Original Story of Daredevil
Matthew Murdock, the man without fear, has been defending the city of New York both as a lawyer and as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. While he’s been away for a while, he’s finally coming back. I will be focusing less on the stats of the character and more on his unique power set as he is just a regular human being.
At the age of nine, Matt was blinded by hazardous chemicals that spilled from a Rand Oil and Chemicals truck. While he lost the ability to see, his other senses were enhanced and compensated for his lack of vision, giving him superhuman abilities that provide more advantages than simply being able to see.
After the tragic death of his father, Matthew was sent to an orphanage and was eventually found by Stick, a member of the Chaste who was also blind and, like Matthew, used his other senses to see the world around him. Stick took Matt under his wing and began to train him in the martial arts to be a weapon to fight against the Hand while also training him to hone his incredible senses. While Matt was one of the most naturally gifted fighters that Stick had ever seen, he saw that Matt had become too emotionally attached to him and saw this as a weakness that Matt could not overcome, so Stick abandoned the child.
Becoming Daredevil
Matt went on to live the rest of his life away from Stick but always under the watchful eye of the Chaste. As he grew older, Matt decided that he wanted to make more of a difference within the city than he could as a simple lawyer and began fighting crime, eventually garnering the moniker of Daredevil.
Fighting Style and Techniques
As the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt employs various fighting styles to near perfection to take out his opponents quickly and effectively. The official Marvel Studios Daredevil page states that he is proficient in boxing, something that he would have a strong emotional connection to considering that his father was a boxer. Muay Thai, mixed martial arts-style ground and pound, kung fu, judo, aikido, capoeira, taekwondo, tricking (which combines kicks with flips and twists from martial arts as well as gymnastics), and wrestling takedowns are among the various styles he’s picked up along his journey. Using his elite fighting capabilities, Matt regularly takes on multiple assailants at once—it’s kind of his thing—and, God forbid, you ever face this man in a hallway.
Battles and Adversaries
He’s able to not only fight multiple street thugs at once but also trained FBI agents, whom he can disarm and incapacitate quite easily, not to mention top-tier Hand ninjas who, in most cases, he doesn’t even consider a challenge. In one of the very first fights we see Matt in, he defeats one of Wilson Fisk’s professional assassins, whom Fisk was surprised to learn had been defeated in a fight. Of course, Fisk, being the careful and calculated man he is, wouldn’t skimp on the right assassin—this guy was likely world-class, but Matt defeats him nonetheless.
However, Matt doesn’t just face nameless enemies as Daredevil; he consistently fights the best of the best and wins or at least holds his own in every single case. He’s gone up against Stick, the man who trained him and has the same enhanced senses that Matt does. He’s gone toe-to-toe with the Punisher, an elite Marine Corps sniper with years of battlefield experience. Nobu, one of the Hand’s best warriors at the time. Elektra, another one of the Chaste’s prodigies who had been fighting the Hand her entire life and who blatantly states that Matt fights better than anyone she knows.
Bullseye and Iron Fist
He battles Bullseye, an FBI agent with the unique ability to never miss—he’s essentially Hawkeye but can turn anything from an empty clip to an offering plate into a deadly projectile. Matt mentions in season 3 that Bullseye is as fast and as skilled as anyone he’s ever faced, and by the end of season 3, the two fight fairly evenly, showing us how much Matt has grown since season 1. Finally, in the Defenders, Matt is able to fight the immortal Iron Fist, who literally trained every day for years to become the greatest martial artist on the planet. After seeing Matt fight, Iron Fist admits that his skill is some of the best he’s ever witnessed, and keep in mind, he grew up in K’un-Lun, where everyone’s entire mission is to be a complete and total badass in martial arts. Matt’s skill has become legendary among the Chaste as well as the Hand.
Vulnerabilities and Strengths
Daredevil is not perfect, though, and he does end up on the wrong end of a blade or a fist throughout his crusade. He’s been slashed and nearly bled to death mid-fight, pummeled by Kingpin, who can barrel through walls and large tables, crush a man’s skull, and bench multiple reps of 405 pounds. Not to mention, he broke Bullseye’s back while Bullseye was in the Daredevil armor. Speaking of which, Daredevil is a serious threat while unarmed and unarmored, but when he is equipped with his Daredevil suit, he becomes even more dangerous. Created by Melvin Potter, this suit allows Daredevil to take more punishment and continue to fight. It’s more knife-resistant, and while his original helmet does get busted up in his fight with Punisher, he eventually receives an upgrade in the form of a fortified carbon tube helmet along with some reinforced alloy gloves. In his suit, he survived the collapse of Midland Circle—something no one else walked away from. Additionally, Matt comes equipped with his iconic billy club, which can be used normally or can be separated into two individual sticks joined by a high-tensile wire.
If his opponent likes to keep their distance, Daredevil can throw his billy club with deadly accuracy as well.
Enhanced Senses
Now that we’ve discussed just how skilled Daredevil is, let’s discuss the powers and abilities. As I said, after being blinded as a child, all of Matt’s other senses were enhanced to a point where they shaped the world around him, allowing him to see a world on fire. To tackle this most effectively, I think it’s probably best to address each sense individually to show you how Daredevil compensates for his lack of vision.
Enhanced Hearing
First would be his enhanced hearing. He’s able to hear many things that you’d expect from someone with enhanced senses, such as Captain America. Daredevil can hear things like guns being cocked, which allows him to evade gunfire, but his hearing is far better than the legendary super soldier. Matt can always tell when someone is lying, even if they’re able to put on an incredible poker face, as he can hear the rhythm of their heart, which gives them up each and every time. He’s able to hear the ticking of a watch from a decent distance away, the clinking of a chain during a rainstorm, an electrical current running through a wall. He can hear Claire’s bones shifting as she breathes and could pinpoint the location of her hairline fracture. Matt’s heard someone speaking through an earpiece that was in someone else’s ear while there was loud music at a boisterous party from a decent distance away, and he can even hear blood flowing through tubes from dozens of floors up. His sense of hearing is so great that he can search for and pick out individual sounds through the never-ending noise of New York City.
Enhanced Smell and Taste
He also has an enhanced sense of smell, which he doesn’t use as much as his hearing, but when he does employ this sense, he’s able to use it very effectively. He can smell someone’s cologne from multiple floors away and can pick out individual foods being served before they arrive. He can even determine what restaurant the food was cooked in. With this sense, he could determine the exact time two days prior that his friend Foggy had had lunch and exactly what he was eating. His sense of smell is so sharp that he was able to find out that a man was afflicted with cancer by the smell of it. How that works, I have no clue.
To his sense of smell is his sense of taste. Using his sense of taste, he could tell that Claire’s cut had reopened because he could taste the copper in the air, and he could also taste the alcohol on Karen’s lips from across the room from a drink that she had 30 minutes prior and was able to determine the exact brand of alcohol that she was drinking.
Sense of Touch and Balance
His sense of touch and balance are also nearly indescribable. He can feel direction, micro changes in air density, vibrations, and blankets of temperature variations. He can crack a safe by feeling the tumblers click, and he has to sleep in silk sheets as the cotton feels like sandpaper on his skin. So each time he’s struck by an enemy, you can imagine how much more pain he’d feel than a normal person. So Matt’s pain tolerance and endurance are incredible as well. At one point, he’s shot with a poisoned arrow but is able to continue to fight. He’s been drugged and then forced to fight his way out of a high-security prison, not to mention the various beatings that he’s endured throughout his time as Daredevil. When combining all of these incredible senses, Matt is able to form a picture of the world in his mind, essentially giving him his sight back. However, if these senses are affected by drugs or injuries, this vision of the world gets darker and makes it much more difficult for him to navigate.
Regeneration
One last power that I’d like to mention before we move on is Matt’s regeneration. Now, this isn’t very combat applicable as he does need time to sit down and meditate to force his natural healing processes to move more quickly. But it is interesting to note that he can regenerate faster than a normal human being by sitting down and concentrating.
In summation, Daredevil is an incredibly gifted, well-trained, and disciplined man who, without super strength, durability, or super speed, is able to effectively defend his city using his incredible mind, his senses, and fighting abilities combined with an extensive knowledge of the law and, of course, his friends.
So, I love Daredevil. I really hope that Charlie Cox continues to reprise the role for many years to come. Let me know down in the comments what your favorite season of Daredevil is and what your favorite fight scene in all of Daredevil.
