The 40+ ways Daredevil: Born Again reminds you that Matt is blind (for real)

Hey all! It’s been a while, but with less than six months to go until the second season of Daredevil: Born Again, I figured it was high time to tackle the next logical installment of my ongoing list of posts detailing how these shows handle Matt’s blindness. Or rather, how we as viewers are reminded in various ways - whether by design or not - of some of the ways Matt is impacted by the fact that his other heightened senses often don’t compensate fully, and sometimes not at all.

I say this just as a reminder of the reason I ended up writing the first post in this series, which is that assertions that Daredevil is not meaningfully blind remain incredibly common, and I've decided that the best way to shatter this myth is to actually look at the character’s on-screen record and apply some logic and reading between the lines. 

This series of posts has always had a lot of hits and been pretty popular, and I’ve already had people ask me for an update since Daredevil returned to the small screen. Ask, and I shall deliver! Eventually.

As you may recall from earlier posts and videos, I really loved what Born Again did with Matt’s senses. With one glaring exception, which we’ll touch on briefly below, this show was nearly perfect in my book. And so, it should come as no surprise that I’m nearly as impressed with the show’s treatment of Matt’s blindness as I am with the portrayal of his heightened senses.

While it’s certainly possible to deliver good senses writing while sidestepping much of the blindness angle - just as it’s possible to combine lackluster senses writing with an ambitious approach to presenting the character as still being blind - I’ve found that the two tend to go together. If you’re going to really get inside Daredevil’s head from the standpoint of what he is able to perceive of his surroundings, it helps to have a good grasp of what information he would be missing and what information from his other, heightened senses might conceivably help close the gap.

Let’s have a closer look!

1. Throughout the season – The phone

   Last time we met Matt, in season three of the original series, he spent much of his time hanging around a church basement before returning to some minimal legal work. He did have a phone, and that phone certainly did have some accessibility features, but it also looked to be about fifteen years old.

   In the first season of Born Again, we instead see quite a lot of Matt’s professional life, along with his just existing as a civilian in New York. And so, the smart phone is back, and this time around Matt makes frequent use of the voice activated features that are now commonplace and widely used. The phone also audibly announces the various callers to him. None of this is unexpected or a big deal. However, any kind of smart phone belongs on this list for the simple reason that Matt’s use of such a device would not in any way, shape or form set him apart from a totally blind person without heightened senses.

2. Episodes 1 (at time stamp 31:15) and 3 (at 38:00) - The culinary arts

   Back in the very first season, Matt cooked breakfast for Claire. Aside from that, we haven’t seen much evidence of his culinary skills. Meanwhile, Wilson Fisk has been the one to dazzle us with his omelettes. In Born Again, we see Matt cook for both himself and (later) Heather Glenn. His efforts in the first episode are thwarted by the distraction of learning that Fisk is running for mayor, but he probably would have whipped up something good if it hadn’t triggered the fire alarm.

   Even in the real world, blindness is not something that would prevent a person from becoming a good, or even excellent, chef. After all, blind contestant Christine Ha went on to win the third season of Master Chef. I also like to think that this is one arena where having a heightened sense of smell, in particular, would be a great asset. However, cooking also kind of sits in that gray area where Matt’s senses might take him some of the way along the blind-sighted spectrum, from a functional standpoint, but he’d likely still find certain blind techniques or tools useful for certain subtasks, and would probably place a big emphasis on organization.

3. Episode 1 (at 04:48) - The comment

   In the scene showing Cherry’s retirement party at Josie’s, before everything goes south, Karen makes a comment to Matt about Foggy and Kirsten at the bar. I still, to this day, have no idea what “Foggy did it” is in reference to. Karen can’t be talking about drinking from a very particular bottle of booze, because that becomes a plot point much later on. So if anyone has a clue about what “it” is in reference to, let me know in the comments!
   

   

   In terms of what makes it onto this list, it doesn’t matter much though. What is interesting is that Karen, who at this point has known Matt for many years - and has known about his senses and Daredevil activities for the majority of that time - is still not operating under the assumption that Matt is constantly and magically attuned to everything going on around them. He can do things she cannot, such as when he moments later decides to eavesdrop on his friend’s conversation and tell Karen about it, but that clearly also works the other way around.

4. Episode 1 (at 17:50) - The morning routine

   At the “one year later” mark in the story, we are treated to some time alone with Matt in his apartment while he’s getting ready for work. There are several details here that easily could have been listed separately, but let’s tackle them in one go, focusing on the ones that I found more prominent.

   At the start of the scene, Matt is standing at the window, very much not enjoying the sprawling cityscape at dawn that is reflected back to the viewer. The way this is shot, with how we’re brusquely pulled back from this picturesque scene with the mundane act of Matt bringing a coffee cup to his mouth before putting it away feels deliberate. It’s not as if there isn’t room for Matt to enjoy standing there in silent contemplation, facing the window, with easy access to the sounds from outside or the subtle warmth of the sun, but it does seem to also serve the purpose of reminding the average sighted viewer of the difference of perspective that exists.

   We also notice that Matt has finally invested in a TV. The fact that we never saw one in his old apartment always did feel like an unnecessary omission to me. Keeping up with the news, as he does in this scene, seems like an obvious reason to have a TV. In the age of streaming, many popular shows also feature audio description. At the same time, Matt’s heightened senses obviously don't add anything to the experience, which is why I mention it here.

   

   Then there’s the LP record, which appears to have braille labeling on it (though it’s quite hard to tell), and of course the very enviable walk-in closet. Aside from the labels on the shelves, we see Matt inspect the suit jacket by feel, presumably to identify the one that matches his pants.

5. Episode 1 (at 34:40) - The watch (and the computer)

   I’ll have reason to return to the topic of Matt and his laptop further down, but for now let’s just note that Matt has a very cool tactile watch. The watch in question is called the Bradley and is a 2015 Red Dot Design Award winner.

6. Episode 1 (at 35:30) - The stack of newspapers

   On his way to meet Heather, for what neither of them know is a date, Matt listens to the conversations all around him pertaining to the mayoral election and Fisk’s candidacy. He is startled when a stack of newspapers is dropped on the ground right next to him. He would likely know what they are from shape, weight, and distinct smell of newsprint, but will obviously not be privy to any of the information printed on the first page.

7. Episode 1 (at 35:50) - The Heather encounter

   Matt’s first meeting with Heather presents us with a situation that I’m not sure we’ve encountered before during the course of the original show, but which would realistically be quite common. Matt, who is the first to arrive at the coffee shop, doesn’t know what Heather looks like, and wouldn’t be able to recognize her based on her appearance even if such knowledge could be magically downloaded to his brain. Furthermore, he can’t make eye contact with her or anyone else in order to look for someone trying to find him. He makes the correct call that this is Heather approaching based on what I assume to be timing, Heather’s hesitation, and quite possibly smell and overall shape. Still, Heather will have a much easier time identifying him in this situation than vice versa.

   

   I bring this up here because it’s a good example of how Matt’s blindness, even with heightened senses, can make certain social situations a bit trickier. As a species, us humans often rely quite heavily on subtle visual cues that are easily forgotten about in the context of communication because we also (typically) have speech. But even minor and fleeting facial expressions add an important layer to our interactions, and we also use our gaze to quite literally “point” at the people we are either addressing or talking about, or to reference something around us.

   When Matt, in episode three, is confronted by officer Powell in the bathroom, his “are you talking to me?” is meant to mock him. Both men know that they are alone, and they both know that the other person knows that as well. But that doesn’t mean that Matt may not occasionally be unsure of whether someone is addressing him or some other person nearby, for the simple reason that he can’t see who the speaker is looking at. Sensitivity to eye gaze is also an important element when several people in a group take turns speaking, and while Matt has other quite credible ways of knowing when someone is about to speak, he’d be less able than the average person of picking up on who the speaker is addressing in ambiguous situations.

8. Episode 1 (at 39:35) - The investigator

   This is where we are introduced to Cherry as Matt’s investigator. We’ve known since the start of the episode that the two have been acquainted for some time, because Matt was at his ill-fated retirement party, and we also know that Cherry found out that Matt is Daredevil by the end of it. We learn here that Cherry has been working as Matt’s investigator, the kind of role that might otherwise have fallen to Karen or someone like Jessica Jones.

   What I find interesting about this is the implicit admission that it would be unreasonable for Matt to fully be able to do what an investigator can do. Part of it would obviously be the lack of time, expertise and connections that someone like Cherry can bring to the table, and which would be useful regardless of Matt’s vision status. Having an investigator isn’t something that would be useful solely for the fact that he cannot see in the traditional way, even though certain tasks are made easier and more expedient through the visual sense. But it’s a nice contrast to what was one of my biggest gripes with the otherwise excellent season three of the original series, which was the phenomenon of Matt simply “knowing stuff” while not even having access to a computer or a smart phone.

9. Episode 1 (at 42:50) - The Fisk meeting

   Matt’s meeting with Wilson Fisk at the diner was an amazing scene all around. Talk about the kind of tension thick enough to cut with a knife! What places it on this list though is the way Matt talks about Fisk’s physique in strictly non-visual terms. With “your step is lighter” Matt highlights something that is noticeable to him about his adversary, but which would go undetected by the majority of people who operate within a more typical “sensory hierarchy” where vision reigns supreme.

   
   

   I find the understanding of Matt’s heightened senses, hearing specifically, as providing a sort of ersatz “sight” that restores some of the functions of vision to be fairly uncontroversial. On the other hand, I consider statements such as “he can see better than all of us!” to be utterly ridiculous. Removing all contrast (except whatever is provided by the distance from objects, and their spatial arrangement) from the visual channel constitutes an absolutely massive loss of sensory information. There is simply no way around that. What remains is enough to make Daredevil a reasonably believable superhero, and certainly enough to explain his ability to move through space safely with an awareness of nearby objects. But whatever this sensory experience amounts to, it would be far weaker and less salient than what he gets from his other senses, and that is exactly what I’m getting from Matt’s comment here.

10. Episode 1 (at 44:20) - The piece of “flair”

    Okay, so my using the word "flair" is obviously a reference to Jennifer Aniston’s character in the movie Office Space (External YouTube link), and the buttons she is forced to wear by her boss – or, in his words, strongly encouraged to.

    In the case of Daredevil: Born Again, I’m thinking of the Fisk supporter who taps on the diner window during the latter’s conversation with Matt, pointing enthusiastically at his button. While there is no mistaking the man's zeal, Matt is obviously unable to see the button.

11. Episode 2 (at 11:40) – The reaction

    So, we’re finally on to the second episode! Here, I want to bring attention to something that Daredevil: Born Again touches on that we also haven’t see a ton of elsewhere (including the comics), which is Matt dealing with the stigma of blindness. Here, it’s Hector Ayala’s reaction to realizing the strange lawyer who appeared out of nowhere is blind. Hector’s reaction seems to be more one of wonder than anything overtly negative, but Matt’s huff of a response suggests he’s used to it, though not amused.

12. Episode 2 (at 28:05) – The video

    Later in episode two, after Cherry has done some digging, Matt confronts Hector with a video of the White Tiger on his phone. This obviously requires a backstory that entails Cherry both supplying Matt with the video and explaining what is shown on it. Because he obviously can’t see that.

    

13. Episode 2 (at 35:20) – The touching of the railing

    One thing I pointed out in my book, in the chapter on touch, was how I’ve generally found this sense underused in Daredevil. This is also the case with the sense of smell, but I suspect the neglect in that case is more due to us collectively tending to forget we even have it.

    When it comes to the sense of touch, on the other hand, Matt using it for things the average person wouldn’t risks bringing too much focus on his blindness, and this is what I suspect has created an awkwardness around it. Because while it is Matt’s heightened senses that are collectively meant to compensate for his lack of sight, they cannot be allowed to do so in a manner that has him appear too blind. Hearing and smelling can be done discretely, but touching sort of gives up the game. For this reason, it was a welcome surprise to see Matt’s hand explore the railing and the stone masonry when he’s listening to the sounds coming from the church across the street. Does he need touch to know the railing is there? No. But, it likely gives him a better “look” at it.

14. Episode 2 (at 37:00) – The cab incident

    The scene where Matt decides to stake out and follow Officer Powell is great all around. One thing it does well is put the spotlight on Matt’s hearing, which is the primary sense he’s using to keep track of his target. After Matt is almost hit by a cab, and temporarily loses this connection, it takes him a few beats to find Powell again.

    

    The very fact that Matt didn’t stop in time also highlights the role of attention in his ability to operate as he does. There have been runs of the Daredevil comic that treats Matt’s senses as if they would make him almost omniscient, simultaneously aware of virtually everything that goes on around him. I personally don’t find this compelling at all. It also suggests that there would be much more going on with Matt than his simply having heightened senses, as if he’s got some additional superpowers on top of the ones we all know about.

    The TV show has generally been more comfortable with the idea that Daredevil can be distracted, and the cab scene is another example of this. The sound as the light changes reminds us that Matt can actually hear that, but is too focused on Powell to notice the cab in time to stop.

15. Episode 2 (at 42:45) – The Punisher tattoo

    Tracking Powell leads to the location of a witness Matt needs for the Hector Ayala case. This is also the scene in which Matt’s life becomes much more complicated as he takes out Powell and his accomplice. We as the viewing audience are treated to a subtle clue that completely passes Matt by, the presence of a Punisher tattoo on Powell’s neck.

16. Episode 3 (at 01:25) – The beach and the frog

    At the very start of episode three, Hector tells Matt the story about his home in Puerto Rico, offering a description that contains both visual and auditory components. The scene Hector paints serves as a reminder for both the viewer and possibly Matt himself of the visual beauty of the world that he cannot appreciate. I doubt we’re meant to feel sorry for him, nor that Matt would spend much time dwelling on these things, but it’s definitely a consequence of his blindness that his other senses can’t really compensate for even though they likely bring other pleasures.

17. Episode 3 (at 12:50) – The black eye

    In one of the funnier scenes of the season, Matt brings attention to Powell’s black eye when the latter is on the witness stand. Because he is the one responsible, Matt obviously knows that Powell likely displays visible signs of having been beaten to a pulp, including a black eye. At the same time, he can’t actually see it.

18. Episode 3 (at 15:05) – The braille

    Matt can be seen reviewing his braille notes in the court room while he and Kirsten wait for their witness to show up. There is still no indication that the TV version of Matt is able to read actual print by touch, which is very much appreciated. (I know many people have brought up the blueprints from season one, but more on this further down the list.)

    Print-reading is not among Daredevil’s most extreme skills, though it only really made sense back in the day, when printing techniques were different than they are today.

19. Episode 3 (at 29:15) – The pictures shown in court

    During the court proceedings, witnesses are brought in to testify to Hector’s character and how they were saved by the White Tiger. This entails showing pictures and other types of evidence meant to be viewed. This would not be unique to this trial, and Matt would naturally be reliant on having this kind of material described to him.

    

    It seems clear to me that having heightened senses would be very helpful in Matt’s professional career when it comes to gauging people’s reactions. His hearing and sense of smell help him select the clients he wants to represent, in jury selection, when figuring out whether a particular legal strategy is received by the judge and jury in the way he intended, and in understanding how a witness is reacting to a particular line of questioning. All huge things when you think about it. However, his heightened senses don’t really help with many of the other aspects of the job, including all of the research and paperwork that happen outside of court.

20. Episode 4 (at 15:00) – The client’s dismissal

    As mentioned above, in the context of Matt’s first meeting with Hector Ayala, this season touches on blindness as a social factor in Matt’s life to a greater extent than we’ve seen previously. The scene where Matt is openly mocked by his new and reluctant client Mr. Bradley is a more extreme example of this. I doubt something this direct would be very common, but being underestimated in general probably is.

    While he doesn’t express it in so many words, you can tell Matt finds this both frustrating and annoying. And it seems like his drive to go above and beyond for Mr. Bradley is not only to serve his client, but to prove what he is capable of. That need to prove something, to himself and others, seems to me to be a central aspect of the character and likely accounts for some of his drive to be Daredevil, and one can imagine that a steady stream of being underestimated feeds into it.

21. Episode 4 (at 20:30) – The sounds of the adversary

    After meeting his client at the police station, Matt runs into Powell again. The way the scene is structured, it’s clear that Powell is recognized by the way he sounds (footsteps and voice while on the phone), and not by any elaborate sensing of his general appearance.

    

22. Episode 4 (at 35:35) – The bullet

    I went into some detail about what I liked about the scene in which Matt finds the bullet that killed Hector Ayala in a video on YouTube. Here, I’d just like to point out how easily this vital clue would have been missed if the Punisher logo hadn’t been etched into the bullet.

23. Episode 4 (at 38:05) – The stuff in Frank’s lair

    When Matt pays a visit to Frank Castle’s hideout, we get another brief look at a very apt use of the sense of touch. While I don’t doubt that Matt can sense the shape of the weapons right in front of him, even before he reaches up to touch them, making sense of the circuit boards (or whatever that is) on the table might be more confusing and present merely as a pile of random crap without the use of touch to verify. Of course, the pictures and notes Frank have posted on his walls remain undetectable.

    

24. Episode 5 (at 03:10) – The missed name sign

    When we first meet Matt in episode five, during what is promising to be a very exciting visit to the bank, he is seated at a desk waiting for a Mr. Aldrich. It turns out that Mr. Aldrich is out for the day, and that Matt will instead be meeting Mr. Yusuf Khan. He would have known this if he had been able to read the sign on Mr. Khan’s desk. Why the person who likely directed him to that desk didn’t clue him in on that he wasn’t going to be seen by Mr. Aldrich is another matter.

25. Episode 5 (at 04:40) – The Miss Marvel Funko

    What would Matt make of a Funko? Who knows. According to my own “head canon,” he likely “sees” in enough detail to make out the two main shapes that dominate the appearance of a Funko so that he can tell that Mr. Khan appears to be holding a doll-like object. But that’s about the extent of it. So no, he will be none the wiser about what a Miss Marvel Funko figure looks like, what differentiates it from any other figure, or whether it carries any resemblance to the real Miss Marvel, whom he’s never met.

26. Episode 5 (at 17:40) – The blind orphan conversation

    I guess I’ll categorize this as another one of the situations where Matt bristles at receiving any kind of differential treatment or being the subject of pity, even when the offenders in question are bank robbers. Having said that, I must admit I chuckled at Matt being compared to a “wee Charles Dickens character.”

27. Episode 5 (at 26:50) – The vault scene

    The scene with Matt and Yusuf Khan in the bank vault was another scene I really appreciated, and which also has its own video dedicated to it. After being so used to writers working a bit too hard to make sure Matt can solve any conundrum in his path, it’s refreshing to see him take a step back and let Mr. Khan put his eyes to use in finding the right locker.

    

28. Episode 6 (at 11:50) – The Ayala girl

    While in conversation with Kristen, Matt is informed that the “Ayala girl is here." By his look of genuine surprise, it appears he hadn't yet noticed her by the alternative means available to him.

    Matt being able to hear heartbeats from reasonable distances (though other body sounds are objectively much louder) is one thing, and being able to simultaneously be aware of the positions of a dozen people – with whom he enjoys varying degrees of familiarity while simultaneously filtering out all of the other much louder sounds in the environment – is quite another. It makes more sense that he would need to be paying active attention to these things, and the show has repeatedly suggested that this is indeed the case.

    Whatever the case may be, one thing he cannot do is simply look through the glass portioning and see her, or anyone else, through the walls of the conference room. A glass wall is not less “transparent” than any other wall to him. He can hear whatever sound makes it through the wall, which is usually quite a lot in this universe, but the glass is neither more nor less of an obstacle.

29. Episode 6 (at 21:55 and 29:10) – The screen reader

    We see Matt doing research on his computer twice in this episode, at the office and at home, both times using a screen reader interface to navigate the screen and listen to what is being read back to him. Which, of course, is the only way he’d be able to interact with a computer, and why these moments belong on this list.

    While I very much appreciate that they’re giving us these kinds of tidbits, I have to say that I was a little disappointed by how they did it. Because the absolutely glacial speed at which the text was read out made Matt seem far from the kind of power user of assistive technology he would have to be to manage his job. I realize that they also wanted the audience to be able to understand what he was researching, but surely they could have found some other way to do it. If anyone should have the speed setting on that thing set to the absolute maximum, it’s Matt Murdock.

    

30. Episode 7 (at 08:10) – The face touching

    So, we’re at the first of the pair of interconnected scenes that absolutely made my jaw drop, and not in a good way. We’ll get to how the full sequence of events makes zero sense below, but for now we’ll just discuss the face touching scene in isolation.

    Let’s first get to why it’s even on this list, which is that it at least doesn’t signal to the viewer that Matt can't see Heather. That’s the one saving grace here. The rest of it is just pure cringe. It would make perfect sense for him to caress her cheek or touch her in the way anyone might in a physically intimate situation. The full “face scan,” though? No. Why are the creative types still putting blind people doing shit like this in movies and TV shows when this isn’t really a thing the typical blind person would do? Argh.

31. Episode 7 (at 13:45) – The hospital conversation

    Connected to the scenes above and below, but thankfully very much its own thing, we have Matt talking to Angela in the hospital for clues to something about Muse’s lair that he might have missed. This one actually makes sense. Let’s all remember that Matt has been there, as Daredevil, saving Angela and beating up Muse. But because he’s well aware of the possibility that he might have missed something important that he couldn’t see, he sees fit to ask Angela about what she noticed. Good.

32. Episode 7 (at 23:10) – The art touching

    I don’t have the mental bandwidth to rehash everything that is wrong with the scanning art with his fingertips scene, especially when I already have a video up about this very topic. All I will say here is that it seems that the writers have forgotten both how art works, and what it means that Matt is blind. Don’t get me wrong. They understand that Matt is blind, which is why he even has to go to the trouble of touching these paintings and drawings to begin with (only some of which seem to give him any information at all). This is the only reason this scene is even on this list. But it’s as if they’ve forgotten the deeper implications of Matt’s blindness.

    Let me spell it out: Matt doesn’t know what Heather looks like in the sighted sense. He may have an idea, face touching or not, that makes sense to him in his own mental “language,” but it’s not something that can be easily translated to how she would appear to someone with eyesight. This seems to be a pretty big thing to miss, and this doesn’t even get to how the painted version of Heather doesn’t even correspond texturally to what she actually looks like.

    And, speaking or art, I was very surprised that the aspect of a blind superhero going after an artist serial killer wasn’t more developed as an overall plot point. Matt never asks anyone about what kind of art Muse is making, or where it appears. It’s all very odd.

33. Episode 8 (at 19:05) – The stop at Josie’s

    We’re finally at the tail end of the season, and a switch back to the new creative team whom we last met in episode one. In this scene, an increasingly frantic Matt makes a stop at Josie’s. Or rather, he’s hovering around outside, and she invites him in. He makes the comment that “it’s probably a good thing I can’t see the place,” in reference to all the damages of Bullseye’s rampage the previous year. Of course, Matt has multiple ways of assessing the state of the place, including lingering smells and a sense of physical disarray. However, the statement is not a complete lie as there are certainly also traces of what happened there that he would not be able to detect.

34. Episode 8 (at 31:35) – The ball

    The scene where Matt approaches and then enters the ball at Gracie mansion is a master class in depicting the complexity of this character. Upon entering the building, Matt almost runs up the steps, easily detectible to him, and can’t seem to be bothered to keep up the pretense of needing his cane. Until he makes it inside and the pretense suddenly becomes, well, much less of an act. The room full of people chattering and moving about seems to present a legitimate challenge in distinguishing one person from the next or even finding a clear path. Though he does manage to zero in Wilson Fisk before too long.

    
    

35. Episode 9 (at 06:45) – The mistaken identity

    When Matt regains consciousness in the hospital, Kirsten and Heather are in the room with him. When Matt initially confuses Heather for Karen, he torpedoes a relationship that was already in crisis. It’s easy to read too much into this from a sensory perspective, especially as Matt is probably quite groggy, but I suspect being able to actually see Heather would have made recognizing her a bit speedier.

36. Episode 9 (at 23:35) – The wound check

    After Matt escapes from the hospital and later has his apartment blown to bits, Karen returns and picks up Matt and Frank. Back in Frank’s “lair,” Karen attends to Matt’s bullet wound, and he asks her “How’s it look?” Can Matt assess the state of his physical condition in other ways? Sure. He wouldn’t be a good judge of how the injury appears to others though.

37. Episode 9 (at 27:25) – The borrowed eyes

    When Matt realizes he needs to dig into Foggy’s old, archived paperwork, he asks Karen if she could come along to “be his eyes.” This question is nothing short of astonishing. It shouldn’t be, and it’s not as if TV show Matt hasn’t “borrowed” people’s eyes previously - take for example Claire reading Matt text messages in season one, or Matt asking Foggy about Frank’s appearance in court in season two. However, having Matt explicitly ask for help with a crucial task that might have otherwise been sidestepped goes a long way toward shattering the myth that he isn’t blind in any real sense. (And yes, this particular myth is obviously why this series of posts exists to begin with.) I do suspect that we will be seeing more of this kind of thing in season two now that Matt is officially teaming up with people.

38. Episode 9 (at 31:05) – The storage

    Which takes us to the scene of Karen looking through the old paperwork, and Matt comfortable doing nothing besides keeping her company. There is the tender moment when Matt identifies one of the boxes he packed (which suitably contains various objects rather than documents), and the two reminisce about it, before Karen goes back to locating the document Foggy’s case was riding on and reading it to Matt.

    This scene sits in stark contrast to a scene from an older comic in which Matt, as Daredevil, successfully digs through an archive by finger-reading. I should stress that even if Matt could read print by touch, this would be an arduous task. It would mean having to closely examine everything on the page, where a sighted person could quickly rifle through a pile and with a single glance separate the “not its” from whatever needs a closer look.
     

    One of the obvious benefits of vision is the way it allows for the assimilation of large amounts of information quickly in one go, whereas Matt can only “see” with his fingers what they’re touching at any one time. This is one reason why I’ve dismissed the blueprint scene from season one as a case of reading print by touch. Because his handling of the papers is so brief and otherwise limited, it seems more likely that he’s simply ascertaining that these are blueprints - a more general finding associated with a particular paper texture and maybe a vague sense of printed lines on top - as opposed to gaining insight into what exactly this set of blueprints is depicting.

    This is also yet another reason the art touching scene from earlier in this season is so spectacularly ill-advised. His fingers cannot “see” anything beyond the borders of the fingertips. Even in the best of circumstances, it would be like looking at something through narrow tubes.

39. Episode 9 (at 42:35) – The duo at the dock

    This example, along with the final two that end this list, are great “fix-its” for me, in that they successfully challenge things and perspectives in a way that runs counter, albeit subtly, to things we’ve seen before.

    When Karen helpfully fills in what is happening at the docks down below, more specifically that the people there are from Fisk’s task force, I can’t help but be reminded of a scene from season one. In the seventh episode, “Stick,” Matt and his former mentor are going in search of the Black Sky (a young kid Stick ends up killing by the end), and Matt starts listing exactly what guns they’re carrying.

    He’s frequently done similar things in the comics, but that doesn’t make it any less jarring to me. I just have a very hard time squaring my understanding of the logical extent of Daredevil’s powers with that level of detailed knowledge. The Born Again scene makes much more sense.

40. Episode 9 (at 43:40) – The description

    While still at the dock, Karen changes the conversation (a bit abruptly in my opinion) to what she’d asked him years ago about what it was like to be “living in the darkness,” to which Matt had replied that “it’s not dark, it’s like a thousand suns.” I’ve had people ask me what I made of this, considering my past comments on the “world on fire” take on how Matt perceives the world. As someone who comes from the perspective that Matt’s world is explainable, I was frustrated to see what amounted to nothing more than a visual effects filter with no underlying logic.

    So, what to make of the “thousand suns” comment. Well, without knowing the exact intentions of the creative team, I actually see it as an attempt to rehabilitate the world on fire, as a way to pivot away from it without having the scene overtly stricken from the record. My reasoning behind this is that the mental image of “a thousand suns” drives home the idea that Matt sees nothing (in the strict sense, without little quotes around the word sees). Unlike a visual scene that is simply “on fire,” a thousand suns suggests something either so bright that it obliterates everything else, or a description of bright static (if we imagine the stars as viewed from far away, scattered across a night sky). Either way, it may as well be darkness, because there is no information contained within it, just noise.

    Interestingly, the comment doesn’t just put a more appetizing spin on the world on fire, it also challenges the real-world myth that blind people “see” black or darkness, as opposed to nothing at all or, as in the case for some, various phantom phenomena. The “nothing” in this scenario would be more like what the typical person would see outside of their visual field. We don’t think of the visual field as fading to black at the edges, it just fades to nothing. Just as we don’t experience the world behind us as dark so much as simply “unseen.”

    Even a cursory look at this topic suggests that people experience total blindness differently. To someone who was born without sight, the concept of dark is just as abstract as the concept of light. People who have lost their sight and are able to put a visual description to what they’re (not) seeing may also report “nothingness,” though others may experience various patterns of light, even bright light, generated spontaneously by the visual system. Matt’s “a thousand suns” may well reflect exactly such an experience, and it may very well exist alongside what I would argue is the “pseudo-visual” experience that provides him with a sense of objects in space which would share some, but not all, of the subjective qualities of traditional eyesight.

41. Episode 9 (at 47:45) – The childhood reminiscence

    In one of the very final scenes of the season, Matt and Karen talk some more and Matt reflects on his past:

    “You know when I was a kid, after the accident, I thought God had taken my sight. When I grew up, I came to believe that in exchange, he'd given me a special destiny. Like a mask and a purpose could save my life.”

    When Karen asks, "didn't it?," he says:

    No. It wasn't the mask. It was me needing to believe in it that saved me. My mistake was thinking I was immune to the darkness. And I let it creep inside me. I let the dark power me."

    The way Matt (or Charlie, in this context) emphasizes the words in the sentence "I thought God had taken my sight" is a bit confusing. When you hear the slight emphasis on the word “taken,” you suspect that he’s about to tell us that God didn’t actually take his sight (because heightened senses and all that). But when you hear all of it in context, you realize that it would have made more sense to emphasize the word God. He believed that God had taken his sight as part of bestowing him with some higher purpose, and then framing it as something he had to believe to get through it at all.

    

    What I find interesting about this scene is that it offers a more nuanced perspective than the simple “boy has tragic accident, boy loses his sight, boy realizes he has heightened senses that are better than sight, and finally boy becomes superhero. That Matt would have very mixed and even contradictory feelings about his blinding injury, and everything that followed, and what it’s meant in terms of losses and gains, is not surprising.

    Humans as individuals can obviously be both very resilient and very good at making meaning out of even difficult situations. And, everything that happens to us, and every choice we make, creates a fork in the road that means that all the things that happen downstream of that - good or bad - become intertwined with that initial event. Over time, our experiences shape how we view ourselves. And so, it’s not uncommon for people to put even objectively (or at least initially) undesirable or unwanted experiences in the context of “if X hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had positive experience Y or met wonderful person Z.” This creates meaning and value around X. I’ve seen examples of very real people who have lost their sight (I can think of more than one person but won’t quote anyone directly) express sentiments such as “I’m very happy with my life as it is and don’t feel the need to be cured,” and “I wouldn’t wish going through this on my worst enemy” in almost the same breath, and have it make sense.

    We see an example of this line of thinking at the end of the third season of the original show when Matt talks to Sister Maggie by the stained-glass windows about Daredevil as a positive outcome of what had happened to him as a child, even though he’d been struggling with coming to terms with it at the time. In this new scene from Born Again, we are again reminded of the fact that Matt did suffer a loss that he had to create meaning around. It's a more mature approach to the whole genre than the idea that any present state of self-acceptance is due simply to his heightened senses and what they allow him to do, as opposed to a more human sort of coping mechanisms. Although, as coping mechanisms go, putting on a mask and becoming a vigilante is probably more common in their universe than in our own.

That's it for this series of posts until next season! Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 😉