Frank deals with Fisk in prison, while Matt tracks down a Hand base.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Appropriated Appellation: Fisk decides to take the title of Kingpin from Dutton after his defeat.
- Back from the Dead: Nobu appears at the Farm alive and well, despite being last seen as a burning heap on the floor.Daredevil: Wait. You're dead.
Nobu: There is no such thing. - Be Careful What You Wish For: Foggy comes to Matt suggesting they shut down the office for a while until both of them can work out what's important to them. He's surprised when Matt agrees...because he's already decided to end their partnership, having decided that his vigilantism is what's important to him.
- Blood Is the New Black: After being locked in Dutton's cell block and fighting his way through every inmate in there, Castle is positively dripping with gore.
- Call-Back: When Frank says that the next time they meet only one will walk away, Fisk responds with, "I'm counting on it," just like he said when Wesley warned him that killing Anatoly would start a war with the Russians.
- Chekhov's Gunman: There's a very brief shot of Stewart Finney sweeping the floor when Fisk is being processed, moments before he properly introduces himself to Fisk.
- The Chessmaster: Invoked when Fisk tells Frank that he plays "the long game."
- Cold Open: A ten-minute-long one detailing Fisk's life in prison.
- Combat Pragmatist: Frank immediately goes for the eye, the groin, and the throat when he fights Dutton's men.
- Commonality Connection: Stewart Finney instantly connects with Fisk by appealing to him as a businessman, and persuading him that they both are superior intellects compared to the rest of the inmates.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Fisk is brought in to prison, he still has wounds around his face from his fight in the alleyway with Matt.
- Additionally, he pauses when removing the cufflinks that Vanessa chose for him.
- Clean Up Crew: Matt has a blurry image of people cleaning up his apartment after his battle with the ninja, apparently people called in by Elektra.
- The Corruptor: Rather than Matt leading her to the light as she suggested in the previous episode, Matt decides to end things with Elektra because he's worried they'll both corrupt each other.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Matt severs his ties with Foggy, Karen and Elektra because he acknowledges that he is no good for them.
- Dark and Troubled Past
- Elektra confesses to having committed her first kill at the age of twelve, with no other justification than to see what it felt like.
- Ben Urich mentioned looking into Karen's past, and she's visibly upset on finding her file on Ben's desk, though Ellison says he doesn't care about the contents despite having read it.
- Enemy Mine: Not once is Castle happy with it, but by helping Fisk he is able to get info on his family's deaths.
- Evil Is Petty: In an Evil vs. Evil kind of way. A prison guard taps Fisk on the back of the head with a baton and tells him "Newbies wear white. That's yours."
- Evil Sounds Deep: Dutton and Fisk have a deep-off.
- Evil vs. Evil: Fisk's conflict with Dutton.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Fisk buys loyalty in prison by seeing to it that the loved ones of his subordinates are taken care of; additionally, he refuses to dip into the reserve funding he has set up to keep Vanessa safe and comfortable.
- Eye Scream: Frank gouges out an inmate's eye with his thumb.
- Face Palm: Played for drama; Foggy does one after hearing from Karen that she found Elektra in Matt's bed, and Karen does a tearful version on finding a newspaper clipping about herself in Ben's files.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Before unmasking, and even before speaking with Peter Shinkoda's distinctive voice, the masked Nobu does a slow-motion, spinning kick to Matt's face—the exact same move that opened his fight with Matt in the dockhouse. He also uses the same weapon he did to inflict those scars on Matt.
- Foreshadowing: Two episodes ago, Matt and Elektra discussed all the scars he got from his fight with Nobu. Guess who's Back from the Dead?
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Look at the assignment board
◊ at the Bulletin office. You'll notice that Ellison seems to have revamped the paper's priorities. Rather than the fluff pieces Ben Urich criticized Ellison for prioritizing, they're focusing on important city matters, including a mugging in Hell's Kitchen, a major rape trial, a building fire, a police-involved shooting in Hell's Kitchen, police brutality allegations, and a stalking incident involving the mayor's wife. - Get Out!: Fisk bellows, "GO, NOW!" at the guards under his payroll who are understandably nervous about leaving their meal ticket alone with Castle.
- Gorn: Frank's massacre in Dutton's cell block is probably one of the most brutal scenes in the entire series.
- Hallway Fight: Fisk tricks Frank into entering a cell block, locks him in, and releases all the prisoners, who are quick to get revenge on him for killing their boss. He ends up having to go down a corridor, stabbing his way with a shiv.
- Ham-to-Ham Combat: Fisk and Frank, two screaming berserkers.
- Hellhole Prison: Rikers. On Fisk's arrival, Dutton runs 80% of the contraband in the place and has most of the guards in his pocket. By the end of the episode, Fisk has completely taken over the prison, and after buying out the guards, he sets a whole cell block loose on Frank.
- The Heart: Karen is the only one who wants to keep digging into the Castle case when both Matt and Foggy have not only given up, but dissolved their partnership.
- Honor Before Reason: Zig-zagged with Frank. One the one hand, taking Fisk's deal is practical in that it gets him a chance to find those responsible for his family's deaths instead of rotting away in prison, and his chances of killing Fisk before the guards stop him are slim. On the other hand, Frank chooses to get his revenge instead of trying to eliminate Fisk, even after Fisk both shows and tells Frank exactly how much greater a threat he could become thanks to Frank's actions.
- How We Got Here: The episode opens with an extended flashback documenting Fisk's arrival in prison and shows us how he's been biding his time.
- Human Resources: Matt finds Gibson's son and several others imprisoned in cages as human blood banks for whatever is in the huge urn.
- I Am What I Am: Matt says he's tired of apologizing to Foggy about his vigilantism. He decides to end his day job and embrace Daredevil completely.
- Ironic Echo: On Fisk's arrival in prison, Dutton visits him in his cell to taunt him, saying to him, "There's only room for one of us in this prison and it ain't gonna be you, not ever. Because I'm the kingpin of this bitch." Fisk repeats Dutton's words to him as he's dying in the hospital wing.Wilson Fisk: In prison, there's only room for one Kingpin.
- I Take Offense to That Last One: Frank tells Fisk that he doesn't make deals with shit-bag has-been mob bosses. Fisk takes exception to "has-been".Wilson Fisk: Has-been?
Frank Castle: You heard what I said. - Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: During Frank's fight in the prison, one of the men comes at him with a sharpened stake. Frank uses it against another inmate. We actually see it come out the man's back. Slowly.
- Impersonating an Officer: On Fisk's arrangements, Frank is smuggled out of the prison disguised in a corrections officer's riot gear.
- Institutional Apparel: Fisk wears white coveralls as a new arrival, as does Castle when fighting Dutton's yellow-clad henchmen.
- Ironic Episode Title: Taken from a teenage kissing game, here it refers to the seven minutes Fisk allows Frank to accomplish his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Dutton's cell block.
- Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: When Matt grabs Hirochi, he says there are more guards outside. Matt just smirks, saying none of them are conscious. However it turns out Nobu, who came very close to defeating Matt last year, is guarding their most valuable asset downstairs.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Rather than fighting Dutton himself, Fisk instead informs Frank that Dutton most likely arranged the deal that got Frank's family killed. When Frank fatally wounds Dutton, Fisk takes over as the prison kingpin. Fisk then helps Frank escape prison since he figures that on the outside Frank will continue killing Fisk's competition.
- Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Downplayed, at first, as Dutton doesn't own the entire prison—just Block D. By the end of the episode, however, it looks like Fisk controls the whole place, as he is able to arrange for Frank Castle, a maximum security prisoner, to just walk out.
- Mythology Gag:
- In the aftermath of Frank's massacre of the inmates, the blood pattern on his shirt forms a rough, red-on-white version of his distinctive skull logo.
- Fisk tells Frank that he has "a gift" for killing, which ironically plays off of the MCU's use of the term "gifted" to refer to superhumans.
- Fisk's machinations in prison allude to a comics story, "The Devil in Cell Block D." Dutton's role resembles the one played by the Owl in the comics version, and he even resembles the way the Owl was drawn in those comics.
- Frank's plot draws in limited fashion on elements of Punisher: The Cell, a Punisher MAX one-shot in which he deliberately gets sent to prison so he can exact revenge on people responsible for his family's death.
- The prisoners in cages in the Hand's lair allude to the Shadowland storyline, where they did something similar.
- Mugging the Monster: Stewart Finney was an accountant who embezzled from his clients. And got caught after he skimmed the brother of a very influential Justice Department official.
- Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: We learn that the shootout at the carousel was actually a meeting to form a larger organization.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Frank's actions ensure that Fisk will be well positioned to take over the prison, and perhaps a good portion of the Northeast's organized crime circuits in the long run.
- Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Averted. Fisk is bleeding through the limited funds that the federal government didn't seize when he was arrested, and his new source of funding comes from taking over Dutton's contraband business.
- One-Man Army: The inmates of Dutton's cell block find out the hard way why Frank is so feared.
- Pet the Dog: Despite arranging his assassination, Fisk decides to spend the time Dutton has left with him so he doesn't die alone. Of course, it's as much an opportunity to indulge in Evil Gloating as anything else.Wilson Fisk: The physician says that your condition is grave, that your lungs are filling with liquid. In a few hours, you're likely to suffocate in your own blood. But you won't suffer alone. I'll be here. Because you were right. In prison, there's only room for one kingpin.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Donovan tells Fisk that he needs to keep his criminal activity in prison to a minimum because he does not want to jeopardize his chances at an early release. He could have killed Dutton himself, but it would have been linked to him and destroyed his chances for parole. When he helps Frank escape it is not out of the kindness of his heart, but because Frank can weaken many criminal elements outside the prison so Fisk can take over more easily once he's out.
- Prisons Are Gymnasiums: Frank met Fisk working out in the prison's gym. After the How We Got Here Cold Open, that's where we pick up.
- Prolonged Prologue: A ten-minute one about Wilson Fisk's arrival in prison, and his time adjusting to the life until Castle is brought to him, picking up where the last episode left off.
- Replacement Goldfish: Fisk's first recruit in prison is Stewart Finney, a bespectacled white-collar criminal who plays a role similar to James Wesley's role in Fisk's outside operation.
- The Reveal: Frank, Karen, and Ellison all find out at the same time that the shootout at the carousel wasn't a fight between the three gangs. The three were coming together to work out a sharing arrangement, selling heroin for a mysterious individual known only as the Blacksmith. The reason it all went wrong is because it was a sting, there were undercover cops there and more in the area to pick everyone up. Someone started shooting and it all went sideways.
- Scars Are Forever: Nobu reveals that he still has some fairly horrible scars from when Matt burned him to death.Nobu: I hope you still have scars to remember me by.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Stewart Finney says that he got locked up in Rikers because he double crossed the brother of a very influential Justice Department bigwig.
- Sinister Shiv: As most of the episode takes place inside a prison, there are a whole mess of these.
- Too Dumb to Live: Yes, you should totally threaten Wilson Fisk, Dutton. Your years of experience as kingpin of an underground contraband ring clearly trump his years of experience on the streets of Hell's Kitchen.
- Took a Level in Badass: Fisk's time in prison has given him lots of experience. He was already an expert at running a covert criminal empire but being sent to prison has forced him to learn to do the same with extremely limited resources, presaging his return to prominence in the third season. He also spends time working out, making him an even more imposing physical threat, as well.
- Villain Has a Point:
- Fisk does this to Castle repeatedly in the episode.
- Dutton points out that Frank's Roaring Rampage of Revenge will never really end. Frank agrees, not that it does Dutton much good.
- Underestimating Badassery:
- Frank and Dutton underestimate just how manipulative and ruthless Fisk can be. Dutton is surprised when Fisk has Castle kill him, and Castle is surprised when Fisk sells him out when the job is done.
- Fisk in turn, admits he believed the newspaper articles describing the Punisher murders were "apocryphal". He is surprised when Castle not only kills Dutton but butchers his entire gang.
- Wham Line: From Tepper, the disgraced former Medical Examiner.Tepper: It means John Doe wasn't a criminal, and he wasn't an innocent bystander either. He was an undercover cop.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Fisk slams Castle onto the table during their scuffle.
- Xanatos Gambit: Fisk ensures that his claim to power inside of prison is guaranteed whether Frank survives or not.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Fisk attempts to pull this on Frank, letting him die in the cell block after he killed Dutton. When it fails, Fisk decides to change his plan and let him escape prison so he will take out his competition.
