missing dex being called by (his preferred name) dex. it’s the name he refers to himself by and the name he chose and it hasn’t been said since daredevil born again 1x01 :(
rewatching ddba— and a question that popped up in my head : why did dex continue wreaking havoc on josie’s bar waaaaayy after the initial goal, which was to kill foggy, was completed?
hello. i wondered the same thing when i first watched the episode because on the surface it really doesn’t make much sense. by the time the season is over, you get a few more puzzle pieces that help explain dex’s mental and physical state, but i still don’t think the show gives us enough information during the fight itself. that’s one of my biggest criticisms of the scene. unlike the original daredevil series, where almost every movement during a fight tells you something about what the characters are thinking or trying to accomplish, this sequence leaves a lot of that up to interpretation. i think there are answers that fit dex’s characterization, but i also think there are moments that only really happen because the plot needs them to happen.
if we actually look at the sequence of events, dex’s original mission is extremely straightforward. foggy gets a call from benny, after “someone” (dex) breaks into foggy’s apartment where benny is staying. we never actually see what happens inside, but based on what we’re told later, it’s pretty easy to infer that dex threatened benny, forced him to reveal where foggy was, injured him, and left. matt hears enough over the phone to believe benny is in danger, so he runs to help him. while matt is several blocks away, benny manages to call foggy back. he tells him, “he wanted to know where you were,” and presumably dies. and before foggy can even process what that means, matt hears dex adjusting his handgun. a second later, dex puts on his mask, foggy says, “i don’t know what he’s talking about,” and dex immediately shoots him. from that point onward, the assignment vanessa gave him is complete. foggy is dead. if the only objective was to kill foggy in exchange for his freedom from the psychiatric hospital, then everything after that exists outside of the original mission.
that’s why i don’t think the rest of the scene can be explained by saying “he was still trying to complete the mission,” because the mission was already over.
the next part actually still makes complete sense to me. two armed men immediately respond by coming outside and drawing their guns, and dex eliminates both of them almost instantly. phil silvera actually talked about this, saying that dex isn’t killing people randomly. he’s identifying people who are about to or could become threats and removing them before they have the opportunity to act. that’s always been one of dex’s defining traits. he doesn’t wait until someone shoots first. he reads body language, notices weapons, predicts movements, and neutralizes threats before they become immediate dangers. the two armed men fit perfectly into that pattern. they’re drawing their guns ready to presumably point them at him, so he responds exactly how we’ve always known he would.
it’s what happens immediately after that where i think things become much more interesting. instead of leaving, dex deliberately walks toward karen. he doesn’t shoot her from where he’s standing. he doesn’t immediately escape. he doesn’t disappear before matt gets back. he actually closes the distance between them, looks directly at her, and says, “hello, karen.” that choice feels incredibly intentional.
to me, that moment has almost nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with psychology. dex remembers karen. he remembers bulletin. he remembers clinton church. he remembers failing to kill her in season 3, and i think saying “hello, karen” serves one purpose above everything else: he wants her to know exactly who killed foggy before she dies too. if he simply wanted to eliminate another witness, he could’ve shot her from a distance the same way he shot foggy. instead, he walks toward her and forces her to recognize him first. that’s sadistic. he’s drawing out those few extra seconds because he gets something out of her fear and recognition. he wants her to understand exactly who’s standing in front of her. from a purely tactical standpoint, it’s actually a terrible decision because those extra seconds are exactly what allow matt to return and tackle him through the window. but psychologically, it fits with something we’ve seen from dex before. he doesn’t only like controlling whether someone lives or dies. he likes controlling how they experience those final moments too.
after matt crashes into him, though, i think the entire situation changes. this is where i think dex stops operating according to a plan and starts operating almost entirely on instinct and impulse. everything has gone wrong. he’s lost the initiative. his escape route is gone. daredevil is suddenly back. now i think his objective shifts from completing a mission to simply surviving.
that’s where phil silvera’s explanation becomes much more relevant because from that point onward, dex is constantly eliminating people who could potentially interfere with his escape. whether it’s someone reaching for a weapon, someone moving into his path, or someone who could become a threat a second later, his brain is constantly reassessing the environment. dex has always been extraordinarily fast at threat assessment. by the time someone else decides whether to act, he’s already made his decision about them. i don’t think those kills are random. i think they’re instinctive, even if they are irrational. his survival instincts take over, and once they do, his brain begins treating almost every capable person around him as a future obstacle.
from a character perspective, i think dex spends the second half of the fight operating almost entirely on self-preservation, instinct, and rapidly changing threat assessment while simultaneously dealing with what was almost certainly the physical and psychological effects of abruptly going off of 8 years of heavy medication cold turkey. i think that’s why he feels much more reactive, more desperate, and more volatile than he did in season 3. but i also think some of his decisions, particularly approaching karen, carrying equipment that doesn’t really fit the mission, and turning what could’ve been a clean assassination into a prolonged confrontation, exist primarily because the story needed a large action sequence. i can interpret those moments through dex’s psychology, and i think there are ways they can make sense, but i also don’t think every choice in this fight is as tightly motivated as the fight scenes from the original series were. that’s why i have such mixed feelings about it. i loved seeing dex again, but i also wish the writing trusted his intelligence and tactical ability as much as season 3 consistently did.
at the same time, i don’t think it’s possible to separate this fight from what we later learn about his condition. by episode 9, we finally see what dex was up to since season three. and he’s in terrible physical shape in the psych ward. he can barely keep his eyes open. he’s sweating. he’s slumped over the table. he’s dissociating out the window. his movements are delayed. he struggles to hold a pen. vanessa has to literally place it into his hand for him, and even then his hands shake so badly that ink ends up smeared across his palm and his signature looks completely different from the precise handwriting we know he normally has.
that’s not someone receiving balanced treatment. that’s someone who’s been purposefully heavily medicated for years. realistically, there is almost no chance someone in that condition would simply stop taking those medications and feel completely normal forty-eight hours later. whether the show explicitly addresses withdrawal or not, his body almost certainly would’ve been experiencing it. after spending years on multiple psychiatric medications, suddenly functioning without them would affect everything from motor control to emotional regulation, concentration, physical endurance, and sensory processing.
i think one of the most interesting moments in the fight happens upstairs after he throws the knife at the man on the stairs. before punching the woman, dex briefly looks down at his own hand, flexes his fingers, closes them into a fist, and only then strikes her. i don’t think that’s a random piece of acting. to me, it looks like someone subconsciously checking whether his hands are still responding the way they’re supposed to. because just two days ago, he could barely hold a pen. now those same hands are suddenly being pushed to perform at an incredibly high level again.
gif by novagif
i also don’t think dex is thinking as clearly as he normally does, but i want to make an important distinction because i don’t think that means he isn’t responsible for what he’s does. he absolutely knows what he’s doing. he understands that he’s killing people. nothing about the scene suggests otherwise. but i do think his judgment is being influenced by a combination of withdrawal, physical pain, adrenaline, sensory overload, years of institutionalization, and suddenly being thrown into complete chaos. dex likes control. we’ve seen that repeatedly throughout season 3. he likes planning, predicting, and staying several moves ahead. once that control starts disappearing, he becomes noticeably more unstable. that’s why i find the hallway/stairwell scene so interesting. when he says, “what have you done?” before immediately correcting himself with, “come on, dex… come on, dex,” it feels like someone trying to pull himself back together after realizing the situation has completely slipped out of his control.
gif by ilya-rozanova
so considering that, the scene where he leans against the wall and takes a moment to breathe and does the “crazy eyes” i don’t interpret that as fear of daredevil. i interpret it as someone becoming increasingly overwhelmed. he’s fighting for the first time in almost a decade, his body is almost certainly dealing with withdrawal, adrenaline is flooding his system, and on top of all of that, he’s probably feeling physical pain in a way he hasn’t for years. if he’d been medicated that heavily inside the psychiatric hospital, those medications likely dulled at least some of the chronic pain associated with the spinal injury fisk gave him in season 3. now he’s throwing himself into an intense fight while no longer having that same level of pharmaceutical suppression. physically alone, that’s an enormous amount for anyone’s body to handle.
there are still aspects of the sequence that i genuinely think exist because the plot needed them to exist rather than because they naturally follow dex’s established characterization. the smoke bombs are probably the biggest example. based on everything we’re told, vanessa’s deal with dex is simple: kill foggy, and she’ll free him from the psychiatric hospital. that’s the entire assignment. if that’s really all she asked of him, then carrying smoke bombs, walking directly toward karen instead of leaving, and engaging in a prolonged fight inside josie’s all seem unnecessarily risky. realistically, someone as intelligent and tactically skilled as dex could’ve accomplished the mission from much farther away. he could’ve sniped foggy, disappeared before matt ever returned, and dramatically increased his chances of escaping. instead, the fight unfolds in a way that creates an exciting action sequence, even if it doesn’t always feel like the smartest decision the character himself would’ve made. i think that’s where born again differs the most from the original series. in season 3, every movement during dex’s fights tells you something about his mental state. his desperation, his confidence, his frustration, and his changing emotional state are communicated through the choreography itself. here, i think we’re left doing much more of the work ourselves, trying to connect pieces that are spread across multiple episodes instead of being communicated clearly within the scene.
so ultimately, i think once matt tackled him through the window, dex stopped operating according to a carefully planned mission and started operating almost entirely on self-preservation and instinct. at that point, his objective wasn’t “kill foggy” anymore because that objective had already been completed. now his objective was simply to survive and get out. that’s why i don’t think the civilians he attacked were necessarily being viewed as individual people in that moment. i think they became potential obstacles. some of them had guns, some were trying to fight back, some were moving unpredictably, and others could become threats a second later even if they were just standing there in fear at that moment. dex has always had an incredibly fast threat-assessment process, and combined with what was likely withdrawal after years of heavy medication, physical pain from his reconstructed spine, adrenaline, sensory overload, and the realization that his plan had completely fallen apart, i think his brain would’ve been operating almost entirely on instinct so he would have been acting irrationaly. when your body is flooded with that much stress, your thinking naturally becomes much narrower. instead of calmly planning several moves ahead like he normally would, i think his mind had narrowed to one overwhelming objective: get out. above everything else, dex survives. after spending almost a decade trapped inside a psychiatric institution, finally being free only to immediately die or be sent back wasn’t something he was going to willingly accept. his body and instincts would’ve been fighting against that outcome with everything they had.
i also think that’s why we see him using civilians the same way he’s always used them throughout the original series, not as people, but as pieces he can manipulate to gain an advantage. one of the clearest examples is when he grabs two pool balls. he throws one directly at daredevil and another at an innocent woman standing nearby.
gif by novagif
the goal isn’t simply to hurt her for the sake of hurting her. it’s to force matt into making a choice. matt deflects the ball aimed at himself, but that leaves the woman vulnerable, giving dex exactly the opening he wanted to disappear around the corner and finally catch his breath.
that’s consistent with his behavior in season 3. during the church fight, he moved toward an innocent bystander to use them as leverage before matt stopped him, and during the hotel ballroom fight, he grabbed one of the guests because he knew the fbi agents would hesitate to shoot. dex has never been above using innocent people as shields, distractions, bargaining chips, or escape routes if it increases his own chances of surviving.
i think that’s exactly what’s happening throughout the josie’s fight as well. he isn’t carefully selecting victims because of who they are as individuals, he’s reacting to a rapidly collapsing situation where almost everyone around him becomes either a potential threat or a potential tool. whether he’s eliminating someone before they can interfere or forcing daredevil to divert his attention toward someone else, every action seems driven by the same instinctive goal: survive first, escape second, and deal with everything else later. i don’t think he was thinking as clearly or methodically as we’re used to seeing from him, but i also don’t think he completely lost control of himself. i think he was making decisions in real time under extreme physical and psychological stress, and those decisions became increasingly ruthless because, in his mind, surviving outweighed absolutely everything else.
