One Small Scene: “Love is the perfect prison.”

Chained to a car and surrounded by federal agents, prisoner and criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk begins to opine on the subject that dominates his mind, rather than the dangers of prison, crime, the public, or the agents all ambivalent about his death.

“You can build a prison of stone and steel, but you merely present the prisoner with a challenge. Any truly determined man will find a way out. But love…”

The clearer and clearer confinement of the Kingpin, his desperation, the detachment and ambiguous response he receives from his Vanessa when she finally returns to him after this desperate transit and scheme shows a classic flaw. As with most crime and many tragedies, there is an avoidable, clear Achillies heel to an otherwise dangerous character.

“Love is the perfect prison. Inescapable. So you see Agent Nadeem, I am always in prison wherever I go.”

This becomes a literal truth, as Fisk’s nature, and the added bloodlust of his wife leads to their betrayal. The three-way fight between a henchman whose psychopathy becomes unleashed back upon the Kingpin, and the archenemy Daredevil he has tried meticulously, on a mental and physical level to break all fight each other at the moment Fisk thought was his triumph.

“I will do whatever I must.”

The misanthropy, the childish violence and poorly contained rage within Fisk leads to the callous murder of Julie, the woman Agent Dex pinned his sense of self-control to in a similarly unhealthy fashion to Fisk himself. It is not just his romantic love, not just the virtue of romance present within his growth in Season One, but his warped perspective of it that defeats Wilson Fisk.

The classic villain, killing to “free” others, to occupy their place as an emotional keystone in order to take another under his control. Love is not that of the complex and authoritarian friends Matt Murdoch has, the love of his religious advisors, and the love of the city in which he lives. Fisk’s love, his trapped mentality, his selfishness, connected deeply to his passion are a prison.

They ultimately hold the character’s defeat. And perhaps most interestingly, when Fisk speaks within the armoured car there is a sense that he understands the inevitability even while his scheme has just begun to unfold. It’s not just poignant about Fisk’s current situation as a target. It applies to his future, perhaps to a more grim and less rose-tinted perspective about his relationship, and the path he willing stepped upon.

Reference: Daredevil. Season 3, Episode 2. “Please”.