Daredevil: Born Again's fifth episode, "With Interest," was directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff and has proven to be surprisingly divisive since hitting Disney+ yesterday evening.
The filmmaker also helmed last week's "Sic Semper Systema," but this bottle episode - a largely standalone instalment of a series typically filmed in a single location, often with a minimal cast - seems to either be drawing rave reviews or harsh criticisms.
Talking to Phase Hero, Nachmanoff reflected on shooting Matt Murdock's team-up with Ms. Marvel's father, Yusuf Khan, and confirmed that "With Interest" is the only episode of Daredevil: Born Again not to have been tinkered with during the creative overhaul.
"This episode is the only completely untouched episode, I believe, from the original version of the show before we went back and reworked it," he explained. "You can feel that. It has that bottle episode feel because it's just Matt for the most part."
"This is a bank heist gone wrong episode, and you treat it as its own contained story. That's what we did. We actually shot it in the same bank down on Wall Street where they shot Inside Man," Nachmanoff added before he was asked if the jewel at the centre of the robbery holds any importance. "This is a contained episode, so the jewel doesn't come back."
It seems highly likely that this standalone episode is indicative of what Daredevil: Born Again's tone was before Marvel Studios stepped in to shake things up. Remember, a big part of that overhaul was to bring the revival more in line with Netflix's gritty, violent Daredevil.
Nachmanoff went on to discuss this episode's approach to the Man Without Fear and why the decision was made to tie it into another critically acclaimed Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel.
"Well, Sana [Amanat] was obviously a big part of creating [Ms. Marvel] and she's one of the producers on Daredevil and it was her influence. She helped me understand what Yusuf's backstory was and the tone of that other show was much lighter and more comedic. How do we make that work? Daredevil is about as dark as you go in Marvel and Ms. Marvel might be about as light as you can go."
"I thought the actors did a great job of living in the same space. Each character moves into the other one's space. You have some jokiness from Matt because that character does have a sense of humour and playfulness. The other character, he has to play it a little more serious and that there's a real-world threat in this situation."
"I didn't even know what a Funko is but that's a classic Marvel joke where you can have merchandising of your fake characters in your fake world. Marvel fans, at this point, are super sophisticated that they're enjoying and participating in an entertainment system. They're also aware that it's commercialised, otherwise it doesn't exists. By nodding to it constantly, [fans know], 'The joke's not on us, we're in on it.'"
As divisive as this episode appears to have been, it also helps establish Daredevil as being part of the wider MCU. If the rumours about him appearing in Avengers: Doomsday are true, then that's surely far from a bad thing.
Six episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now streaming on Disney+.