The third episode of Daredevil: Born Again was a roller coaster of pretty extreme highs and lows for Matt Murdock, lawyer by day and (formerly) Daredevil by night. Episode 3, "The Hollow of His Hand," named after an Irish prayer that Heather recites in Foggy Nelson (RIP)'s honor in the episode, was all about the trial of Hector Ayala and a growing sense of chaos in Daredevil's beloved New York City.
Matt Murdock is fully in lawyer mode for the entirety of episode 3. As you may remember, his firm is defending Hector (who moonlights as the vigilante superhero The White Tiger) in court. Hector intervened in a fight on a subway platform between two plainclothes officers and a police informant named Nicky Torres. When one of the cops accidentally got hit by a train, the other, Officer Powell, framed Hector for his murder. At the end of episode 2, Matt located Nicky Torres, the only witness, and got in a nasty fight with Powell himself.
Does Matt win the trial and free Hector?
At the beginning of the episode, Matt returns to visit Hector Ayala in prison. His client's mind is on the beach in Puerto Rico and a tree frog called a coquí. (Unfortunately, the first thing I think of when anyone mentions coquíes is a very funny and very dumb web-series that Lin-Manuel Miranda once made.) Matt promises him that he's gonna see that beach and be with his family and hear the frogs again.
Even though he's still experiencing some Catholic guilt for getting in the fight at the end of the last episode, you can tell that Matt is feeling himself. Officer Powell tries to threaten him in the bathroom and Matt threatens to expose him for tampering with a witness right back. When Powell gives his testimony, Matt teases him about the black eye he knows full well he gave him. Meanwhile, Cherry goes to great lengths to protect Nicky Torres and get him to court. He takes him to a safe house and bribes him with drugs. He arranges for multiple cars to drive to the court to stop anyone trying to get to Torres (and they do try) to either intimidate or kill him before he can testify. They're good at this!
But then, either Torres gets spooked by the number of cops in court or, as Matt's partner Nikki later suggests, was never actually on Hector's side. Torres lies under oath and denies being on the platform. Matt is pissed. He and Nikki have to rework their entire defense now.
Backed into a corner, Matt pulls a major mulligan in court and "outs" Hector as the White Tiger even though he asked that that not be omitted as evidence. Nikki and Cherry are shocked. The prosecutor and the judge are furious. But Matt had no choice, and promises that he'll deal with the consequences. Then, after a recess, Matt and Nikki call a series of character witnesses who the White Tiger protected to the stand. He'd saved them from car wrecks and muggings and repeatedly put himself in harm's way just because it was the right thing to do. The two lawyers even read aloud several police reports–including one that may be from Miles Morales' dad–that praise the White Tiger's efforts and credit him for assisting them.
"It wasn't your secret to tell," Hector tells Matt during the recess. Matt apologizes. He then warns Hector that he can't put the suit back on if he's acquitted. He'll have to find other ways to do good in his community. But Hector sees it as a calling. Given that Matt himself has hung up his Daredevil suit, this is an excellent, loaded scene. Hector's speaking right to Matt, but he doesn't know it. (I know that it's common for superheroes in general, but in the world of the MCU where Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Sam Wilson are household names and for a time people even knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man, it's still weird to see a vigilante care so much about protecting a secret identity.)
The prosecutor's closing argument doesn't stand a chance. He describes what happens to the body when you get hit by a train in a way that might actually give me nightmares, sure, but preaching about how good people can still do bad things and chiding that "real heroes don't need to hide" is not enough. Matt wins the case and Hector is acquitted.
This does not make Mayor Fisk, who campaigned on an anti-vigilante agenda, happy. He meets with young upstart reporter B.B. Urich and gives a statement on the "miscarriage of justice" that has, in his opinion, taken place. By opinion, I do mean a straight-up lie.
What's Mayor Fisk, f.k.a. Kingpin, doing in Red Hook?
The newly minted mayor, Wilson Fisk, has designs on the Brooklyn neighborhood Red Hook. There's just one problem: gang violence is ticking up and up in the area. At breakfast, Fisk and Vanessa learn about a carjacking and double homicide that took place there. Vanessa says that the leaders of the Five Families are restless, and turning on each other because neither of them are keeping them in line. Fisk shrugs this off. Let them kill each other. He also has bloody knuckles... why? Unclear. Something is up.
But Vanessa's not satisfied with that. For one thing, whoever comes out on top will likely come for them when they're done. And she's clearly itching to do crime again. She wistfully talks about how much money she could launder with art sales. When they go to marriage counseling with Matt's girlfriend later in the episode, she accuses Fisk of punishing her for whatever happened with this guy Adam. (Definitely an affair, right?)
Fisk sends Buck Cashman, a comics character I'm still shocked they didn't rename for television, to meet with the leaders of the Five Families instead. He attempts to settle their debts and tells them to cool it with the violence. They're not satisfied either.
Speaking of Heather, Matt cooks for her after the verdict. So that's still going on. They drink the special whiskey he and Foggy saved for whenever they won a case. (Which, if you weren't already upset, happens to be what Foggy was drinking on the day he died.) I'm not 100 percent sold on Matt and Heather together, but he's still in a funk. I'll let him have a boring, ordinary relationship if that's what he needs. Things will definitely get interesting when he learns that she's counseling his nemesis. This is the calm before the storm.
Whoa whoa whoa, who killed the White Tiger?
The trial may have ended triumphantly, but tragedy strikes almost immediately after. At the end of the episode, Hector suits back up and hits the pavement as The White Tiger. A lone assassin shoots him in cold blood. His amulet can't protect him from a bullet in the back of the head. It's a brutal end to this briefly uplifting story.
Then things get crazy. The lone assassin appeared to be dressed as The Punisher, a.k.a. Frank Castle. Did Matt's salty frenemy Frank do this?! I'm guessing that one of the cops displeased with the outcome did this. We already know that many of them are fans. Unless they hired the Punisher. Still, it's not impossible that Frank is working for the cops who worship him but it is improbable. It's even less likely that he's working for Fisk. Frank's not big on authority and Hector does not fit the profile of the his usual victims.
Why was a superhero the White Tiger introduced and killed off so quickly? That sucks. In Marvel comics, both Hector's younger sister and niece, Ava and Angela, take up the mantle and become the White Tiger as well. In episode 3, Hector mentions during the trial that he lived with his sister and her daughter. He was actually planning to move out, and was on the way to put flowers in the new place he'd gotten to surprise his wife. Is Daredevil: Born Again setting up Ava and/or Angela to be the next White Tiger? His niece is in court, beaming when her uncle takes the stand. We'll have to wait and see! As of this episode, however, we're still mourning. The end credits are silent, save for the sounds of the coquí singing–a painful reminder of what Hector lost.
