WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel's Daredevil Season 3, streaming now on Netflix.


Wilson Fisk is nothing if not a patient man, biding his time behind bars as he crafted a baroque plot to not only guarantee the safe return of his one true love, Vanessa Marianna, but also reclaim his twin thrones in New York's criminal underworld and respectable society. After manipulating the FBI, murdering the one agent who dared to testify against him, framing his archenemy, and ensuring his own exoneration, Fisk was seemingly poised to get everything he wanted in the Daredevil Season 3 finale, beginning with a wedding. That is, until his carefully laid plan suddenly unraveled, and in spectacular fashion.

In retrospect, with such an intricate scheme -- involving, for starters coerced FBI agents and crime bosses, an imposter Daredevil, jury tampering and murders -- some of the interlocking pieces were bound to break off, especially when one of them is a sociopath with unerring aim. But Fisk misjudged more than one of the players in his game.

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Ray Nadeem

Marvel's Daredevil Season 3
Foggy Nelson and Agent Ray Nadeem

Fisk's plot to cooperate with the FBI to shield Vanessa from prosecution while eliminating his own criminal rivals required the help of an agent who would be willing to believe virtually anything he was told. Early on, he marked Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) as a good candidate. When Naddem's sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, Fisk arranged to have her health insurance canceled, forcing the agent to go into debt to pay her medical expenses. Desperate for promotion, and the accompanying pay raise, Nadeem is easy prey for Fisk, who feeds him information for arrests that will earn him recognition from his superiors in Washington, D.C. By the time he's confronted with the truth by Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Nadeem is in over his head, and put on the hook for the murder of another agent by his supervisor, who's already in Fisk's pocket.

Forced to do Fisk's bidding, alongside several other compromised agents, Nadeem realizes he must atone for what he's done after Agent Benjamin Poindexter (Wilson Bethel), dressed as Daredevil, attacks Clinton Church, in an effort to kill Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). Working with Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), Nadeem strikes a deal with the district attorney to testify to a grand jury about his knowledge of Fisk's crimes. However, Fisk threatens the jury, resulting in no indictments, and Vanessa, now fully part of his criminal activities, orders Poindexter to "eliminate" the threat posed by Nadeem.

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Ben Poindexter

Daredevil Season 3

Fisk encountered Agent Benjamin Poindexter completely by accident, when the FBI convoy transporting him from prison to the safe house was ambushed by the Albanian crime syndicate. With most of the agents injured or dead, and Fisk about to be assassinated himself, Poindexter appeared seemingly out of nowhere to take down the attackers with unerring aim and no moral compunctions. Investigating Dex's past, Fisk discovered an orphaned sociopath who killed his youth baseball coach with an impossible pitch, who only remained on the straight and narrow when he had someone to serve as his moral compass -- his "North Star." After his childhood therapist died, Dex fixated on a former co-worker, Julie Mercer, going so far as to stalk her, and concoct an imaginary life together. Detecting his weakness, Fisk arranged to reunite Dex and Julie, only to later have her murdered so that he could become the sociopath's new North Star.

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Eager to please Fisk, Dex masqueraded as Daredevil to help from Matt Murdock for deadly attacks on the New York Bulletin and Clinton Church. With that, New York City had a new public enemy, and Fisk had an unflinchingly loyal killer -- that is, until Murdock revealed to Dex that Julie didn't break off contact with him; Fisk had her murdered. Donning the Daredevil costume once more, Dex recovers Julie's frozen body from a restaurant's walk-in cooler, and drives her to the Presidential Hotel to crash Fisk's wedding, and exact his revenge. He even jumped onstage to offer a toast: "Julie and I wish you the absolute best."

Wilson and Vanessa Fisk

Daredevil Season 3
Wilson Fisk and Vanessa Fisk

What should have been the happiest night of Wilson and Vanessa Fisk's lives -- a high-profile wedding intended to endear them to the city -- is derailed during their first dance by a voice from beyond the grave. Knowing that he was living on borrowed time after testifying before the grand jury, Nadeem recorded a message for his wife in which he detailed the extent of Fisk's crimes, and the involvement of FBI agents. At the wedding reception, the smiles of the adoring crowd quickly turn to gasps as Nadeem's dying declaration plays out across cell phones. Although Wilson and Vanessa pretend to be unfazed by that commotion, they can hardly ignore the arrival of, first, Poindexter and then Daredevil.

The ensuing three-fight fight is brutal and bloody -- savage, even -- as Fisk and Murdock unleash years of pent-up rage on each other, while Poindexter throwing makeshift weapons at anyone who enters his line of sight, including Vanessa. It's Fisk who finally stops his unhinged disciple, by crushing his spine against a stone wall, leaving only himself and Matt Murdock.

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Matt Murdock

Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk

Distraught over the murder of Nadeem, Matt Murdock rejects the law once more, and goes to the Presidential Hotel determined to kill Fisk, convinced that's the only way to stop him. But just when it seems he's about to beat his old foe to death, he stops in response to a scream from Vanessa. However, Fisk wants Matt to kill him. "I will never stop hunting Karen Page or Foggy Nelson," a bloody Fisk warns. "I will tell the world who you really are."

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Matt isn't about to allow Fisk to destroy who he is by provoking him to kill, though. Besides, he has information to ensure that Fisk will live out the rest of his life in prison without endangering anyone, or revealing his secret: He learned from Fisk's fixer, Felix Manning, that it was Vanessa who ordered the murder of Nadeem. Faced with the possibility of his wife receiving a life sentence, Fisk agrees to Murdock's terms. They even seal the deal with a handshake.

Bullseye

There's a nice coda to the finale, in which it feels like old times, with Matt, Foggy and Karen drinking together, enjoying each other's company and toying with the idea of Nelson, Murdock & Page. But the real eye-opener, so to speak, is the stinger in which spinal surgery is being performed on Poindexter in hopes of repairing the damage from his fight with Fisk.

Although one surgeon warns that, if the procedure fails, Poindexter will be permanently paralyzed, the other suggests the Cogmium steel reinforcing framework may work, acknowledging that the patient knew the risks. That's an apparent nod to the 1982 Marvel Comics storyline in which Bullseye is paralyzed in a fight with Daredevil, after fatally impaling Elektra. His bones were later laced with adamantium, the same substance bonded to Wolverine's skeleton and claws, which permitted him mobility.

In the final shot of the finale, and the season, Poindexter opens his eyes, revealing a bullseye reflected in the iris, which certainly suggests viewers can expect a rematch in Season 4.


Now available on Netflix, Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Joanne Whalley as Sister Maggie, Wilson Bethel as Benjamin Poindexter, Jay Ali as Rahul "Ray" Nadeem and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk.