Muse Is the Perfect Villain for Daredevil: Born Again

This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again episode 4.

Prior to the opening credits and right before the closing credits of “Sic Semper Systema,” the fourth episode of Daredevil: Born Again, we see something that feels less from a superhero comic book and more from a grimy 2000s torture porn movie.

A masked figure carries an incapacitated young man through a subway tunnel, all lit in jaundiced yellow. When he arrives at his lair, the figure sticks a needle into the man’s leg and starts pumping out blood, blood that he’ll mix into the paint for the murals painted around town.

That figure is Muse, the prime supervillain antagonist of Born Again‘s first season. More than just a cool baddie for Daredevil to beat up, Muse is the ideal antagonist for Born Again, one who tests Matt Murdock‘s faith in the law. For an episode in a series about a superhero in the Marvel universe, with a serial killer on the loose, “Sic Semper Systema” is really interested in municipal functions.

The most important thematic scene might be an early one in which Mayor Fisk‘s chief of staff Sheila (Zabryna Guevara) walks him through the bureaucratic process needed to launch a revitalization project on the docs. The most dramatic moment involves Matt Murdock getting a talking to from a pro bono client about racism and classism in the legal system. The superhero team-up moment consists of Matt and Frank Castle aka the Punisher arguing about the nature of justice.

Like the entire season thus far, “Sic Semper Systema” is mostly about the law and our relationship to it as members of a community. Daredevil: Born Again begins with Matt Murdock experiencing a crisis of faith. Not religious faith, something that the Disney+ series has mostly abandoned from the Netflix show, but faith in his works as a vigilante. To Matt’s mind, his actions as Daredevil brought people like Dex aka Bullseye into his life, leading to Foggy’s death. So now, he’ll devote himself to practicing law, trusting in the rule of law to bring better justice than he could as the Man Without Fear.

Four episodes in, Born Again has done nothing but test that faith. There are large-scale failures of the system — obviously, Fisk becoming Mayor of New York, but also the empty feeling that Matt has after Dex’s sentencing. But “Sic Semper Systema” is more interested in the smaller acts of injustice, as demonstrated by Matt’s interaction with his client Leroy (Charlie Hudson III).

We first see Leroy outside of a convenience store, where he’s being detained for stealing snack foods. One of the cops pops open a stolen box and starts munching away, laughing off the fact that it’s evidence. When Matt meets with Leroy, he’s taken aback by what he considers an unreasonable request. Leroy, a serial small-time offender, demands probation instead of the standard 30 days of jail time. When Matt uses his considerable charm to get the sentence down to ten days, he’s shocked and offended that Leroy still isn’t happy.

“You just don’t get it,” Leroy tells Matt, before going through the indignities he experiences on a daily basis, all of which make the crime of stealing a box of snacks seem microscopic. “For that, they’re willing to spend five times more to lock me up than to feed me,” he points out, before reminding us that the cops also stole snacks and suffer no blow back.

Ultimately, the point that Leroy makes is the same point that Frank Castle made and the same point made by the existence of Mayor Fisk. The law is not equal. The law is not just.

And then, Muse shows up.

Although this is our first good look at Muse, his work has been present since the first two episodes of the series. His street art, Banksy-esque images with vaguely populist and anti-establishment themes, have appeared throughout the city, building on the show’s sense of rising resentment toward the status quo.

More than just a basic plot function, the connection between Muse as a serial killer and Muse as an outsider artist underscore’s the show’s themes. How can a civil society deal with a problem like Muse, a masked serial killer who lurks undetected below the city? How can a city more concerned with using its resources to imprison a petty thief like Leroy deal with an unimaginable evil?

The answer, of course, is teased in this episode. Towards the end, Matt opens his hidden room, filled with his Daredevil equipment. He retrieves his signature baton and takes it to the roof, where he begins training to resume the mantle of Daredevil.

According to Daredevil: Born Again, civil society deals with a problem like Muse by relying on vigilantes who operate on the outskirts of society. That’s exciting to us as viewers because, obviously, we want to watch a superhero story, in which the superhero Daredevil beats up the supervillain Muse. But for Matt Murdock, it’s a full fall from grace. His faith in the law is now gone too, forcing him to relapse into a life he wanted to leave behind, a life as Daredevil.

In the end, Muse does what not even Wilson Fisk could do. Muse forces Matt to lose his faith in law and civil society, and give himself up to the Devil.

New episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiere Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.

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