After Frank's escape, the entire legal system is frantic to find a way to track him and discover what he's after. Meanwhile, Elektra meets a French gentleman while waiting for her plane out of New York.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Affably Evil: Jacques makes his intentions clear and praises Elektra's past assassinations before engaging her in a fight to the death.
- All for Nothing:
- Reyes confesses that she didn't evacuate the park during the sting operation because she didn't want to spook the Blacksmith. Didn't matter since he didn't even show up, and people ended up dying.
- Matt hits the Despair Event Horizon in his conversation with Claire. Nobu is somehow alive, Fisk Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All, and The Punisher is out of prison the day after he's put in there.
- Always a Bigger Fish: So long as Reyes was pursuing Castle and maintaining the cover up, the Blacksmith was happy to stay in the shadows. When Fisk gets Castle out of prison and the cover up falls apart, he sends in killers to tie up everything that can connect him to the massacre at the park.
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: Fisk declares that once he’s free, he'll go after Foggy as he was partially responsible for Fisk's incarceration. Matt visibly panics upon hearing this and insists that he alone had Fisk arrested. Fisk instantly counters that Nelson and Murdock were responsible for his current situation.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Matt asks Foggy how he feels. Like he's been shot, of course.
- Asshole Victim: Reyes's death at the hand's of the Blacksmith's men, given that she was indirectly responsible for the deaths of the Castle's family and only regretted it once she realized she had no control of the situation.
- Audible Sharpness / Dual Wielding: The French Assassin's sais.
- Berserk Button: Vanessa is still Fisk's personal Berserk Button. As soon as Matt threatens her, the previously stoic Fisk goes absolutely berserk.
- Body Horror: Pretty much everything related to the kids from The Farm.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: For some reason, the assassin sent by Stick decides to reveal his intention to kill Elektra, despite having all but seduced her already. He also draws sais when he's already beating the tar out of her barehanded, and just seems to be arrogant in general.
- Break the Haughty: When Reyes appears, she's a broken woman who doesn't care about her career anymore. She also does feel guilt about the death of Frank's family.
- Break Them by Talking: Matt pushes Fisk to the point where he drops the cuffs he's wearing, revealing he was never chained, and starts beating the shit out of Matt while the guards standing outside do nothing. Matt got the confirmation he wanted that Fisk is in complete control of the prison and did set Castle free. Of course, it also means Fisk has extra motivation to come after Matt.
- Bullying a Dragon: Fisk attacks Matt after the latter threatens to make some legal moves to prevent Vanessa from ever being able to return to the United States.
- Call-Back:
- Karen believes Frank's If I Wanted You Dead... claim from a previous episode, uses this to argue that Castle wasn't the one who killed Reyes; the hit was too sloppy and an innocent person (Foggy) got hurt.
- Claire explains that the teens rescued from The Farm were full of chemicals and that one of her fellow doctors believes they were being used to incubate those chemicals then systematically drained of their blood, being used as some sort of chemical farm.
- Cliffhanger: Hand ninjas are climbing the walls of the hospital with Claire and Foggy in danger inside. And the only line of defense is Matt, suited up and cricking his neck at the battle to come.
- Continuity Nod:
- There's a female detective with Brett Mahoney. In "Penny and Dime", Brett had a female partner, who would have also been promoted for the 'capture' of the Punisher.
- Fisk threatens Foggy but not Karen, as it was Wesley who realised her key role in the Nelson and Murdock team, but he's dead and Fisk only knows what he's read in the newspapers.
- Dissonant Serenity: After Fisk delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and tells him to leave, Matt listens to his heartbeat and he's perfectly calm. Either he calms down incredibly quickly or his blind rage doesn't excite him.
- Diving Save
- While in Reyes' office, Matt hears a Dramatic Gun Cock and throws Karen to safety just as Reyes is riddled by a shooter firing through the window. Foggy, who is sitting on Matt's opposite side, catches a bullet in the shoulder.
- Karen is holding Castle at gunpoint when someone starts shooting through the walls; Castle uses the distraction to disarm Karen and throw her to the ground.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- As self-absorbed and corrupt as she might be, Reyes cares much more about her daughter's safety than her career.
- Wilson Fisk's desire to reunite with Vanessa is what keeps him going whilst in prison, and threatening to disrupt that is unwise, as Matt finds out.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Reyes reveals that she was horrified by the consequences of her sting operation, though that didn't stop her from trying to cover her tracks, including putting a DNR order on Frank Castle.
- Foreshadowing: The fact that Foggy, one of the only completely innocent people in the show, gets shot is all the proof you need that Frank isn't involved in the Reyes shooting. Not to mention the high risk of collateral damage in both murders, a far cry from Frank's "military precision," as Karen even points out.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Hand ninjas use grapple projectors to climb the walls of the hospital. Unlike some examples of this trope, they're shown to have a large container for the rope.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Reyes finally comes clean about her involvement and wishes to help, only to be killed by the Blacksmith.
- The Heart: This time it's Claire Temple who tries to buck up Matt's spirits, and tries (but fails) to get him to make a simple visit to Foggy in his hospital bed.
- Implied Death Threat: Reyes found a copy of the Punisher's skull x-ray in her daughter's schoolbag.
- Luxury Prison Suite: Downplayed; Fisk is shown tucking into a steak and wine with classic music playing, but the wine is in a plastic cup and he's still in a small prison cell near noisy inmates in other cells, sitting on his uncomfortable-looking prison cot in an orange jumpsuit. Having the guards and inmates on puppet strings gets you a lot of perks, but it still ain't the Ritz.
- Mad Science: Claire tells Matt the blood work of the people he took from the Farm is like something out of science fiction. Even Matt seems barely able to get to grips with what he's up against.
- Male Gaze: We get a leg-first introduction to Elektra to show off her tight leather pants.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Fisk, as far as being in a prison allows him to be anyway. Now that he has some control, he uses it to smuggle in fine steaks and wine. He even still listens to Bach's Cello Suite in G Major.
- Multiple Gunshot Death: Reyes gets completely riddled with bullet holes in her own office.
- Mythology Gag: Elektra takes Jacques's twin sais and kills him, mirroring the weapon of choice of the comic version's Elektra.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Jacques is holding his own very well against Elektra hand to hand. Then he draws his sais, and Elektra kills him with his own weapons almost immediately.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Reyes initially wanted to bring down the Blacksmith, but because she didn't clear Central Park, it resulted in a shootout that saw an undercover police officer killed along with Frank Castle's family, which prompts him to become the Punisher.
- Matt punching Fisk in the mouth during their chat. In his final scene, Fisk is reconsidering the wound and wants to re-examine his files on Matt. The implication is that having fought Daredevil hand-to-hand at the end of Season One, Fisk subconsciously recognizes Matt and Daredevil's punches are the same (to say nothing of how a blind man, even as the son of a boxer, could've thrown a punch that well and on target at all).
- Not Me This Time: Frank visits Karen at her apartment and tries to convince her that he didn't kill Reyes and the other victims. Moments later, he is proven right when another attack unfolds.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- After spending the entire season wearing nothing but professional clothes and acting like a complete asshole, Reyes greets the heroes politely (and nervously) while wearing sweats. It demonstrates just how much distress she is in.
- Similarly, the murders blamed on Frank are much messier than anything he's done. Karen thinks this means it's not him, while Ellison says she might've just been wrong.
- Seconds after Ellison says he thinks Frank is a mad-dog killer, he asks the cops to escort Karen home. She accuses him of being sexist, and that he'd never do it to Ben, even though she's normally cool in a crisis. Ellison immediately retorts that she's right about the second part, and that's what got Ben killed.
- Matt is noticeably rattled by everything that's happened; first having Nobu come back from the dead and what he witnessed in the Farm, then seeing Foggy shot, followed up by his terrifying confrontation with Fisk when he realises just how powerful he has become and that his friends—specifically Foggy—are directly threatened.
- Patricide: The son of Roxxon's accountant kills him, revealing that the children are still very much controlled by the Hand.
- Psychological Projection: Ellison brings up this trope when mentioning Karen's reluctance to believe Castle is the crazed gunman he seems to be. "Although why you'd want to see good in the man who pulls the trigger is beyond me."
- Redemption Equals Death: Reyes is driven to confess everything she's been covering up when it appears the Punisher is threatening her daughter, just in time to get gunned down.
- Revealing Cover Up: Of the Nixon variety. Reyes's original mistake wasn't a crime (though they would have decimated her career), but the on-going falsification of records was criminal.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Fisk tells Matt his intention to go on one against him and Foggy once he is free.
- Sleep Deprivation: Claire urges Matt to get some rest, but he refuses because he's guarding the hospital for the attack he knows is coming.
- Shown Their Work: A minor one: When Matt is handed the contract in Braille, he begins to read it with his fingers, only to note that it's upside-down, and flips the pages accordingly. The contract is also in legitimate Braille.
- Sequel Hook: Wilson Fisk's threat greatly qualifies, as it invokes the Born Again storyline, arguably the most famous Daredevil story. This is especially true if Fisk really does suspect that Matt is Daredevil.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The Blacksmith is the key player in a sting operation Reyes planned in order to take down a drug deal between the three gangs from the first three episodes of season 2. However, because the Blacksmith didn't show up, the Kitchen Irish, the Dogs of Hell, and the Mexican Cartel opened fire in Central Park, causing the death of Frank Castle's family and leading him into his path of vengeance as the Punisher. The failure of the sting operation also caused Reyes to try and cover up her failure by prosecuting the Punisher and antagonizing the Nelson & Murdock law firm.
- Spotting the Thread: Matt is able to get a good punch in while Fisk is pounding his head on the table. Fisk just puts this down to Matt being the son of a boxer, but afterwards Fisk gets a thoughtful look and orders his minion to bring him the file he has on Matt Murdock.
- Traitor Shot: Gibson's son is shown staring coldly at his father, showing he's not happy about being 'rescued' from the Farm.
- Unperson: The subjects found in the Farm have had their fingerprints burned off.
- We Do Not Know Each Other: On the steps Matt pretends to walk past Karen without noticing her, and she's clearly thinking of just remaining quiet so he will, but does call out to him.
- Wham Line: Before giving Jacques the Coup de Grâce, Elektra tells him she has no interest in the Hand or their war.Jacques: The Hand didn't send me. Stick did.
- White Shirt of Death: After killing Jacques, Elektra is a white Sexy Sweater Girl of Death.
- Would Hurt a Child: When the gunman fires into Karen's apartment a baby starts crying, just to hammer home the difference between the shooter and Castle, who would never put an innocent child at risk.
