While Wilson Fisk is Daredevil's leading enemy, Kingpin isn't really one to do the dirty work. So he needed to enlist the help of a skilled assassin in Daredevil Season 3. Spoilers for Episodes 1-6 follow. During Daredevil and Bullseye's fight in Season 3, Benjamin Poindexter (or "Dex," as he likes to be called) wears a version of Matt Murdock's secret suit. This Daredevil impersonation act is orchestrated by Fisk, who wants to introduce a new villain to New York City to distract them from him. Over the course of the first six episodes, Fisk manipulates Dex until the FBI agent with absurdly accurate aim breaks down and becomes the villain Bullseye. Daredevil first encounters this new nemesis in a face-off at the New York Bulletin. And with Bullseye's skills, it's amazing that Matt, Karen, and Foggy are able to survive.
Fisk started to suspect that Matt Murdock was Daredevil back in Season 2. His suspicion deepens in Episode 5 when he sees footage of Matt fighting off the prison guards under Fisk's employ. So Fisk decides to take Matt down from all angles. He tells Agent Ray Nadeem that Matt Murdock is a criminal who has worked for him in the past. And then he sets up Dex to do a deadly Daredevil doppelgänger act at the New York Bulletin.
Karen, Foggy, and Matt (as himself — not his vigilante alter ego) are all at the newspaper office to turn over Jasper Evans. Fisk had hired Jasper to shank him in prison, which led to Fisk being relocated. To stop Jasper from giving a statement to Ray, Fisk dispatches Dex there presumably under the orders to kill Jasper and anyone else he feels like while donning the Daredevil suit. A power outage in the office promises ominous things as Dex emerges as Daredevil and begins to kill the staff of the Bulletin.
Matt doesn't have his own Daredevil suit on him (he's been forgoing it anyway in Season 3), but he emerges just in time to stop Dex from killing Foggy by grabbing the baton that Dex threw at him. Once Foggy escapes from immediate danger to the conference room with Karen, Matt asks this familiarly-masked stranger, "Who are you?" Dex replies, "I'm Daredevil," which leads Matt to attack this imposter.
Matt's martial arts expertise seems to give him the advantage in hand-to-hand combat, but he's not prepared for Bullseye's accuracy when it comes to throwing things. Plus, this ability seems to mess with Matt's senses. Dex uses his ricochet skills to launch a number of office supplies at the real Daredevil and it throws Matt off his game. But Matt is able to use his senses to catch a snow globe in a baller move that proves why he's the real Daredevil.
However, Dex gets the upper hand when he stabs Matt with a pair of scissors and stomps them further into his shoulder. Bullseye heads into the conference room where he punches out Foggy, stabs Karen's editor Mitchell in the stomach, and shoots Jasper in the head. But he lets a petrified Karen go and says, "Hello Karen, it's nice to see you again." Then Dex as Daredevil fights the FBI agents who have arrived in the stairwell, including Ray. Meanwhile, Matt flees to the printer area and takes out all the office supplies that are lodged in his body. At the end of the episode, an enraged Ray tells a fellow agent that Daredevil is who caused all this carnage.
Showrunner Erik Oleson told Bustle in an interview ahead of the premiere that he wanted the action sequences to be unexpected and have real consequences. "When you do an action sequence on a show called Daredevil, you're pretty sure he's going to survive that fight," Oleson says. "So what else is going on that makes it real, that makes it important? And one of the things that I wanted to do this season was to have fights where Matt loses! And there are real consequences to him losing that fight that the audience does not expect. That, for me, makes it good television where you watch the show and you don't know what's coming next."
Oleson certainly achieved both those elements in Daredevil and Bullseye's first fight. The fight is thrilling to watch as Bullseye has essentially an entire office emporium at his disposal. And Matt losing results in the deaths of many of Karen's colleagues, including presumably Mitchell. This defeat also keeps Kingpin's con intact. So the FBI will be hunting for this killer Daredevil in episodes to come. And hopefully, when Dex inevitably fights Matt again, his killer bullseye will give his true identity away.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Patton.
