![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
he_put_the_devil_in_meThe following post is a highly condensed version of Matt's MCU wiki page.
Pre-Series
Matthew Murdock was raised in Hell's Kitchen by single father Jack Murdock, a professional boxer, and often helped stitch him up after fights, many of which were deliberate dives. At age nine, Matt pushed a man out of the path of a speeding tanker truck hauling hazardous chemicals, and the resulting chemical spill blinded him and heightened his other senses to superhuman levels. A year later, after being paid to throw a fight, Jack decided instead to place a large bet on himself and go for a knockout, so that Matt could hear people cheering for his old man instead of him being a loser. Jack was murdered in retaliation, and Matt was sent to live in St. Agnes Orphanage.
Matt's supersenses overwhelmed him with sensory input, and the nuns were approached by a blind man named Stick who claimed to be able to help him adjust. Stick's lessons taught Matt how to use his non-visual senses to navigate the world and pick up details unnoticeable to regular sighted people, and once he'd mastered this, they moved on to martial arts. Stick was a harsh taskmaster, looking for soldiers he could forge into weapons to fight a war he insisted would be coming, but when he realized Matt had started to think of him as a replacement father figure, he cut Matt's training short and left. Matt continued training on his own, incorporating boxing into his personal fighting style.
After leaving the orphanage, Matt attended Columbia University Law School and became close friends with his roommate, Foggy Nelson. At some point during their schooling, they crashed a high-class party and Matt met Elektra Natchios, a seemingly bored rich girl looking for a thrill. Elektra helped Matt indulge his repressed violent impulses, finally culminating with her capturing the man responsible for killing Jack Murdock, Roscoe Sweeney. Matt beat Sweeney in a rage, but when Elektra encouraged him to kill the man, Matt refused, and called the police to turn Sweeney in. Disappointed, Elektra disappeared from Matt's life, leaving him to focus on law school.
Matt and Foggy interned at law firm Landman and Zack, where they helped defend large profitable corporations against justified lawsuits from the public. Though they were eventually offered permanent jobs in the firm, Matt convinced Foggy that they should start their own firm to help the innocent people of New York City. Not long after they quit, Matt look the law into his own hands for the first time, donning a blindfold and ambushing a incestuous child molester that he'd previously reported to Child Protective Services with no results. Matt beat the man and threatened to come after him again if the crime was repeated. Matt continued his vigilante efforts at night, dressed in black and wearing a mask that covered the entire upper half of his face, keeping his after-hours hobby a secret from everyone.
Season One
With property prices low due to damage from the Chitauri invasion of New York two years prior, Nelson and Murdock opened an office and began scouting for clients, with the help of Officer Brett Mahoney of the NYPD. As the Man in the Mask, Matt helped clear client Karen Page's name, and she came to work for the firm as the office manager. After being hired to defend a criminal by an unidentified representative of a shadow corporation, Matt began looking deeper into organized crime of Hell's Kitchen, discovering that a man named Wilson Fisk was at the heart of multiple criminal enterprises whose corruption included both the NYPD and high-level figures of the government. Fisk was smart, and left little evidence that could be brought against him in court despite the escalation of his crimes, and Matt struggled with the possibility that he may have to kill Fisk to stop him, something which he believed would damn his soul for eternity, and sought counsel from his priest, Father Lantom, on the matter.
The Man in the Mask eventually followed the trail to one of Fisk's associates, a ninja named Nobu, who gravely wounded Matt before accidentally burning to death. Fisk himself arrived and followed this up with a beating, his suit lined with body armor to protect him from Matt's retaliation. Matt managed to escape and flee to his apartment, collapsing in front of Foggy, who became outraged that Matt had kept both his senses and his vigilante life a secret from his best friend. He did, however, call Claire Temple, a nurse who had treated Matt for numerous injuries after she found the masked vigilante wounded some time prior.
After recovering sufficiently from his injuries, Matt tracked down Melvin Potter, the man who crafted Fisk's body armor, whose girlfriend was being threatened if he didn't cooperate. Matt promised to protect Melvin and Betsy in exchange for Melvin creating a special armored suit for the Man in the Mask.
Foggy met with Marci Stahl, an ex-girlfriend who worked for Landman and Zack representing Fisk, and managed to convince her of Fisk's corruption and eventual defeat, giving her a chance to flip and deliver more solid evidence to build the case against Fisk. Between Marci's intel and Matt's vigilante efforts, the non-corrupt cops in the NYPD are able to clean house and launch a simultaneous sweep of Fisk's operatives throughout the city, also taking Fisk into custody. Some of Fisk's men managed to hijack the prisoner transport to free their boss, forcing Matt to armor himself up as Daredevil and bring down Fisk himself, retaliating for the beating Fisk had given him earlier and delivering him into police custody.
Season Two
Matt and Foggy continued to work together as law partners, though their friendship was still on somewhat rocky grounds due to Foggy's disapproval of Matt putting himself in danger. When an unknown shooter turned up in Hell's Kitchen and began massacring the local gangs, Daredevil confronted him and was shot in the head, his bulletproof mask leaving him with a severe concussion rather than being dead, and making Foggy even more upset about Matt's vigilante life. The shooter Frank Castle, dubbed the Punisher by the media, butted heads with Daredevil again not long after, arguing over killing criminals to prevent them from reoffending versus redemption and faith in the justice system. Castle's family was killed by the gangs of Hell's Kitchen, and his massacres are to seek revenge for their deaths.
After Daredevil saved the Punisher's life from one of the gangs he was at war with, Castle is picked up by the NYPD and taken into custody, and Matt insists that Nelson and Murdock represent him in court out of the belief that the system failed Frank and his family. His attention was diverted from the case when Elektra reappeared in his life, and manipulated him into helping her take down an organization she believed to be the Yakuza, operating in Hell's Kitchen. As his two lives conflicted more and more, Elektra threatened one of the trial witnesses in an attempt to hasten what she saw as a distraction, which invalidated the witness' testimony. Foggy, furious at Matt's inattention to the most important trial of their careers, as well as his unintentional sabotage and repeated lies, threw Matt off the trial.
Freed from the obligations of court, Matt and Elektra investigated Midland Circle construction site, and discovered a seemingly endless pit stretching down into the bowels of the Earth before being attacked by ninjas, whom Matt had difficulty tracking as they had no heartbeats for him to hear. When Elektra was badly wounded, Stick appeared and defended the pair, evacuating them all back to Matt's apartment to save Elektra's life. According to Stick, the Hand were an ancient evil organization, and the opponents in the war he'd been training Matt to fight as a member of the Chaste. Matt is also told that Elektra's meeting him was not an accident, and Stick sent her to seduce him, though she really did fall in love with him.
In Matt's absence, the trial of Frank Castle deteriorated, and Foggy was forced to ask for his help. Matt returned to the courtroom but despite his impassioned defense, Castle went ballistic on the stand during his testimony and embraced the name Punisher, insisting that his mass murder was the right thing to do. Foggy and Karen both blamed Matt for bombing the case, and Nelson and Murdock was dissolved. With his civilian life falling apart, Matt chose to go with Elektra and fight the Hand, though he insisted she stop killing after seeing how much she enjoyed it. While investigating the Hand, Daredevil discovered a secret facility where people were being drained of their blood, which was put inside a stone sarcophagus with the power to raise the dead, something that was proved by Nobu's reappearance and defense of the facility.
The Punisher escaped prison with aid from Fisk, and after questioning Fisk in person, Matt realized that he had taken over the prison from the inside. His threats to keep Fisk's lover Vanessa barred from the United States only enraged Fisk, and made him swear revenge against Matt Murdock and everyone he cares about.
The conflict with the Hand eventually lead to the revelation that Elektra is the Black Sky, a fabled legendary warrior whom the Hand worships, and they wanted her to join them. In the final battle, Elektra was killed defending Daredevil from the Hand, and the Punisher made an appearance to snipe ninjas while Daredevil fought Nobu. After Nobu's defeat, Stick killed him to prevent him from resurrecting again.
With both of his lives in tatters, Matt revealed to Karen that he is Daredevil. Though angry at him for hiding so much from her, Karen decided she can't be angry at someone who had personally saved her life multiple times, and Matt declared his intentions to leave Daredevil behind and focus on being a lawyer.
The Defenders
Matt took on multiple successful pro bono cases, building a reputation for himself independent of Nelson and Murdock, until the Hand began to meddle with New York yet again, causing an earthquake while mining in the pit below Midland Circle, which was then covered by a skyscraper. Matt's investigation of the Hand lead him to reluctantly join forces with Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand as all four of them had become connected with the Hand's activities, and Stick arrived to explain the situation to the others.
The team's efforts were hampered by Elektra, resurrected by the Hand and stripped of her memories, and she killed Stick, kidnapped Danny and used his power as the Immortal Iron Fist to unseal a grave of dragon bones beneath Midland Circle, the key to the secret Substance that resurrects the dead. To keep the Hand from gaining this last known source of the Substance, the Defenders used explosives to bring down the tower and collapse it into the pit. To buy them time, and attempt to bring Elektra back to him, Matt stayed behind and was presumed killed when the bombs went off.
Season Three
Rather than being buried in the rubble, Matt was swept into a drain pipe which dumped him out at the docks, badly wounded. He was found and brought to St. Anges, where he was cared for by the nuns after Sister Maggie swore them to secrecy. Matt spent weeks unconscious and woke to find he was deaf in one ear, and his sense of smell was blocked by blood and swelling, leaving him almost helpless and unable to navigate. In a deep depression, Matt decided that God didn't matter and that Stick was right to tell him to abandon his friendships. After regaining his sense of smell, he learned how to use vibrations from the world around him to get around again, and went out in his black mask to fight crime only to be easily defeated due to his still-healing injuries. Despite seeking death from those who defeated him, Matt still fled from the police when they arrived.
Matt regained his hearing just in time to hear that Fisk had been released from prison, cooperating with the FBI and held prisoner in a hotel penthouse. Matt revealed his survival to Foggy, who had been wracked with guilt over providing him with the Daredevil suit before the collapse of Midland Circle, but rather than reconnect, Matt told Foggy that this would be the last time they spoke, and stole his wallet to use his identification to infiltrate the prison as Foggy. Fisk still controlled the prison, however, and Matt barely escaped with his life, after revealing his martial arts abilities during the riot and confirming his identity as Daredevil to Fisk, who was watching the security cameras. Fisk then set the FBI on Matt, framing him as a criminal and using their single case under his employ as proof of his association. Fisk also forced Melvin Potter to create a duplicate Daredevil suit, which he then gave to FBI Agent Ben Poindexter, a sociopath whom Fisk manipulated to follow his directions, and set him loose on the Bulletin newspaper office where Karen worked to prevent them from interviewing a witness that could prove Fisk was manipulating the FBI. Matt was also present as Foggy's client, waiting to turn himself in to the FBI after the witness' testimony, and fought the fake Daredevil in his own black mask, only to be defeated.
Matt went to Melvin for answers, and learned that Fisk had again forced him into his employ, creating a second duplicate suit for Matt, who refused to take it, saying that he had outgrown what it stood for. The FBI had been waiting for Daredevil to approach, however, and though Matt escaped their trap, Melvin was taken into custody. Matt found Betsy to warn her to leave town before seeking out FBI Agent Ray Nadeem, to reveal Poindexter's identity as the fake Daredevil. Nadeem and Matt broke into Poindexter's apartment but found no direct evidence of his later crimes, only audio tapes of therapy sessions that revealed his sociopathy. In the aftermath, Nadeem approached his boss to tell her the FBI was being used as Fisk's puppets, but she had already been corrupted and blackmailed by Fisk, and immediately killed the other agent in the room and framed Nadeem for the murder, using the evidence as blackmail to bring him under Fisk's thumb.
Meanwhile, back at the church, Matt overheard Sister Maggie's prayers and found out that she is actually his mother. Furious at being lied to and abandoned as a child, Matt left the church with the intention to never return, deciding that God held no more guidance for him and that he had to kill Fisk. He infiltrated Fisk's penthouse and waited to kill him, only to overhear that 'Daredevil' was attacking the church in pursuit of Karen Page. Matt rushed to the church to save her, but was too late to save Father Lantom. While Sister Maggie and the other nuns distracted the FBI and keep them from finding Karen and Matt, Karen confessed that she had killed Fisk's right hand man years before when he'd tried blackmailing her, and tried to convince Matt that if he murdered Fisk, it would change him forever.
When the NYPD arrived, Nadeem quietly told Mahoney that he needed to take Karen into his custody, because she would die in FBI hands. Overhearing this, Matt decided Nadeem was still trustworthy, and after reuniting with Karen and Foggy, Matt apologized and agreed to try taking down Fisk legally, using Nadeem as a key witness in front of a grand jury. Matt arrived at Nadeem's house just in time to save him and his family from Fisk's men, and revealed his identity to gain his trust. With his family safe, Nadeem agreed to blow the whistle on the FBI, and despite being ambushed on the way to the courthouse, Matt ensured that Nadeem arrived safely. After testifying, however, Matt overheard the grand jury talking and realized that Fisk had gotten their identities and was threatening their families too, forcing them to dismiss Nadeem's testimony.
Nadeem was killed by Poindexter, and Matt became convinced that the only avenue left would be to murder Fisk himself. After he left, Karen and Foggy learned that Nadeem had recorded a dying declaration before Poindexter's arrival, a video confession admissible in court as evidence, in which he outlined Fisk's influence over the FBI and detailed specific crimes. While they worked to get the video out in the public eye, Matt hunted down Fisk's new right hand man and tortured him into giving intel about Fisk's plans for that night: the arrival of Vanessa from out of the country, and their wedding that would take place that same day. Matt calls Poindexter and gave him proof that Fisk had been pulling his strings, including killing someone that Poindexter had wanted to use as a moral compass, and set him to attack the wedding to clear Matt's path to the top. During the reception, Karen arranged for Nadeem's dying declaration to be broadcast as a mass text, interrupting the festivities.
Poindexter successfully crashed the wedding reception, dressed in his fake Daredevil suit, and chased Fisk and Vanessa up to the penthouse where Matt was waiting for them. A three-way battle ensued, with Matt protecting Vanessa from Poindexter while also attacking Fisk. Fisk broke Poindexter's spine, taking him out of the fight, leaving him and Matt to fight one-on-one. Matt finally beat down Fisk, but couldn't bring himself to kill him, and instead threatened to have Vanessa imprisoned if Fisk ever revealed his identity as Daredevil. To keep her clean in the eyes of the authorities, Fisk agreed, and was taken into custody at the arrival of the NYPD. Poindexter was also arrested, and Mahoney identified him as a fake, pointing to black-masked Matt as the real one, thus clearing Daredevil's name also.
Matt gave the eulogy at Father Lantom's funeral, reflecting on the lessons he'd learned about overcoming fear, and privately spoke to Sister Maggie about how he'd once been told that only God can see the whole picture and humans can only have faith that this too will pass, but had never internalized it until now. Parting on good terms with his mother, he then mended his fences with Karen and Foggy at the wake, announcing his intentions to find a balance between Matt Murdock and Daredevil, and the three agree to open a new firm together again: Nelson, Murdock, and Page.
Pre-Series
Matthew Murdock was raised in Hell's Kitchen by single father Jack Murdock, a professional boxer, and often helped stitch him up after fights, many of which were deliberate dives. At age nine, Matt pushed a man out of the path of a speeding tanker truck hauling hazardous chemicals, and the resulting chemical spill blinded him and heightened his other senses to superhuman levels. A year later, after being paid to throw a fight, Jack decided instead to place a large bet on himself and go for a knockout, so that Matt could hear people cheering for his old man instead of him being a loser. Jack was murdered in retaliation, and Matt was sent to live in St. Agnes Orphanage.
Matt's supersenses overwhelmed him with sensory input, and the nuns were approached by a blind man named Stick who claimed to be able to help him adjust. Stick's lessons taught Matt how to use his non-visual senses to navigate the world and pick up details unnoticeable to regular sighted people, and once he'd mastered this, they moved on to martial arts. Stick was a harsh taskmaster, looking for soldiers he could forge into weapons to fight a war he insisted would be coming, but when he realized Matt had started to think of him as a replacement father figure, he cut Matt's training short and left. Matt continued training on his own, incorporating boxing into his personal fighting style.
After leaving the orphanage, Matt attended Columbia University Law School and became close friends with his roommate, Foggy Nelson. At some point during their schooling, they crashed a high-class party and Matt met Elektra Natchios, a seemingly bored rich girl looking for a thrill. Elektra helped Matt indulge his repressed violent impulses, finally culminating with her capturing the man responsible for killing Jack Murdock, Roscoe Sweeney. Matt beat Sweeney in a rage, but when Elektra encouraged him to kill the man, Matt refused, and called the police to turn Sweeney in. Disappointed, Elektra disappeared from Matt's life, leaving him to focus on law school.
Matt and Foggy interned at law firm Landman and Zack, where they helped defend large profitable corporations against justified lawsuits from the public. Though they were eventually offered permanent jobs in the firm, Matt convinced Foggy that they should start their own firm to help the innocent people of New York City. Not long after they quit, Matt look the law into his own hands for the first time, donning a blindfold and ambushing a incestuous child molester that he'd previously reported to Child Protective Services with no results. Matt beat the man and threatened to come after him again if the crime was repeated. Matt continued his vigilante efforts at night, dressed in black and wearing a mask that covered the entire upper half of his face, keeping his after-hours hobby a secret from everyone.
Season One
With property prices low due to damage from the Chitauri invasion of New York two years prior, Nelson and Murdock opened an office and began scouting for clients, with the help of Officer Brett Mahoney of the NYPD. As the Man in the Mask, Matt helped clear client Karen Page's name, and she came to work for the firm as the office manager. After being hired to defend a criminal by an unidentified representative of a shadow corporation, Matt began looking deeper into organized crime of Hell's Kitchen, discovering that a man named Wilson Fisk was at the heart of multiple criminal enterprises whose corruption included both the NYPD and high-level figures of the government. Fisk was smart, and left little evidence that could be brought against him in court despite the escalation of his crimes, and Matt struggled with the possibility that he may have to kill Fisk to stop him, something which he believed would damn his soul for eternity, and sought counsel from his priest, Father Lantom, on the matter.
The Man in the Mask eventually followed the trail to one of Fisk's associates, a ninja named Nobu, who gravely wounded Matt before accidentally burning to death. Fisk himself arrived and followed this up with a beating, his suit lined with body armor to protect him from Matt's retaliation. Matt managed to escape and flee to his apartment, collapsing in front of Foggy, who became outraged that Matt had kept both his senses and his vigilante life a secret from his best friend. He did, however, call Claire Temple, a nurse who had treated Matt for numerous injuries after she found the masked vigilante wounded some time prior.
After recovering sufficiently from his injuries, Matt tracked down Melvin Potter, the man who crafted Fisk's body armor, whose girlfriend was being threatened if he didn't cooperate. Matt promised to protect Melvin and Betsy in exchange for Melvin creating a special armored suit for the Man in the Mask.
Foggy met with Marci Stahl, an ex-girlfriend who worked for Landman and Zack representing Fisk, and managed to convince her of Fisk's corruption and eventual defeat, giving her a chance to flip and deliver more solid evidence to build the case against Fisk. Between Marci's intel and Matt's vigilante efforts, the non-corrupt cops in the NYPD are able to clean house and launch a simultaneous sweep of Fisk's operatives throughout the city, also taking Fisk into custody. Some of Fisk's men managed to hijack the prisoner transport to free their boss, forcing Matt to armor himself up as Daredevil and bring down Fisk himself, retaliating for the beating Fisk had given him earlier and delivering him into police custody.
Season Two
Matt and Foggy continued to work together as law partners, though their friendship was still on somewhat rocky grounds due to Foggy's disapproval of Matt putting himself in danger. When an unknown shooter turned up in Hell's Kitchen and began massacring the local gangs, Daredevil confronted him and was shot in the head, his bulletproof mask leaving him with a severe concussion rather than being dead, and making Foggy even more upset about Matt's vigilante life. The shooter Frank Castle, dubbed the Punisher by the media, butted heads with Daredevil again not long after, arguing over killing criminals to prevent them from reoffending versus redemption and faith in the justice system. Castle's family was killed by the gangs of Hell's Kitchen, and his massacres are to seek revenge for their deaths.
After Daredevil saved the Punisher's life from one of the gangs he was at war with, Castle is picked up by the NYPD and taken into custody, and Matt insists that Nelson and Murdock represent him in court out of the belief that the system failed Frank and his family. His attention was diverted from the case when Elektra reappeared in his life, and manipulated him into helping her take down an organization she believed to be the Yakuza, operating in Hell's Kitchen. As his two lives conflicted more and more, Elektra threatened one of the trial witnesses in an attempt to hasten what she saw as a distraction, which invalidated the witness' testimony. Foggy, furious at Matt's inattention to the most important trial of their careers, as well as his unintentional sabotage and repeated lies, threw Matt off the trial.
Freed from the obligations of court, Matt and Elektra investigated Midland Circle construction site, and discovered a seemingly endless pit stretching down into the bowels of the Earth before being attacked by ninjas, whom Matt had difficulty tracking as they had no heartbeats for him to hear. When Elektra was badly wounded, Stick appeared and defended the pair, evacuating them all back to Matt's apartment to save Elektra's life. According to Stick, the Hand were an ancient evil organization, and the opponents in the war he'd been training Matt to fight as a member of the Chaste. Matt is also told that Elektra's meeting him was not an accident, and Stick sent her to seduce him, though she really did fall in love with him.
In Matt's absence, the trial of Frank Castle deteriorated, and Foggy was forced to ask for his help. Matt returned to the courtroom but despite his impassioned defense, Castle went ballistic on the stand during his testimony and embraced the name Punisher, insisting that his mass murder was the right thing to do. Foggy and Karen both blamed Matt for bombing the case, and Nelson and Murdock was dissolved. With his civilian life falling apart, Matt chose to go with Elektra and fight the Hand, though he insisted she stop killing after seeing how much she enjoyed it. While investigating the Hand, Daredevil discovered a secret facility where people were being drained of their blood, which was put inside a stone sarcophagus with the power to raise the dead, something that was proved by Nobu's reappearance and defense of the facility.
The Punisher escaped prison with aid from Fisk, and after questioning Fisk in person, Matt realized that he had taken over the prison from the inside. His threats to keep Fisk's lover Vanessa barred from the United States only enraged Fisk, and made him swear revenge against Matt Murdock and everyone he cares about.
The conflict with the Hand eventually lead to the revelation that Elektra is the Black Sky, a fabled legendary warrior whom the Hand worships, and they wanted her to join them. In the final battle, Elektra was killed defending Daredevil from the Hand, and the Punisher made an appearance to snipe ninjas while Daredevil fought Nobu. After Nobu's defeat, Stick killed him to prevent him from resurrecting again.
With both of his lives in tatters, Matt revealed to Karen that he is Daredevil. Though angry at him for hiding so much from her, Karen decided she can't be angry at someone who had personally saved her life multiple times, and Matt declared his intentions to leave Daredevil behind and focus on being a lawyer.
The Defenders
Matt took on multiple successful pro bono cases, building a reputation for himself independent of Nelson and Murdock, until the Hand began to meddle with New York yet again, causing an earthquake while mining in the pit below Midland Circle, which was then covered by a skyscraper. Matt's investigation of the Hand lead him to reluctantly join forces with Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand as all four of them had become connected with the Hand's activities, and Stick arrived to explain the situation to the others.
The team's efforts were hampered by Elektra, resurrected by the Hand and stripped of her memories, and she killed Stick, kidnapped Danny and used his power as the Immortal Iron Fist to unseal a grave of dragon bones beneath Midland Circle, the key to the secret Substance that resurrects the dead. To keep the Hand from gaining this last known source of the Substance, the Defenders used explosives to bring down the tower and collapse it into the pit. To buy them time, and attempt to bring Elektra back to him, Matt stayed behind and was presumed killed when the bombs went off.
Season Three
Rather than being buried in the rubble, Matt was swept into a drain pipe which dumped him out at the docks, badly wounded. He was found and brought to St. Anges, where he was cared for by the nuns after Sister Maggie swore them to secrecy. Matt spent weeks unconscious and woke to find he was deaf in one ear, and his sense of smell was blocked by blood and swelling, leaving him almost helpless and unable to navigate. In a deep depression, Matt decided that God didn't matter and that Stick was right to tell him to abandon his friendships. After regaining his sense of smell, he learned how to use vibrations from the world around him to get around again, and went out in his black mask to fight crime only to be easily defeated due to his still-healing injuries. Despite seeking death from those who defeated him, Matt still fled from the police when they arrived.
Matt regained his hearing just in time to hear that Fisk had been released from prison, cooperating with the FBI and held prisoner in a hotel penthouse. Matt revealed his survival to Foggy, who had been wracked with guilt over providing him with the Daredevil suit before the collapse of Midland Circle, but rather than reconnect, Matt told Foggy that this would be the last time they spoke, and stole his wallet to use his identification to infiltrate the prison as Foggy. Fisk still controlled the prison, however, and Matt barely escaped with his life, after revealing his martial arts abilities during the riot and confirming his identity as Daredevil to Fisk, who was watching the security cameras. Fisk then set the FBI on Matt, framing him as a criminal and using their single case under his employ as proof of his association. Fisk also forced Melvin Potter to create a duplicate Daredevil suit, which he then gave to FBI Agent Ben Poindexter, a sociopath whom Fisk manipulated to follow his directions, and set him loose on the Bulletin newspaper office where Karen worked to prevent them from interviewing a witness that could prove Fisk was manipulating the FBI. Matt was also present as Foggy's client, waiting to turn himself in to the FBI after the witness' testimony, and fought the fake Daredevil in his own black mask, only to be defeated.
Matt went to Melvin for answers, and learned that Fisk had again forced him into his employ, creating a second duplicate suit for Matt, who refused to take it, saying that he had outgrown what it stood for. The FBI had been waiting for Daredevil to approach, however, and though Matt escaped their trap, Melvin was taken into custody. Matt found Betsy to warn her to leave town before seeking out FBI Agent Ray Nadeem, to reveal Poindexter's identity as the fake Daredevil. Nadeem and Matt broke into Poindexter's apartment but found no direct evidence of his later crimes, only audio tapes of therapy sessions that revealed his sociopathy. In the aftermath, Nadeem approached his boss to tell her the FBI was being used as Fisk's puppets, but she had already been corrupted and blackmailed by Fisk, and immediately killed the other agent in the room and framed Nadeem for the murder, using the evidence as blackmail to bring him under Fisk's thumb.
Meanwhile, back at the church, Matt overheard Sister Maggie's prayers and found out that she is actually his mother. Furious at being lied to and abandoned as a child, Matt left the church with the intention to never return, deciding that God held no more guidance for him and that he had to kill Fisk. He infiltrated Fisk's penthouse and waited to kill him, only to overhear that 'Daredevil' was attacking the church in pursuit of Karen Page. Matt rushed to the church to save her, but was too late to save Father Lantom. While Sister Maggie and the other nuns distracted the FBI and keep them from finding Karen and Matt, Karen confessed that she had killed Fisk's right hand man years before when he'd tried blackmailing her, and tried to convince Matt that if he murdered Fisk, it would change him forever.
When the NYPD arrived, Nadeem quietly told Mahoney that he needed to take Karen into his custody, because she would die in FBI hands. Overhearing this, Matt decided Nadeem was still trustworthy, and after reuniting with Karen and Foggy, Matt apologized and agreed to try taking down Fisk legally, using Nadeem as a key witness in front of a grand jury. Matt arrived at Nadeem's house just in time to save him and his family from Fisk's men, and revealed his identity to gain his trust. With his family safe, Nadeem agreed to blow the whistle on the FBI, and despite being ambushed on the way to the courthouse, Matt ensured that Nadeem arrived safely. After testifying, however, Matt overheard the grand jury talking and realized that Fisk had gotten their identities and was threatening their families too, forcing them to dismiss Nadeem's testimony.
Nadeem was killed by Poindexter, and Matt became convinced that the only avenue left would be to murder Fisk himself. After he left, Karen and Foggy learned that Nadeem had recorded a dying declaration before Poindexter's arrival, a video confession admissible in court as evidence, in which he outlined Fisk's influence over the FBI and detailed specific crimes. While they worked to get the video out in the public eye, Matt hunted down Fisk's new right hand man and tortured him into giving intel about Fisk's plans for that night: the arrival of Vanessa from out of the country, and their wedding that would take place that same day. Matt calls Poindexter and gave him proof that Fisk had been pulling his strings, including killing someone that Poindexter had wanted to use as a moral compass, and set him to attack the wedding to clear Matt's path to the top. During the reception, Karen arranged for Nadeem's dying declaration to be broadcast as a mass text, interrupting the festivities.
Poindexter successfully crashed the wedding reception, dressed in his fake Daredevil suit, and chased Fisk and Vanessa up to the penthouse where Matt was waiting for them. A three-way battle ensued, with Matt protecting Vanessa from Poindexter while also attacking Fisk. Fisk broke Poindexter's spine, taking him out of the fight, leaving him and Matt to fight one-on-one. Matt finally beat down Fisk, but couldn't bring himself to kill him, and instead threatened to have Vanessa imprisoned if Fisk ever revealed his identity as Daredevil. To keep her clean in the eyes of the authorities, Fisk agreed, and was taken into custody at the arrival of the NYPD. Poindexter was also arrested, and Mahoney identified him as a fake, pointing to black-masked Matt as the real one, thus clearing Daredevil's name also.
Matt gave the eulogy at Father Lantom's funeral, reflecting on the lessons he'd learned about overcoming fear, and privately spoke to Sister Maggie about how he'd once been told that only God can see the whole picture and humans can only have faith that this too will pass, but had never internalized it until now. Parting on good terms with his mother, he then mended his fences with Karen and Foggy at the wake, announcing his intentions to find a balance between Matt Murdock and Daredevil, and the three agree to open a new firm together again: Nelson, Murdock, and Page.