Fisk takes his fight to the gym. Bullseye takes his to the streets.

The operatic mayhem of this episode is off the charts. The opening scene sets the tone with Bullseye setting up his day to ‘New York State of Mind’ before picking a fight with the AVTF and slaughtering an entire squad of them, just to get Matt’s attention. It’s an incredible sequence, the sound effects and fluidity of motion giving you a literal razor’s edge look at Ben Poindexter unfettered as he dismantles a diner full of thugs using little more than forks. He’s never seemed more dangerous and Wilson Bethel is extraordinary here, balancing Joel Kinnaman-esque glacial calm with flamboyant, dead-eyed physicality.

His return causes Matt and Karen to divide their forces, Karen taking testimonies from the disappeared including the first mate of the Northern Star while Matt tracks down Bullseye. Both cases lead to Fisk, as everything does, but they also lead to a new level of cruelty for the mayor. Barely two episodes after using Matt’s perceived hero status as a weapon, he steps into the ring to use his physical stature as one. It’s billed as a morale building exercise for the city but it’s really a chance for Fisk to exercise his demons. The fight is brilliantly staged and offhandedly savage, Fisk more honest than he’s ever been as his luckless opponent lands a punch and is absolutely brutalised for it. The fact it happens at Matt’s old boxing gym is simply brass knuckles, literal and metaphorical dirty boxing.

Fisk is truly unfettered as he beats his opponent halfway to death while he has Buck murder the Northern Star survivors. But then the episode slides sideways into Greek tragedy. Bullseye storms the fight just as Vanessa makes a surprise appearance. Before Matt can stop them there’s a moment where a glass keepsake of Fisk and his city becomes a weapon, Fisk’s boxing belt becomes a shield and neither of them are quite enough. Vanessa fatally injured, it seems, on the same white canvas Fisk barely bleeds on is operative, overwrought and horrifying, as it should be.

Verdict: Now, with Vanessa at death’s door, Fisk enraged and Matt and Bullseye both on the run and injured? Now’s when the fight really gets dirty. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart