Spoilers Daredevil: Born Again (Spoilers)

This is part of a larger conversation re: superhero ethics that only sometimes gets touched upon in the comics themselves. Is it worth it to engage violent criminals in spaces where there are innocents when the crime is simply theft from a bank? Even if no innocents are endangered, is the property damage worth it? Thinking back to Matt's appearance in She-Hulk, it would be hard for Jen to justify the damage she did to the parking lot (especially the owner of the car she threw at Matt) as necessary for "catching the bad guy."
I am having a very difficult time reconciling your description of what happened with what I saw with my own eyes. This was not a simple theft where lives were not endangered. This was a robbery committed by well armed men, who deliberately threatened the lives of unarmed people, and assaulted a "blind" man. If someone pointed a gun in your face would you seriously tell me you weren't endangered? If so, you've got ice in your veins.

I should note that stopping bank robbers is a classic superhero move. Spider-Man did it when Doc Ock was robbing the bank in the 2nd Tobey movie and he stopped another robbery in Tom's first Spider-Man movie.
 

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The bank robbers were threatening to murder the hostages from the start, there's no reason to believe they were bluffing.

The leader of the bank robbers outright said he was going to start shooting hostages at the end. Even though he was lying to get the police to charge in, that's not something you assume is a bluff.

Daredevil's actions were entirely ethical, he didn't put the hostages in any more danger than they already were in. In fact I'd say he lessened the danger since he took out bank robbers who might otherwise have shot hostages or the police.
 

There can be questionable decisions by superheroes about property damage and risk to the public (though some of it depends on the conventions in use in the fiction; we watch heroic car chases in action movies all the time and those are a hell of a lot more risky that a lot of superhero battles. Its just usually accepted because one of the conventions of such things usually is that they don't go lethally bad for bystanders). Daredevil (and as far as that goes, the other three members of the MCU Defenders) are actually toward the lower end of that risk because they don't use ranged attacks and tend to be pretty selective about where they pick fights.
 


Daredevil is a vigilante, what do you expect him to do? Dude had already committed a violent, public-endangering crime, so why let him go so he can do it again?
I dunno, track him back to his boss or lair or wherever he's going? Attack him when he can do so without maiming him so brutally and psychotically? He had all the options in the world at that point. The guy was not an immediate threat to anyone and didn't even have any stolen goods.

Also, this needs to be read in a both Watsonian and Doylist way, and it's just shenaningans to stick solely to the Watsonian angle as you're doing. The writer/showrunner of this episode (almost certainly NOT the current showrunner) decided that insane hyperviolence against a man who was considerably less bad (as far as DD knows, anyway, including what he overhead) than many people DD faces off against was the correct for this story to go. That's a bizarre decision, and at-odds with the general tone of both that episode (which was fairly whimsical) and the entire Daredevil TV canon, where DD is not a psychopath, and doesn't do that kind of thing without an extremely good reason and when he does, it costs him personally/emotionally unless its life-and-death (and sometimes even then). Also, it blurs the line between him and the Punisher in a way that's not clever or cool, and that I'm sure wasn't intentional (again, given the tone of the rest of the episode). DD doesn't generally "punish" people for distant sins, he takes down people who are immediate threats or who are really serious ongoing threats (which one fleeing bank robber certainly doesn't qualify as). Absolutely brutalizing the hell out of a guy who hadn't actually done anything horrific and was fleeing should be significant for DD, especially when it's clearly not some particularly life-or-death fight for him.

They could easily have worked it in as him losing control, or him sliding towards being a Punisher-type and having to atone for that, but the episode totally did not do that, instead forgetting that brutality and immediately engaging in as I said, almost 1960s Batman levels of silly business (which is pretty off for Daredevil, sorry, but it is).

Further, there's a pretty clear plothole (unless it's acknowledged or followed up later, I haven't seen the newest episode yet) in that at least one of those bank robbers 100% knows he got beat up by that blind lawyer guy (unless he's suffering from head injury amnesia or something), and I'm sorry, this isn't grade school, he's not going to keep that to himself out of embarrassment or something. Especially as evidently someone did it, and there are no other suspects. So given that and the wild and clumsy tonal fluctuations, I think this is a pretty clear example of the dreaded "bad writing" (but again, not by the current team working on DD, by the old, fired one).
 


Also, this needs to be read in a both Watsonian and Doylist way, and it's just shenaningans to stick solely to the Watsonian angle as you're doing. The writer/showrunner of this episode (almost certainly NOT the current showrunner) decided that insane hyperviolence against a man who was considerably less bad (as far as DD knows, anyway, including what he overhead) than many people DD faces off against was the correct for this story to go.
Considerably less bad than who? He demonstrated a willingness to murder unarmed people to achieve his mission goals. This was an intelligent, ruthless man who was in control of his actions the whole time. He also held his own against Murdoch during their fight which is why it ended in such a brutal manner. This wasn't just some regular henchman going about his day. He was a hench lieutenant.

As far as brutality goes, it's hard to say in a comic book show. We see Daredevil knock out a cop with a blow to the head in a later episode. In real life, such a blow is likely to cause the officer long term problems beyond just waking up later with a headache. We're talking about a genre where supposedly regular humans recover from paraplegia after having their back broken, return to crime fighting a week after surgery where fragments of their skull was removed from their brain, and folks can take a relentless beating that should leave them broken or crippled but they're walking around the next time with some minor bruising and abrasions.

Watsonian! Sir, I am, I say, I am offended. I demand satisfaction! Never before in the annals of history has such a disparaging comment been made of any one person by another. I assure you, I have never been associated with any man named Watson, nor am I familiar with the doilies he produces.
 

We're talking about a genre where supposedly regular humans recover from paraplegia after having their back broken, return to crime fighting a week after surgery where fragments of their skull was removed from their brain, and folks can take a relentless beating that should leave them broken or crippled but they're walking around the next time with some minor bruising and abrasions.
Yeah I've always said, basically comic book humas are like regular humans with like +6 con. Its why batman can take the beatings he does, while people can get caught in midair flying down super fast and not break their necks, etc etc.
 

I just watched the first episode, and haven't read the rest of the thread, because I would prefer not to be spoiled. But..

They fridged Foggy?!?!?! They done my boy dirty indeed! Grrr.
 


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