Spoiler alert! We're talking spoilers for the fifth episode of "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 2, "The Grand Design," so turn away now if you haven't seen it and don't want to know what happens.
The king has lost his queen.
The latest episode of "Daredevil: Born Again" killed off a major character who has been with the Marvel series since the very beginning: Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer), the wife of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio).
The death came after the show toyed with viewers regarding Vanessa's fate over the course of two episodes. At first, she seemed like a goner in the final scene of the fourth episode, "Gloves Off," in which Wilson Fisk's boxing match ended in tragedy when Dex (Wilson Bethel) attacked. Vanessa wound up bleeding out with a shard of glass in her head.
Surprisingly, she was still alive at the start of the fifth episode, "The Grand Design," which opened with her being rushed away at the hospital.
Against all odds, it looked like Vanessa would live to fight another day by the end of the episode. She made it through surgery and appeared to be on the mend, so much so that she could talk with Fisk from her hospital bed and have a conversation about how they met.
But when Vanessa began fading and repeating herself, it became clear she had taken a sudden turn for the worse. Fisk was left devastated as doctors rushed in, but were unable to save his wife, who flatlined and died.
Speaking to USA TODAY, D'Onofrio says Vanessa's death will change the course of Fisk's life, mirroring the way Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) was profoundly affected by the loss of his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) in Season 1. The same person, Dex, is responsible for both deaths.
"He's never going to be the same after her death," D'Onofrio says. "The whole thing that happens after the boxing scene is just intensely emotional, for both Ayelet and I."
In the episode, the possibility of losing his wife reduces the usually intimidating Fisk to a whimpering mess. D'Onofrio tried something new with his performance by changing the way he spoke to make him seem like he was reverting back to his childhood.
"There is a very interesting thing that I've never tried before with this character, because he always speaks in this certain way," he says. "But there's this one moment with his wife, on her deathbed, that he actually sounds like a little boy talking to his mother. That's the first time I've ever changed his voice."
D'Onofrio spoke with USA TODAY about the death in early March, just as he was preparing to start shooting the show's third season. He teases that in Season 3, Fisk has "gone to a severe place" after Vanessa's death "and after what happens at the end of the second season."
D'Onofrio also says it was hard to say goodbye to his longtime costar, noting Zurer "is like a sister to me." They have been working together since the first season of the original Netflix series, which aired in 2015. "[It was] really, really difficult," D'Onofrio says. "Much more difficult than I imagined it would be."
But showrunner Dario Scardapane tells USA TODAY that Vanessa's death has been inevitable going back to the very beginning of "Born Again" Season 1, ever since it was decided that Foggy would die.
"If Matt's going to lose something, Fisk is going to lose something," Scardapane says. "That fight has to consume the people closest to them. ... These two people's fight had to have a lot of collateral damage."
Given the parallel between Vanessa's death and the loss of Foggy last season, it's appropriate Foggy himself makes a return this week, albeit in flashback form.
Over the course of the episode, Matt remembers a case where he and Foggy were tasked with defending a criminal and discovered a clerical error that would result in him walking free. But they disagreed about whether the man actually deserved freedom. Matt wasn't so sure, pointing to his record of selling drugs and trafficking weapons, but Foggy argued in favor of giving even someone who has done terrible things a second chance.
In the present, remembering the way Foggy argued for mercy inspires Matt to fight to save Dex, the very man who murdered Foggy.
Scardapane explains that the events of Episode 5 were "so earth-shattering," it felt like the right time to bring back Foggy to add in some additional emotional resonance. "Foggy was the best of us, and at an extremely low point, we have to be reminded of that."