In the opening chapter of Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Wilson Fisk—the man known as Kingpin—exerts a formidable influence over New York City. While the inaugural season followed Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) as he acclimated to his role as Mayor, he has now reached the zenith of his political power. His Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF) casts a shadow of intimidation over the five boroughs, yet his approval ratings remain high, buoyed by deceptively low crime statistics. Fisk’s hubris has grown so vast that he is now leveraging his Brooklyn free port to funnel military-grade armaments into the city under the cover of legitimate commerce.
However, the premiere suggests that Fisk’s control is more brittle than it appears. After Daredevil infiltrates a cargo vessel transporting these weapons, Kingpin orders the ship scuttled, sending its illicit payload to the bottom of the East River to hide the evidence. With the AVTF increasingly overstepping their bounds by harassing civilians and heroes alike, the seeds of Fisk’s eventual downfall have already been sown. To anticipate where this trajectory leads, we must look to the Marvel source material to see if history is destined to repeat itself.
The precedent for a Mayor Fisk was established in 2017’s Daredevil Vol. 5 #28. Much like the television adaptation, Fisk secured the mayoralty on a platform explicitly targeting masked vigilantes. In a calculated move to pacify the legal community, he appointed Matt Murdock—still unaware of Murdock’s nocturnal activities—as his deputy mayor. This backfired when an assault by The Hand left Fisk comatose, allowing Murdock to seize temporary control of City Hall and dismantle Fisk’s anti-hero initiatives from within before the Kingpin could recover.
Fisk’s political career reached its violent crescendo in the 2022 crossover event Devil’s Reign. In this arc, Fisk discovers that his memory of Daredevil’s secret identity was psychically scrubbed years prior. Incensed by this violation, he ratchets up his crusade by passing The Powers Act, a draconian law criminalizing all superhuman activity within city limits. To enforce this, he enlists the Thunderbolts—a roster of “reformed” villains—to hunt down the city’s protectors.
The comic storyline concludes with Fisk’s incarceration after he attempts to use Kilgrave’s mind-control abilities to rig his re-election. However, in true Kingpin fashion, Fisk escapes custody and finds an unlikely reprieve. He chooses to abandon his vendettas, sailing away with his wife (in the comics, Typhoid Mary, as Vanessa had previously passed away) to find a quiet life elsewhere. Shortly thereafter, Luke Cage is elected to succeed him as the leader of New York.
How much of this will migrate to the screen? Given that Fisk already knows Matt Murdock’s secret in the MCU, the dynamic of Murdock serving as his deputy is unlikely. While Jessica Jones is slated to return, the show will likely keep the narrative focused rather than ballooning into a massive crossover event. Reaching a moral impasse over killing Fisk would also feel superfluous, as Matt has already wrestled with that specific demon across multiple seasons of the original Netflix series.
If Season 2 marks the end of Fisk’s political tenure, we should expect a visceral, grounded confrontation between the AVTF and Murdock’s underground resistance. Curiously, the most realistic ending for a character of Fisk’s stature might be the one from the comics: despite his numerous crimes, his immense wealth and influence might allow him to retire to a private sanctuary with Vanessa (played by Ayelet Zurer), proving that in Hell’s Kitchen, justice is rarely absolute.
Source: Polygon
