Daredevil Reveals An Origin For Wilson Fisk's Nickname Kingpin

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

Fans rejoiced last month with confirmation that Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk would, at long last, don the character's signature white suit jacket in Daredevil Season 3. However, it goes beyond a mere change of clothes, as he also acquires his Marvel Comics nickname: Kingpin.

They mark a turning point for Fisk in an elaborate plot to take him from prison, where he's remained since since his downfall at the end of Daredevil's first season, and return him to not only the top of New York's criminal underworld but the city's high society -- with the love of his life, Vanessa Marianna, once again at his side.

In the first half of the season, Fisk moves from an orange prison jumpsuit to the dark-gray attire of the FBI's safe house (actually a spartan penthouse apartment seized by the government), where he's protected while providing information about the Albanian crime syndicate, as part of a deal to shield Vanessa from criminal prosecution. But once his cooperation bears fruit, the terms of the agreement call for him to be provided with the amenities to which he was once accustomed: upscale furniture, artwork and, yes, racks of identical white silk jackets.

"I think it’s his birth as the Kingpin," D'Onofrio told CBR earlier this week, explaining what the jacket represents to Fisk. "I think it’s him, right at the beginning stages, of who he’ll eventually turn out to be. He’s trying to be complete, and that’s why he tries so desperately to get Vanessa back, because she defines him, in a way. And, so I think it’s the white, the pureness, the simpleness of it – the newness of it, it’s all very kind of young. It’s not Wilson Fisk anymore, he’s actually becoming the Kingpin. I think it’s the beginning of a whole new life, especially at the end of the season, where an awful lot changes, and Vanessa stands out in a much more rock-solid way than when they parted in the first season."

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But while his attire may be pure and simple, Fisk is anything but. From behind bars, he began to orchestrate a byzantine plan to take revenge against those who wronged him (Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson, among them), and to reclaim everything he views as rightfully his. Over the span of more than a year, be played puppet master and strategist, pulling strings, and moving pieces into place. Through shell companies, he purchased the Presidential Hotel, with the foreknowledge that he would be held there by the FBI once he orchestrated an attempt on his own life in prison. But even with the construction of a secret staircase leading from the hotel's penthouse to an equally high-tech command center floors below, Fisk was only getting started.

He staged the death of the son of FBI Special Agent in Charge Tammy Hattley to look like a hit-and-run accident, with the implication that a similar fate could befall her surviving daughter if she didn't begin working for him. He had purveyors stop delivering to the deli owned by Foggy Nelson's family and then, through Red Lion Bank, offered them a fraudulent loan to save the business, in the process involving them in a criminal enterprise. Fisk canceled the health insurance of FBI Agent Ray Nadeem's sister-in-law, who was battling cancer, forcing him to go into debt to pay for her treatment. That ensured Nadeem would be desperate enough to earn a promotion, and a raise, that he would be willing to accept virtually anything Fisk told him, to reap the benefits of a cooperation that, on its face, was simply too good to be true. Through undoubtedly similar manipulations, Fisk acquires the services of at least eight FBI agents, including the unstable Benjamin Poindexter (aka Bullseye), all of whom are assigned to his detail at the safe house.

With the addition of Nadeem, on the hook for murder due to the machinations of Hattley and Fisk's fixer, Felix Manning, the agents fan out across New York City to do the bidding of their new boss. However, they don't refer to him as Mr. Fisk; instead, he's given a code name: Kingpin. He lives up to that moniker, too, as he orders them to apprehend rival crime bosses so he may present a business proposition: 25 percent of all their profits, in exchange for protection from federal authorities. It's an offer he won't permit them to refuse.

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.