying to do the right thing. Ray actually had morals, but Dex was some questionable mental health stereotypes wrapped in a boring white man shell so of course he outlasted Ray.
Dex and Julie
Finally, we have the weird one-sided relationship between Dex and a former coworker of his named Julie Barnes (whose actress is named Holly Cinnamon, holy shit, we are astounded). I will take this time to go OH MY GOD MARVEL, LEARN SOME NEW LAST NAMES (but it’s also funny to imagine that Julie is in fact Bucky’s grand-niece or something). Julie is a very nice woman who originally wanted to be a dancer but had an injury and was working instead basically in whatever job she could get. Dex became obsessed with her and imagined her as his moral compass, then he stalked her, and then Fisk killed her to manipulate Dex. We bring this up because it was a truly egregious fridge and Julie deserved better, but also because… well, Marvel, learn some new names. Basically, because Dex’s therapist had accidentally coniditioned him to rely on her to remind him not to murder people, after she passed away he needed a new person to fixate on to avoid that, and while I am sympathetic to him to some degree, you really need to have consent in that dynamic for it to work (and probably pay the other person tbh). Julie was just severely unlucky.
Oh, here‘s an article about how America apparently doesn’t know what philosopher’s stones are.
baby we can be magic 