⚠️ Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again season 1 & 2, episodes 1–5.
It’s easy to write off Vanessa Fisk’s death in Daredevil: Born Again as a tragic case of circumstance. Her life cut short because out of all the men in Hell’s Kitchen she could fall in love with, her heart chose criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin. You could write a Shakespearean tragedy based on their marriage or how anyone caught in Wilson’s inner circle are doomed due to the violence and chaos that follows him.
Yet at the end of the day, Vanessa chose to stay with Fisk and did a lot of terrible things to help expand his empire. Innocent people have had their lives ruined or even died because of her. You could say her death was karma at work and that she had it coming.
But what if Vanessa’s death wasn’t the freak accident the show made it seem to be?
What if she planned every second of it?
Who Is Vanessa Fisk?
A brief refresher for those who don’t know the show or haven’t been following it closely.
Daredevil: Born Again is a Marvel series streaming on Disney+. It continues the story of Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who secretly fights crime as the costumed vigilante Daredevil. The show focuses on his ongoing conflict with Wilson Fisk, who is now serving as the Mayor of New York City while maintaining his influence over organized crime.
Vanessa Fisk is Wilson’s wife and the only one who can reign in his worst instincts. She’s a former art dealer who presents herself as calm, intelligent and dignified. Over time, it becomes clear that she is not just a bystander in Fisk’s world. She plays a major role in how Fisk maintains power. While he operates as an up-and-coming politician in public, Vanessa helps manage parts of his empire under everyone’s noses.
To understand why Vanessa’s death feels like something she chose, you need to know what she’s been up to in Born Again and how her actions have finally caught up to her.
Vanessa’s Secret Came Back to Haunt Her
When Wilson Fisk disappeared for several months after his confrontation with former protege Maya Lopez, Vanessa ran their criminal empire alone. For years, she used Red Hook Port to launder millions of dollars since it’s exempt from taxes and tolls.
During that time, attorney Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock’s best friend and law partner, was representing a client named Benny Cafaro after he stole twenty cases of Lafite Rothschild wine from a warehouse. Nelson planned to argue that Red Hook’s unique status as a free port made the warehouse exempt from normal legal jurisdiction. When Vanessa learned about Nelson’s involvement in the case, she decided to have him and Cafaro killed.
She had Benjamin Poindexter (Bullseye), a psychopathic former FBI agent, released from a psychiatric hospital so he could go after Foggy and his client. Taking away his medication and promising to give Dex his freedom back, Vanessa took advantage of his desperation. It’s also implied during their exchange that Wilson had no clue about Vanessa’s plans to have Foggy assassinated.
When Bullseye succeeded in killing Foggy, Vanessa abandoned him. He was sentenced to eleven consecutive life sentences in prison, though he eventually escaped near the end of season 1. During the Black & White Ball meant to celebrate Wilson’s inauguration, Bullseye initially targeted Vanessa before settling on killing Wilson, though Matt Murdock used his body as a shield instead.
While evading the Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF), Bullseye became obsessed with the idea that he could balance the scales. If he did one good deed, he could redeem himself and make up for everything he’s done. His plan was to kill Wilson and put an end to the Kingpin once and for all.
The Grand Design
In episode 4 of season 2 “Gloves Off”, Fisk plans to lure out Daredevil and Bullseye during his boxing match. He tries to send Vanessa away to keep her safe, but she shows up at Fogwell’s Gym anyway.
Immediately after Wilson wins the match, Bullseye crashes the event, killing AVTF agents with ease. He throws a glass paperweight at Vanessa but Wilson blocks it with his championship belt. However, one shard of shattered glass manages to lodge itself into Vanessa’s head and she collapses inside the ring.
In episode 5 “The Grand Design,” Vanessa is rushed to the hospital where she’s in critical condition. She undergoes surgery and when she wakes up, it seems like she’ll pull through. Minutes after waking up, Vanessa starts slurring her words as she loses consciousness. Doctors and nurses rush to revive her but you can hear the machines flatline through the chaos.
If you watch the scene again, you’ll notice little signs that Vanessa used her brief moment of lucidity to end her own life.
She Never Asked If She Was Going To Be Okay
Think about that for a moment.
You wake up in a hospital after someone makes an attempt on your life. You’re hooked up to beeping machines while your husband is staring at you with red, teary eyes.
What is the first thing any person usually asks?
What happened? Are you hurt? Is anyone else injured? Am I going to be okay?
Vanessa didn’t ask any of those questions. And it doesn’t feel like something the writers would forget to add considering how much thought and details are included in each episode.
She didn’t ask if she would be okay because she already knew the answer.
She Asked for Something She Normally Dislikes
After she wakes up, Vanessa asks Fisk to get her a glass of pineapple juice. However, Fisk reminds her that she doesn’t like pineapple and that it makes her lips tingle. She says she wants to try it anyway.
After she drinks it, she dies with the implication that she could have had a fatal allergic reaction to it.
Why would Vanessa ask for something she doesn’t like and could potentially hurt her? It’s normal for the type of brain injury she had could rewrite a person’s personality or mess with their memories. Maybe she forgot she hates pineapple. Or maybe Vanessa knew she was allergic and wanted to trigger a reaction?
What if, with the weight of everything she knew pressing down on her, she decided she wanted a way out?
Fisk Blocked the Nurse
After Vanessa asked for pineapple juice, Fisk immediately ordered the nurse to fetch it before she could even begin to examine Vanessa. No check of her vitals. No assessment of her condition after waking from serious brain surgery. Fisk was so overwhelmed with joy, it overrode his instincts to provide Vanessa with the utmost care.
Did Vanessa know her husband well enough to manipulate him without Fisk realizing it?
She knew Fisk’s love for her can make him act irrational. He’s too devoted to Vanessa, to the point where he enables her darker impulses despite his protectiveness towards her. And Vanessa was counting on using that to her advantage.
She Asked for a Story. Twice.
After drinking the juice, Vanessa asks Fisk to tell her the story of how they first met. Then she asks him again.
This is not something a confused person does. They usually ask where they are, or what day it is. After drinking the pineapple juice, remember, her lips would be tingling. She said nothing other than the drink was delicious. Then calmly, while her lips were tingling, asked the man she loved to tell a story.
Vanessa wanted to hear their story one more time, before she died. She wasn’t trying to relieve a memory. She was choosing the last thing she would ever hear.
The Return of the Rabbit in a Snowstorm
When Vanessa first arrived at her job at the Scene Contempo art gallery, her boss didn’t want to display a particular painting. It was called Rabbit in a Snowstorm. It was an abstract painting featuring various gradations of the color white.
Most people saw nothing when they looked at the painting but Vanessa displayed it anyway, against her boss’s wishes. She was convinced that the right person would walk in and pay three times the asking price.
He did. Wilson Fisk walked through that door, saw the painting, and paid three times the asking price for it. And that was the beginning of everything.
Coincidence or excellent planning?
Decked in White
In Vanessa’s dream or vision, memory, call it what you like, she and Fisk are together on a beach, both dressed in white. In fact, the night Vanessa was attacked by Bullseye she was wearing a white dress.
This color is important because for Daredevil: Born Again, Vanessa’s signature color is red. The color symbolizes Vanessa’s transition into someone who embraces her husband’s violent world. She’s become the Lady Macbeth of the series, a more sinister and active partner in Fisk’s criminal empire.
Yet in the last couple of episodes Vanessa is dressed in white, which in East Asian cultures symbolizes death, ghosts and the spirit ascending to the afterlife. Interestingly, the one of final glimpses we see of Vanessa in “The Grand Design” is a bright light shining on her as she stares at the Rabbit in a Snowstorm, and then the camera. And yes, she’s wearing white here. The subtext couldn’t be more obvious.
The Beach
Earlier in Born Again, Vanessa talked to Fisk about escaping the city, the crime, the politics, all of it. She wanted to return to a peaceful beach they visited in the past.
“The Grand Design” starts with Vanessa and Fisk on that beach, decked in white while we hear the waves crash onto the beach. The episode ends with the sound of waves.
Vanessa’s dream was never going to come true while she was alive. Fisk’s hunger for power would not allow it. The actress who plays Vanessa, Ayelet Zurer, said in an interview that Fisk’s need for power was a hunger that Vanessa alone could never satisfy.
“I think the whole season, what’s going on is that maybe Vanessa is beginning to think that there is no end to the game. Nothing will be enough, and I think what hurts most is that maybe she’s not enough and she will not be able to take him off the game and go to some island.”
— Ayelet Zurer
She knew that. She had probably always known it.
At some point, Vanessa realized that she and Fisk are in too deep with no way out. Especially now that Bullseye is after them. This isn’t the first time Dex has targeted Vanessa and he’ll want her to suffer for manipulating him.
Also Fisk doesn’t seem to know what she made Bullseye do to Foggy. Vanessa may or may not be aware of this, but Fisk made an agreement with Matt that he wouldn’t harm Foggy and Karen Page. He even spoke with Matt at the beginning of Born Again to reaffirm that he wasn’t responsible for Foggy’s death. There’s no telling how he would have reacted to learning that Vanessa was the one who ordered the hit. And of course, Matt would make damn sure she spends the rest of her life rotting in prison if he ever got a hold of her.
So she decided that if her story had to end, she would be the one to do it, on her own terms. That the only way for her to experience any peace is to end her own life and hope for something better on the other side. This wouldn’t be the first time Vanessa had to resort to murder to escape the chaos Wilson carries with him. But this time time, the hit she’s arranging is her own demise.
That’s not a tragic accident.
It’s a part of the grand design.
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.
