 I have been shying away from a five star rating for far too long, so here it is. 

Everything about this episode is so full-circle, from little things like Matt going from hearing people’s prayers in the church and wanting to help to hearing their sins being hopeless to help them, to how incredibly Nadeem and Dex’s arcs have progressed. 

Nadeem has constantly been a really engaging character to watch and seeing where his current plot line would go genuinely had me on the edge of my seat. It feels like his character has progressed so flawlessly and naturally to this point and I love his defiance toward Dex and the hands of Fisk. The action scene at the end was great and I didn’t hate him whatsoever for literally showing willingness to kill the protagonist of the show. It was a great way to have Matt reveal his identity and even better for the tying Nadeem’s plot line further into the primary one for this final stretch.

Dex has also been a consistently brilliant character, and this steady plummet into insanity has been agonising to watch. We know he’s just somebody that is deeply hurt and is being taken advantage of but he himself extends no reason for the audience to sympathise, so you’re left watching him fall deeper into this pit with no efforts to escape it, and it hurts to watch.

In this episode they also seriously buffed up on their main characters, because Matt and Fisk were genuinely unbelievable. Watching Fisk’s plans to frame Matt come to fruition, his commanding voice hushing the jeering of the public, a sense of sheer dread sets in, as the Kingpin grabs more of Hell’s Kitchen into the palm of his hand. That moment makes you feel as if there really is no other way to put a stop to him, but the tiny cracks that appear in his master plan leans into Foggy’s hopefulness. Fisk failed to kill Karen and Matt, he did not get his painting, and Vanessa is not yet with him, all things that he wants to do based off of his emotions, as if Karen’s plan wasn’t so bad after all. This is exactly what I talked about a couple reviews ago about them putting a stop to Fisk in a way that really works for the story.

I’ve already mentioned a couple Matt scenes a tiny bit here but I absolutely could not make this review without a paragraph for him, I really did miss him last episode, and this string of scenes was a great welcome back. His apology to Karen and Foggy was the sweetest thing, and thematically makes sense to lead to them winning because he’s finally grown past his hatred for people that have “left him” and has now built a stable form of support for his life.

Seriously incredible stuff, the score was fantastic, I had no issues whatsoever with any acting, and the lighting looked as good as ever.

9.5/10