Fisk mourns Vanessa, and proceeds to pick every possible fight.

Vincent D’Onofrio says very little this episode but the way he carries himself, and the weight (Including the ‘THOOM! THOOM!’ sound of Fisk’s footsteps) of the character is what everyone orbits here. As he says to Matt, no one will kill him, sending him to jail is meaningless. What can they do? How do you beat a man who has embodied and subsumed the system at every possible level?

The episode doesn’t have an answer for you, or its characters, besides their continued struggle to do the right thing. For Daniel, that looks like simultaneously protecting BB Urich from Buck Cashman and working to expose her. For BB it’s choosing not to leak yet more information, to protect Daniel even if it inadvertently saves her from Buck.  Michael Gandolfini and Genneya Walton have quietly been the heart of the show this season and their scenes here ring with painfully fragile intensity. The two characters clearly love one another and are so doomed by their obligations, and Daniel’s inability to see that anyone might love him, that instead they orbit Fisk and each other with increasing speed and ferocity.

Karen Page is moving too fast too and knows it. Her fury at Matt for sparing Bullseye has been criticised in some circles but I buy it completely. Karen has a very different relationship with violence to Matt, one that’s closer and way more aware of its consequences. Deborah Ann Woll is incredible and arguably has been underused this season but this is almost a Karen episode. Her confrontation with Bullseye, and the fact she’s arrested at the closing riot because she instinctively stops to help an injured rioter, are bookends that echo Matt’s interactions with Foggy last week. Doing the right thing, even if it sucks. Especially if it sucks.

No one has a good time this week, and every single plot accelerates into the final corners of the story. Heather, all but confirmed as the new Muse, experiments with her trauma with Buck. The White Tiger and friends find themselves on the front lines. Saunders, the cop who has been an instrumental part of the Resistance’s plan, is executed by Powell as the spark to excuse a brutal crackdown. New York is done and the accreted layers of trauma and brutality around Fisk and Matt are finally beginning to peel away.

All of this makes Krysten Ritter’s return as Jessica Jones almost an afterthought but it’s so much fun. Now the mother of Danielle, and with a complex relationship with Danielle’s dad, Luke Cage, Jess is just as cheerfully non-functional as she always was but with added uncertainty. Her powers phasing in and out plays a little bit cheaply but it adds nice punctuation and tension to the fight scenes and it’s good to have her back.

In the centre of all this, of course, are Matt and Fisk. Cox and D’Onofrio have incredible chemistry and this is one of their best scenes together yet. The two leaders of the two New Yorks know this fight has poisoned everyone around them, they know that they won’t know peace as long as they’re both in the city The fight is inventive, brutal and desperately sad. Fisk battling because that’s what he does. Matt battling for the soul of his city and offering his opponent a chance for redemption even as he’s convinced he’s going to burn. It’s weighty, emotional drama and it sets up the final act beautifully.

Verdict: Another great episode of a series that started good and only ever got better. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart