Warning: Major spoilers ahead for episode 5 of “Daredevil: Born Again”
“Daredevil: Born Again” has officially said goodbye to another original cast member from the Netflix series — despite a brief glimpse of hope that she might make it.
After a startling cliffhanger in episode 4, this week’s episode of the Disney+ series saw Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) beloved Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) in the hospital, after having her head impaled with shards of glass. It was bloody, but she was alive.
As the episode continued, fans were treated to flashbacks of their love — as well as Matt Murdock’s (Charlie Cox) own life, bringing the brief but welcome return of Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) — and in the end, it appeared as though Vanessa made it through surgery and would recover. She did indeed wake up, and asked Wilson to tell her the story of how they met. However, once he’d finished, she asked for the same story again — before suddenly coding and, finally, shockingly, succumbing to her injuries.
“When the decision was made for Matt to lose Foggy, the conversation started about Kingpin losing Vanessa,” showrunner Dario Scardapane told TheWrap. “It had to be — it’s from the comics. There’s a line that ‘This fight poisons everything,’ and who succumbs?”
“Who’s collateral damage to that poison? Foggy was, now what is the collateral damage for Fisk?” he continued. “Every action in our little world has an equal and opposite reaction, and that was part of the discussion.”
For Ayelet Zurer, who’s played the character for 10 years now, the twist was bittersweet, and one that put the writer side of her brain at odds with the actor side. The actress admitted that she needed some time to grieve, but now, she’s made her peace, and agrees with Scardapane about the need.
“This is a show about two powers, right? The sun and the moon of Charlie as Daredevil and Vincent as Kingpin,” she told TheWrap. “And so each one needs a loss to move in a certain direction. And so that was sort of in the stars.”
You can read TheWrap’s discussion with Ayelet Zurer, below (Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity).
TheWrap: You know what’s funny is, even with all that blood, I was like, “There’s no way she’s going. There’s no way!” So I’m curious, when you read these scripts and you see an ending like [episode 4], what was your immediate reaction?
Zurer: Well first of all, I knew where it was going to go, so it wasn’t a surprise for me, thank God. But I’ll tell you what, I think what they’ve done, and I didn’t realize it until I’ve seen it, is that, when you see the end of four, you really go, “What the — No way.”
And then, you move from hope to — I mean, depending on where you are, if you want her dead or not — but if you want her alive, you move from hope that there’s no way they’ve done it. And then you come to five, and that hope is satisfied. But then that hope is taken away. And I think that is the most brutal thing you can do as a writer to the audience, because once you have hope, to take it away again, it’s crazy, because you know it’s never coming again.
You’re right, it was the cruelest thing that they could have done.
Cruelest thing! And, I have to say, that if you feel it, then you really understand him. So I think that’s what it serves really well. You suddenly go inside of him, because he had hope.
He really did. So what I want to know is, how long have you known that this was coming? Because, like you said, you knew where this was going, but is this like, even before season 1, you knew this was the long term plan? At what point did you find out that Vanessa was going?
They are the masters of deceit. They don’t tell you anything until it’s time. So, I think maybe they were playing with the idea, but they never shared. They did, however, do the right thing and call me before we started season 2. I actually don’t think they actually decided that before Season 2, based on other things.
But Dario called me, and explained how he sees the season, and why he needed a vehicle to drive it so to the extreme, and that was the best vehicle to do so. And then [executive producer] Sana [Amanat] called, and then, of course, Vincent called, and then tried to call them and change the plan. But you know, it was in the stars already.
Did you have your own kind of — grieving process, is I guess maybe the best word for it? Because you’ve been playing this character for a long time.
Oh, yeah. Oh damn, yeah. First of all, I hated everybody. I hated that choice. I was like, ‘It’s so personal.’ And then, of course, I realized it wasn’t (laughs). Because I’m a writer too, I understand why they needed it, you know?
But then I had to find a really interesting way to go out, because I didn’t want the people to feel sorry for her. I didn’t feel like that was the right thing for her, and I didn’t feel like she needed to be contemplating what she has done, this is not about that. So I needed to find something for myself to move her in a direction where she’s active, like she always has, and smart the way she was always, even though she is conflicted and feeling the dread of the threat, and something starts to crack.
And so, for me, the most important thing was to get to the end, especially to the fight scene, really, with intention. And what was the intention? For me, the intention was to protect him at any price, even if I’m the prize. And so it gave me agency, and I was really happy about that, and proud, and pleased.
So you have your writer brain fighting your actor brain, and those are kind of — you’ve got to kind of deal with that.
Yeah, I know! But thank god I had the other one, because it really helped me with the mourning of Vanessa.
So what was kind of the acceptance moment? Because you go through the five stages of grief, you hate everyone, and then you kind of do it, and you said that Vincent made a call? Was there an attempt at a reversal there?
Oh, I’m sure! Yes. Yeah, absolutely, I’m sure.
Then what was that turning point for you? Of like, you take a deep breath and you’re like, “Okay, I know this is right. It sucks, but it’s right.” How did you arrive there?
You just arrive at it when the scripts arrive, and it becomes creative. And not about you. Because it’s really not about me, or Vanessa. It’s really about a show that needs to move a really vast storyline forward in support of the show, and to create, you know, enough space for another season.
But once I become creative, I don’t need much, you know? I enjoy the creative part of it. I created a beautiful Vanessa for myself, and so — I mean, not me alone, with a lot of people involved. I’m just happy with what I had.
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I mean, it’s the MCU. People come back all the time!
I think they need an episode with spirits coming in and talking to people.
Well, in that vein, episode 5 was very much a flashback episode. Talk to me about filming this flashback episode, because it seems really, really fun.
It’s fun! There was a lot of discussion of is it real memory? Did it really happen? Or is that her now remembering then? Because, you know, I feel like I matured so much as a person. It’s been a while. It’s been a journey. It’s been 10 years. So to play Vanessa then would be like, a little weird to try to pull that up.
So there was a combination of, you know, the who Vanessa is now, and the culmination, I guess, of who she was and who she is now, and coming to acceptance of this whole thing. This was very much fun. It was fun! It was fun to to, like, investigate this whole white painting again, and who brought it in, and how it ended up there, just on that day.
Yeah, it was just nice, nice sailing. But the scenes in the hospital were more sad.
Yes, I want to go there next, take me through your last day filming with Vincent. Because obviously you guys have been a unit this whole time; Wilson and Vanessa, you and Vincent. If you feel comfortable sharing, because I know that some of those moments might be private, but what did the last conversations between you and Vincent look like on set?
It was not a lot of conversation, we were just sad, I think, if I remember correctly. It was sad, and it was intense. I haven’t watched that episode. I’m talking based on script and experience, because I just didn’t feel like watching it from the outside.
It had such a strong impact on me, saying goodbye, being thankful, and also, just like, enjoying this ride so much, that I didn’t want to see what stayed in. Because a lot of things are being edited a lot. So I didn’t want to not see something that I wanted in badly, or vice versa. So I didn’t watch, I wanted to keep it in myself, like private.
As we get near our time here, I just want to know your experience of really getting a top to bottom, 10-year arc. 10 years is a long time to spend with a character, just in general. Not a lot of people get that opportunity.
I think it’s a rare thing. It’s a great opportunity to start one place, to grow into a role, and then to leave it and come back to it more mature a bunch of years later, and really dive in and then finish with a bow. Has been a true honor.
I hope it’s not a goodbye. You can watch it forever and ever and ever, streaming again and again and again. It’s never the end of a show, and you never know. But it was a pleasure. I enjoyed it. I love the people who I worked with, and I appreciate the immense love from the fanhood, and I take it with me, for sure.
“Daredevil: Born Again” Season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.
