If you started to think that Daredevil: Born Again would let Vanessa Fisk survive in the episode “The Grand Design,” that was intentional. The writers didn’t give Vanessa Fisk a dramatic, sudden death. They gave her a beautiful goodbye disguised as a recovery. Throughout the episode, the writers used classic tropes to subtly hint that Vanessa was never meant to survive.
False Hope of a Full Recovery
When Vanessa wakes up from surgery, she’s a completely different person. She has reverted back to the warm, kind woman she was before she allowed herself to be corrupted by Wilson’s violent world. To Wilson and to the audience, it looks like the worst is over.
Unfortunately, minutes later Vanessa starts repeating the same thing over again and slurring her words before she flatlines. This isn’t a trope per se, but it is based on a real-life condition called a terminal rally, or “dead man’s party.” It’s when a terminally ill patient shows sudden improvement in their physical or mental health shortly before dying. In the days or hours leading up to their death, they can be lucid, alert and full of energy before they permanently take a turn for the worst.
The Last Request
A “death in the limelight” is when a story shifts its focus onto a specific character solely because they’re about to die.
Near the end of “The Grand Design,” Vanessa asks Wilson to tell her the story of how they met. Sometimes when a character asks to relive their most cherished memory while in critical condition it’s because they know, on some level, they don’t have much time left. In Vanessa’s case, this blends into another trope: the last request. Asking for pineapple juice and for Wilson to tell her how they met are the last things she’ll ever say to him.
Before that, we got several flashbacks showing the events that lead to Wilson meeting Vanessa at the art gallery, the beginning of their love story. The flashback sequences serve as a eulogy that looks back on a more innocent time in Vanessa’s life before it all went downhill.
Removing the Last of Wilson’s Humanity
Throughout the series, Vanessa has been the only person capable of humanizing Wilson Fisk. She’s his morality pet, one of the few people Wilson is consistently kind and loving towards. She can’t stop him from continuing his criminal activities but her presence in his life keeps the worst of his cruelty at bay. Take that away, and there is nothing left to hold the monster back.
With Vanessa gone and the odds of Wilson going apeshit crazy at an all time high, it would be wrong not to mention “fridging.” It’s when a female character is killed primarily to motivate or transform a male character, with little regard for her own story. Daredevil: Born Again subverts this trope by making Vanessa a fully developed character in her own right. She has a more active role in managing Wilson’s empire and played a big role in setting the series in motion.
But that doesn’t change the fact that her death is used to break Wilson into embracing his Kingpin persona for the rest of the season. Vanessa’s death doesn’t just end her story. It moves Fisk’s arc forward.
Visual Symbolism: Light, Water, and a Painting
The episode starts with sounds from a beach Vanessa and Wilson once visited. We hear the crashing of the waves, see the bright sunlight shining down on everything.
The beach represents a happy moment in the Fisks’ lives where for once, they were just husband and wife. In fact, earlier in the series, Vanessa suggested that she and Wilson should return to that beach and leave their dangerous world behind. When she dies, we hear the sounds of the ocean waves again. A sign that Vanessa’s dream will never become reality.
And then there’s the return of Rabbit in a Snowstorm, the all-white abstract painting that brought Wilson Fisk and Vanessa together in the first season of the Netflix series. It reappears here during the flashback sequences. Bookending a character’s life with a symbol of their past is one of storytelling’s oldest closing gestures. This is where your role in this story started and this is where it ends.
These are all small details that are easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. But when you do take notice, it’s something that stays with you.
Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT.
